Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: When Glaine Maxwell was sentenced to twenty years jail for
Speaker 1: sex trafficking crimes. Journalist and writer Lucier Osborne Crowley was
Speaker 1: there in the courtroom. She watched on as Glaine Maxwell,
Speaker 1: a British socialite and close associate of Jeffrey Epstein, waited
Speaker 1: to hear her fate, and she listened as her victims
Speaker 1: testified to the harm inflicted by Maxwell's predatory actions. But
Speaker 1: the more Lucier learned, the more she came to understand
Speaker 1: the trial as a sham, with many other unnamed, powerful
Speaker 1: accused perpetrators associated with Epstein and Maxwell still protected to
Speaker 1: this day today. Luccia Osborne Crowley, author of The Lasting Harm,
Speaker 1: on the survivors of the crimes of Glene Maxwell and
Speaker 1: those who got away with it. It's Wednesday, July thirty one, Lydia.
Speaker 1: When people think of Glenn Maxwell, it's often Jeffrey Epstein
Speaker 1: who comes to mind, and the flight logs and all
Speaker 1: of the power and the money that surrounded them. We
Speaker 1: actually don't often hear about the victims, the girls who
Speaker 1: Maxwell trafficked. Could you start by telling me what it
Speaker 1: is that drew you into their story.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. Well I was really struck when I was
Speaker 2: at a trial because I was in a press gallery
Speaker 2: with people who were filing stories every day. So I'd
Speaker 2: get back to my hotel room every night and I'd
Speaker 2: read the coverage of the day, and there was just
Speaker 2: so little coverage of what the victims had actually said.
Speaker 2: We just end up being really focused on perpetrators and
Speaker 2: trying to figure out who they are and why they
Speaker 2: are the way they are, and whether we mean to
Speaker 2: or not, you are, by necessity taking that oxygen away
Speaker 2: from victims. So I really wanted to write something to
Speaker 2: counterbalance that.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, tell me then, what it is that the
Speaker 1: victims actually said in that quorum.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they all told such a similar story about
Speaker 2: grooming and about course of control and about how they
Speaker 2: were kind of hands selected by Gilaine based on their vulnerability.
Speaker 2: So a woman called Carolyne, she testified under only her
Speaker 2: first name to protect her identity, and her testimony was
Speaker 2: unbelievably powerful and she was completely raw with the jury.
Speaker 2: So she is a kind of paradigmatic example of what
Speaker 2: Gilaine and Jeffrey would do. They would find people like Carolyn. So,
Speaker 2: Carolyn grew up in a trailer park with a single
Speaker 2: mother who was a drug addict. She was in middle
Speaker 2: school when they recruited her. She was not being looked
Speaker 2: after at home, and also they didn't have much money
Speaker 2: coming in, and she had been abused by another adult
Speaker 2: male starting from the time that she was four years old.
Speaker 2: Gillane and Jeffrey would often talk to the girls and
Speaker 2: find out if this kind of thing had happened before,
Speaker 2: because they know it's much easier to victimize someone once
Speaker 2: they're already in that cycle. So all of these kind
Speaker 2: of biographical facts about Carolyn's life show you exactly what
Speaker 2: Gulaine did. She found people who were not having their
Speaker 2: needs met at home, and that was often emotional and
Speaker 2: psychological and financial, and then they would come in and
Speaker 2: offered to meet those needs, so firstly by kind of
Speaker 2: befriending them and gaining their trust, but also of course
Speaker 2: by helping them financially. And that's the thing that is
Speaker 2: so awful and so confusing about sexual abuse in childhood
Speaker 2: and grooming in particular, because it leads us to feel
Speaker 2: incredibly confused because we finally trust an adult authority figure
Speaker 2: who swoops in and promises to save us, and then
Speaker 2: they end up hurting us as well. That damage does
Speaker 2: not stop in childhood, and it continues all the way
Speaker 2: through adulthood and all the way through in Carolyn's case,
Speaker 2: all the way through a person's life.
Speaker 1: And so, sitting there in that courtroom over the four
Speaker 1: weeks of the trial, what did you learn about Glene
Speaker 1: Maxwell and her motivations?
Speaker 2: Well, as I said, I decided really early that I
Speaker 2: wanted the book to focus on the victims. But what
Speaker 2: I will say is that just from being there, we
Speaker 2: did learn a lot about her, in part just from
Speaker 2: observing her. I mean, she was incredibly relaxed. She really
Speaker 2: did not appear on a single day of the five
Speaker 2: and a half weeks like she was at a serious
Speaker 2: sex trafficking trial. It felt a bit like she didn't
Speaker 2: really think she should be there. She was just very
Speaker 2: blusse about the entire thing, and that was really jarring
Speaker 2: to me. And she was quite strange in the way
Speaker 2: she interacted with us, Like she drew me at one
Speaker 2: point on her legal pad and then kind of was
Speaker 2: kind of locking eyes with me and trying really hard
Speaker 2: to engage. I mean, she was she wasn't allowed to
Speaker 2: speak to me, but she was trying really hard to
Speaker 2: engage with me in any other way that she could,
Speaker 2: in this kind of charming way. And again, she was
Speaker 2: doing this at times while witnesses were testifying. It's like
Speaker 2: she wasn't even really paying attention sometimes to her own trial.
Speaker 2: So that kind of told me a lot about her
Speaker 2: lack of remorse and the fact that she really didn't
Speaker 2: feel like she had to be there. And then the
Speaker 2: other thing that we learned is what she didn't say
Speaker 2: in her defense. So it was open to the defense
Speaker 2: to make an argument that she was kind of pulled
Speaker 2: into this by Jeffrey Epstein and all so that she
Speaker 2: had a history of having an abusive father and that
Speaker 2: made her vulnerable to being drawn into this. She chose
Speaker 2: not to make that argument. She chose instead to just
Speaker 2: attack the credibility of the victims. That was her only defense.
Speaker 2: Her defense was is women are lying and now they
Speaker 2: think they're going to get money from Jeffrey Epstein's estate,
Speaker 2: so they've made up a story about me being involved
Speaker 2: when I wasn't involved. Thirdly, we also learned about her
Speaker 2: character at sentencing because a defendant is allowed to speak
Speaker 2: at sentencing. It doesn't often happen. I didn't expect it
Speaker 2: to happen. And then all of a sudden, she just
Speaker 2: got up in her shackles and she started walking towards
Speaker 2: the podium and we were really surprised. She spoke for
Speaker 2: five or ten minutes, and she completely failed to apologize.
Speaker 1: Right, So what did she say?
Speaker 2: She said, I'm sorry for what Jeffrey did to you.
Speaker 2: It felt really unbelievable. I mean, she'd just been convicted
Speaker 2: of several counts of federal sex trafficking of underage girls
Speaker 2: and she still wasn't able to acknowledge that she played
Speaker 2: a role in it. Often when defendants speak, it counts
Speaker 2: in their favor because often it means they're willing to
Speaker 2: get up and say that they're sorry. And Judge Nathan said,
Speaker 2: I'm actually taking into account the fact that you decided
Speaker 2: to stand up here today and you still failed to
Speaker 2: express any remorse at all. So it ended up counting
Speaker 2: as an aggravating factor rather than a mitigating factor.
Speaker 1: And after the trial, you spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: with the women who gave evidence, and I wonder, after
Speaker 1: all of the time in the courtroom and with those
Speaker 1: victims afterwards. If you think that ultimately justice was served
Speaker 1: in this.
Speaker 2: Case, great question. No is the short answer.
Speaker 1: After the break the people using money and power to
Speaker 1: evade justice. Lucier in your book about the trial of
Speaker 1: Glene Maxwell, you say that every single piece of your
Speaker 1: reporting over the last twelve months led you to believe
Speaker 1: that the Maxwell trial was a show trial. Can you
Speaker 1: tell me what you mean by that.
Speaker 2: I think it's very important that there has been at
Speaker 2: least one conviction in this case. You know, it would
Speaker 2: have been a much worse outcome if Geline wasn't convicted,
Speaker 2: particularly given that the evidence was so strong, and that
Speaker 2: that would have been a serious miscarriage of justice. But
Speaker 2: that's not to say that this is what justice actually
Speaker 2: looks like for this case. Because what I learned in
Speaker 2: my investigative reporting for the kind of three years after
Speaker 2: the trial and getting to know the victims so well,
Speaker 2: is that there are so many people who are implicated
Speaker 2: in this either who knew about it, or who enabled it,
Speaker 2: or who actually participated in abusing these girls who have
Speaker 2: never been charged, who've never been indicted. Some of them
Speaker 2: are names that I can't say on air, but you'll
Speaker 2: know because they've been associated with Jeffrey and the media,
Speaker 2: but some of them are names that have never been
Speaker 2: associated with Jeffrey, who've never even had their lives tarnished
Speaker 2: by association with him, and they did do this. So
Speaker 2: you know, this story is so far from over. This
Speaker 2: went on for three decades. This was a sex trafficking ring.
Speaker 2: At the moment, there's one person in prison who enabled
Speaker 2: the trafficking, But at the moment, under the justice system,
Speaker 2: there is no one that these girls were technically trafficked too.
Speaker 1: Have you come to any conclusions about why they haven't
Speaker 1: been cases made against any of these other people who
Speaker 1: you're thinking of.
Speaker 2: I mean, I asked the FBI about this, because there
Speaker 2: are lots of allegations against the FBI in the book
Speaker 2: about failing to present evidence at the trial that they
Speaker 2: had access to, and they didn't deny any of the allegations,
Speaker 2: they just declined to comment on them. So I got
Speaker 2: nothing from them by way of explanation. It seems to
Speaker 2: me that there is enough evidence out there to indict
Speaker 2: several people, So I don't think that's the problem. I
Speaker 2: think the problem is political will to do so. There
Speaker 2: are so many coked spiritors out there who really really
Speaker 2: want to live out the rest of their lives without
Speaker 2: this being found out. So they have a lot of
Speaker 2: money and they have a lot to lose, so they
Speaker 2: can do things like send a private investigator to follow
Speaker 2: me around for days and days and days, which is
Speaker 2: what happened when I went out to see Carolyn. I
Speaker 2: was tailed, I was followed, I was threatened. And you know,
Speaker 2: the thing that Gilen used to always tell these women
Speaker 2: when they were teenagers was if you ever speak about
Speaker 2: if you ever come forward, we will find you. We
Speaker 2: will be watching you, and we will find you. And
Speaker 2: she has followed through on that promise.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One small counterpoint to what you're saying, I suppose
Speaker 1: is what you wrote in the book about how Maxwell
Speaker 1: didn't expect those teenagers who she trafficked to grow into
Speaker 1: the women who would then be capable of testifying against
Speaker 1: her in the way that they did. So that offers
Speaker 1: some hope, surely. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And this is one of my favorite moments of
Speaker 2: the trial. It was so so powerful, and it was
Speaker 2: in the reply closing submissions, and one of the prosecutors
Speaker 2: just said that I'm paraphrasing here, but you know, Gilene
Speaker 2: Maxwell thought these girls were beneath her, thought they were nothing.
Speaker 2: But what she didn't count on is that they would
Speaker 2: grow up, and that they would grow up into these
Speaker 2: brave survivors who were willing to come here and sit
Speaker 2: in front of you, the jury, and talk about the
Speaker 2: worst things that have ever happened to them, And that
Speaker 2: really captulated I think so much of what we're seeing
Speaker 2: in the world at the moment is that these perpetrators
Speaker 2: who pray on children, these cowardly perpetrators who pray on
Speaker 2: people who are so much more vulnerable than them, what
Speaker 2: they never ever realize is that we do actually grow
Speaker 2: up and we do have the power to come forward
Speaker 2: and speak up about what they did to us. And
Speaker 2: in Australia we have so many brave people doing that,
Speaker 2: you know, thinking about Grace to Aim and Harry James
Speaker 2: and Britney Higgins, and you know, we have so many
Speaker 2: people proving that exact point, which is that those perpetrators
Speaker 2: were wrong when they underestimated us.
Speaker 1: Lucier, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: No, thank you so much, thank you for your wonderful questions.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, Australia's third largest airline, Rex
Speaker 1: has stopped selling seats and appointed administrators. According to media reports,
Speaker 1: the airline cited escalating costs as partially responsible for recent losses,
Speaker 1: with the airline posting a three point two million dollar
Speaker 1: loss in the first half of the twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: financial year. On Monday, the Australian Stock Exchange suspended Rex's
Speaker 1: shares following the news that Deloitte had been brought in
Speaker 1: to advise on the airline's financial situation. Rex is a
Speaker 1: vital airline carrier for Australia's regions and the federal government
Speaker 1: says it's keeping a close eye on the situation and
Speaker 1: forced marriages, forced labor and sexual exploitation are on the
Speaker 1: rise in Australia. The AFP has reported a twelve percent
Speaker 1: increase in reports of human trafficking and modern slavery over
Speaker 1: the last twelve months, with three hundred and ninety reported
Speaker 1: cases compared to three hundred and forty the previous year.
Speaker 1: While human trafficking of both adults and children was the
Speaker 1: most common crime reported, the data released by the AFP
Speaker 1: included four reports of slavery and one report of organ trafficking.
Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks for listening,