In the week after Jeffrey Epstein died, Anya (not her real name) opened her New York apartment door to find Epstein's brother Mark, who told her she had to leave. She lost her home but escaped a nightmare. (Mark Epstein denies knowing about his brother's wrongdoing.)
"I'm still struggling to reconcile with the fact that I was abused for years," Anya says. "You were not chained to a door ... The chains were less obvious, but they were there." Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting sex-trafficking charges, used to say his operation was "like a cult, and he was the cult leader."
Anya has given the BBC a rare account of life as one of Epstein's "assistants" - roughly a dozen women at a time who were housed, worked all hours, and regularly sexually abused. She says they were drawn in with elaborate deceptions and empty promises, then coercively controlled: finances, who they saw, psychological demeaning, obsessive body monitoring, and forced unnecessary, disfiguring surgery.
Her account is echoed by Sarah Kellen, another former assistant, who told the US House Oversight Committee how Epstein presented himself as their saviour: "He was very good at just decimating your ability to make your own decisions ... and it made you more and more dependent on him."
After his 2008 conviction for abusing a teenage girl, Epstein shifted targets to adult women, mostly from Russia or eastern Europe. Anya says she and others still looked like teenagers. She grew up in post-communist Russia, studied, modelled for Fendi and Chanel, then met Epstein through modelling scout Daniel Siad - whom she now calls "essentially a professional trafficker." (Siad's lawyer declined comment; Siad has previously denied knowledge of Epstein's threat.)
Anya says Epstein groomed her over months: asking about her dreams, insisting she wasn't "in shape," pressuring for nude photos, and eventually sexually assaulting her in Palm Beach while he was on day-release from his sentence. She later learned from released Epstein files that a promised modelling meeting had actually ended in rejection a year earlier - she'd been strung along.
As an assistant, Anya sat around waiting for tasks, was berated for doing nothing, and was on call 24/7. She had no bank account, no rental documentation, and Epstein controlled her healthcare. He paid a small salary only years later because her visa required it. When an assistant ran away, Epstein hired a private investigator and showed Anya an email detailing $700,000 in expenses the woman allegedly owed - a clear message: leave and we'll hunt you.
Epstein also gathered compromising material, including a photoshoot where he encouraged assistants to go topless and dance joyfully, saying "this way I know you'll never go to the police." Anya lived in fear for years. Now she speaks out, hoping to shed light on how adult women can be groomed and controlled.