Lucia Osborne-Crowley The Lasting Harm: Witnessing the Trial of Ghislaine Maxwell

About

This talk, which is based on the book that the Guardian recommended as ‘brilliantly unsettling begins with the words: 'I understand – and sympathise with – the feeling you might have that you already know the Jeffrey Epstein story. But I am not here to tell you a story about Jeffrey Epstein, or even Ghislaine Maxwell. I am here to tell you the stories of ten women, many of whom have never spoken at length before, about the real impact of sexual trauma on their lives.'

In November 2021, Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of five counts of sex-trafficking of minors, and now faces twenty years in prison for the role she played in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of four girls. The trial was meticulously covered by journalist and legal reporter Lucia Osborne-Crowley, one of the only reporters allowed into the courtroom every day.

This talk is her account of that trial, a gripping true crime drama and a blistering critique of a criminal justice system ill-equipped to deliver justice for abuse survivors, no matter the outcome.
Giving voice to four women and their testimonies, and supplemented by exclusive interviews, this presentation brings this incendiary trial to life, questions our age-old appetite for crime and punishment and offers a new blueprint for meaningful reparative justice.

Lucia Osborne-Crowley is an award-winning writer and journalist. Her news reporting and literary work have appeared in Granta, GQ, The Sunday Times, HuffPost UK, the Guardian, ABC News, Meanjin, The Lifted Brow and others. She currently works as a court reporter for Law360, a US newswire covering courts and crime across the world. She is also a trained lawyer.

Her book: ‘My Body Keeps Your Secrets’ was awarded the Somerset Maugham Prize for Literature in 2022.

A Q&A Session will follow.