A BBC News investigation has published a detailed first-hand account from a woman, given the pseudonym Anya, who describes years of coercive control and sexual abuse as one of Jeffrey Epstein's "assistants" in New York. She says Epstein ran his operation "like a cult", drawing in around a dozen women at a time with false promises of work before dominating nearly every aspect of their lives, and her testimony helps explain why so many victims stayed under his control for so long. The account matters because it adds detailed, corroborated evidence to the record on Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting sex-trafficking charges, and highlights how adults, not just children, can be groomed and trapped by coercive abusers.

Anya, a former model from Russia, says she was introduced to Epstein in Paris in her early twenties by a modelling scout, after which he took control of her finances, dictated her relationships, psychologically demeaned her and forced her into unnecessary, disfiguring surgery. She lost her New York flat, one of several properties Epstein used to house women, in the days after his death, when his brother Mark told her to leave (Mark Epstein denies knowledge of any wrongdoing). Another former assistant, Sarah Kellen, gave similar testimony to the US House Oversight Committee this year, describing how Epstein presented himself as a saviour while eroding victims' autonomy; a clinical psychologist notes that adults, not only children, can be vulnerable to such grooming. Following his 2008 conviction for abusing a teenage girl, Epstein reportedly shifted to targeting adult women, mainly from Russia and eastern Europe, some of whom, Anya says, still looked like teenagers.