分类： society

Five years after disgraced sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein died in federal custody, one of his surviving victims has shared a harrowing, unflinching account of the systematic abuse and psychological manipulation that trapped her in his orbit for years. Speaking exclusively to the BBC on condition of anonymity (identified only as Anya to protect her safety), the survivor laid bare the hidden mechanisms of control that allowed Epstein to exploit dozens of vulnerable women long after his 2008 conviction for abusing a minor.

Anya, a former Russian model who moved west to pursue opportunities in high fashion, first encountered Epstein through a connected modelling scout in Paris more than a decade ago. What initially seemed like a lucky break turned out to be a carefully coordinated trap: scout Daniel Siad, who is named thousands of times in publicly released Epstein court documents, targeted Anya specifically after noting she was intelligent, ambitious, and far from her support network back home. He lured her with promises of elite fashion industry introductions through his connection to Epstein, a wealthy financier with high-profile relationships with global leaders and celebrities.

The grooming process unfolded slowly, over the course of nearly a year, designed to erode Anya’s defenses gradually. At their first meeting in Epstein’s luxurious 18-room Paris apartment near the Arc de Triomphe, Epstein built trust by asking detailed questions about her life goals, something few in the superficial modelling industry had ever done, and explicitly denied any sexual interest in her to put her at ease. He pressured her to exercise relentlessly to meet his body standards, demanded nude progress photos, and eventually arranged a short, meaningless meeting with Next Management co-founder Faith Kates, a meeting he had already predetermined would end in rejection. When Anya was dejected after the fake rejection, Epstein lured her to his Palm Beach estate, where he was permitted day release during his 2008 conviction sentence, and sexually assaulted her for the first time.

Lawyers for Kates and Next Management have denied any knowledge of or involvement in Epstein’s trafficking activities, noting that rejecting prospective models is a standard industry practice, and that the agency operated independently of Epstein’s influence.

After the assault, Epstein maneuvered Anya into moving into a rent-free Manhattan apartment on East 66th Street, part of a network of properties he used to house a rotating group of roughly a dozen women he called “assistants.” Far from the business training he had promised, Anya and the other women were kept on 24/7 call, given trivial menial tasks, and subjected to relentless psychological abuse and sexual violence. Epstein controlled every aspect of their lives: he managed their finances, dictated who they could socialize with, monitored all their communications through company-issued phones, and used isolation and gaslighting to break their sense of self-worth.

Anya’s account of systemic coercive control aligns closely with testimony another former assistant, Sarah Kellen, gave to the U.S. House Oversight Committee earlier this year. Kellen told lawmakers that Epstein systematically eroded his victims’ ability to make independent decisions, leaving them completely dependent on him for housing, food, healthcare, and even legal status. “He was very good at just decimating your ability to make your own decisions and have your own autonomy. And it made you more and more dependent on him,” Kellen told the committee.

Epstein used multiple layered tactics to prevent any woman from escaping or speaking out. When one assistant fled, he hired a private investigator to track her down and presented other assistants with an itemized bill for more than $700,000 that she allegedly owed him, a clear warning that he would hunt down any escapee to demand repayment. He collected compromising material, including nude photos and video of the women, to blackmail them into silence, and forced them to write “gratitude letters” praising him for his generosity, which he used to undermine any future claims of abuse. He also pitted the assistants against one another, spreading gossip and pretending to be each woman’s sole supporter, to prevent them from forming solidarity that could challenge his control.

The abuse extended beyond psychological and sexual violence: Anya told the BBC that Epstein forced her to undergo unnecessary, disfiguring surgery to remove a small teenage tattoo, cutting the tattooed skin out instead of using slower laser removal because it suited his preference. She still bears prominent scars from the two procedures Epstein insisted she complete.

The most traumatic part of her experience, Anya said, was that Epstein forced every assistant to recruit at least one new young woman to join the network, making survivors complicit in his trafficking scheme. “It’s one or 10, like, you’re already complicit,” she said, tearing up as she recounted the experience.

Anya only lost her home with Epstein a week after his 2019 death, when Mark Epstein, Jeffrey’s brother, showed up at her apartment door and ordered her to leave. Mark Epstein has denied he had any knowledge of his brother’s criminal activities. While the eviction left Anya homeless, it also freed her from years of abuse, a bittersweet turning point she describes as losing a home but escaping a nightmare.

Clinical psychologist Dr. Tara Quinn-Cirillo, who specializes in supporting survivors of coercive control, explained that a common public misconception holds that only minors are vulnerable to this kind of grooming. “You can be groomed as an adult,” she said, noting that Epstein’s slow, deliberate approach was designed to fly under a victim’s radar, “like stealth bombers are designed just to go under the radar.” After his 2008 conviction, Epstein deliberately shifted his targeting to adult women, mostly from eastern Europe, who were far from their home support networks and often had insecure immigration status that made them easier to control—though Anya noted most of the women he recruited still looked physically like teenagers.

Anya, who has received compensation through the Epstein Victims’ Compensation Fund after providing corroborating evidence of her abuse, said she chose to speak out now to correct the widespread narrative that Epstein only abused underage girls. She wants the public to understand that he built a full “ecosystem of abuse” that exploited vulnerable adult women too, and that his high-profile social connections to world leaders and celebrities helped legitimize his actions and silence victims for decades.

“When you have people like Bill Gates come to his house for dinner and shake his hand, you think, who am I to question it? Who am I to speak up here? It legitimised the abuse,” she said.

Now, years after escaping, Anya said she hopes her story will help other survivors of coercive abuse find the courage to leave their own traumatic situations. “I’m not in any way special,” she said. “I just somehow managed to find this strength in me to persevere and to survive. If I can do it, you can do it.”

For many people, a surname is far more than a simple label attached to the front of a birth certificate – it is a core part of personal identity, tied tightly to family bonds and life experiences. A growing number of adults with fractured relationships with their fathers are taking the legal step of changing their surnames to distance themselves from toxic or absent parental figures, aligning their official name with the loved ones who have shaped their lives.

One of the most recent high-profile examples of this trend comes from the family of Hollywood ex-couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Following Jolie’s 2016 divorce filing after a decade-long relationship, two of the pair’s adopted children have moved forward with plans to drop Pitt’s surname from their legal names. Twenty-four-year-old Maddox and 21-year-old Zahara first filed official name change documents back in April, and completed the mandatory legal step of publishing their intention to change names in a local California newspaper over four weeks between June and July. The pair already use Jolie publicly: Zahara introduced herself with the surname during her 2025 college graduation, while Maddox has credited himself as Jolie on past film projects. They are not the first of Jolie and Pitt’s six children to make this change: their daughter Shiloh removed Pitt’s surname and adopted Jolie back in 2024. The siblings will attend a court hearing in September to receive final judicial approval for their name change.

A source close to Brad Pitt told BBC that while the actor is heartbroken over the rift with his children and regrets how his relationship with his family has unfolded, he respects the adult children’s autonomous decision to change their names.

The Jolie-Pitt children’s legal process mirrors a choice made by thousands of ordinary people across the U.S. and UK every year, including 25-year-old Hannah from California. Like Zahara and Maddox, Hannah has had little to no contact with her father since her parents divorced when she was a toddler. She last saw her father seven years ago, and has no idea where he currently resides. For more than a decade, she lived a double life when it came to her name: she used Leonard, her mother’s maiden surname, for social media, sports teams, personal emails and casual bookings, but kept her father’s inherited surname for legal, work and school purposes. After getting married, she finally made the change official last month, legally changing her name to Leonard-Ripley – a combination of her mother’s maiden name and her husband’s surname.

“I’ve never felt like my last name reflected the love that encompasses my life,” Hannah explained. “And I wanted to make sure that my name reflected that. My mother’s love and also my husband’s love are very abundant and so important to me.” Hannah told reporters that she had wanted to make this change for years, but the high cost of legal name change in California – which ran to hundreds of dollars, including a $400 filing fee and a $130 charge for the mandatory newspaper publication – initially put her off. She described the newspaper requirement as “so outdated and odd”, and the full process took roughly three months to complete.

Maggie, a woman from Lincolnshire in the UK, shared a similar experience. While she is not fully estranged from her father, her parents separated when she was young, and the pair have never been close. She said she always hated her father’s surname, which included a profanity that led to years of bullying at school. “I didn’t want to be associated with it,” she said. Changing her surname to match her mother’s felt like an enormous weight lifted off her shoulders, and she now says she feels “more like myself”. “I wanted to be part of my mum’s family,” she added. Because UK rules require parental consent for name changes for anyone under 16, Maggie waited until she turned 16 to file for the change, even though she knew she wanted to do it years earlier. “It was so frustrating when I was so sure it was something I wanted to do,” she recalled.

Academics and mental health experts say that changing a surname in these circumstances is a deeply meaningful act rooted in identity formation. Dr. Harry Parkin, a lecturer at the University of Chester who specializes in the history of naming conventions, explained that surnames are inherently tied to how people see themselves. “When people change theirs, it can be a sign that they want to disconnect and disassociate from [an old identity],” he noted.

Dr. Becca Bland, a family counselor and coach who specializes in supporting people through family estrangement, frames the choice as a healthy psychological coping mechanism. For people distanced or fully estranged from a parent, changing a surname can “help you separate yourself from something that could be problematic or traumatic”, she explained. It removes the constant reminder of bad memories, and cuts the formal tie to a family branch that the person no longer identifies with.

Dr. Lucy Blake, a University of the West of England researcher who studies family estrangement, pushed back against common criticism that younger people cut family ties and change names on an impulsive whim. “Research shows that adults who estrange themselves from relatives often do so with a great amount of care and consideration over time,” she said. She added that people who experience estrangement often go through a wide range of complex emotions – from grief and loss to profound freedom – and can feel isolated due to fear of judgement from others for their choice.

For anyone considering a legal name change, the process and cost vary significantly by location. In England and Wales, the cheapest route is an unenrolled deed poll, which can be completed independently or through a private service for a small fee. An enrolled deed poll, which creates a permanent public record of the change through the High Court, costs £53.05 (around $71). For people born or adopted in Northern Ireland, options include a deed poll or a formal name change recording before a legal representative, which costs £35. In Scotland, applicants submit a request to National Records of Scotland for a £40 fee. Across the UK, anyone under 16 needs consent from all parties with parental responsibility to change a name. Beyond the legal filing, name changers must also update their details with every relevant government agency and private company, from passport offices and driver services to banks, student loan providers and medical practices.

For people like Hannah and Maggie, and the Jolie children, the hassle and cost are a small price to pay for a name that finally fits who they are.

A catastrophic water main break stemming from a 100-year-old pipeline has carved out a massive sinkhole along one of Southern California’s most iconic thoroughfares, Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, bringing localized chaos to the busy corridor and leaving officials scrambling to assess damage and coordinate repairs.

The rupture, which occurred early [on an unreported date], sent thousands of gallons of water gushing onto adjacent streets, submerging portions of the roadway and creating hazardous conditions for motorists and pedestrians in the area. First responders and local municipal utility crews were dispatched to the scene within minutes to shut off water flow, cordon off the danger zone, and begin initial evaluations of the infrastructure failure.

In a welcome update, local government representatives confirmed that no injuries or fatalities have been linked to the incident as of the latest assessments. The sinkhole, which formed rapidly after the pipe burst, has closed multiple lanes of traffic along the popular boulevard, a major route that sees heavy daily use from commuters, tourists, and local businesses. Utility officials have not yet released a timeline for full repairs or a cost estimate for the damage, noting that teams will first conduct a full inspection of the surrounding pipe network to rule out additional structural weaknesses before beginning restoration work.

In a bizarre and unexpected incident that has captured public attention, a young black-and-white tuxedo kitten named Magnolia has been pulled to safety after being caught up in a failed attempt to rob a bank. The small feline was stolen from its original surroundings before being exploited by individuals planning the heist, used in an as-yet-undisclosed role as part of the robbery plot. Law enforcement teams responding to the incident quickly intervened to foil the criminal plan, and in the process, they located and rescued the unharmed kitten. Now, following her chaotic brush with crime, Magnolia is in the care of local animal welfare professionals, healthy and ready to find a permanent, loving new home through adoption. The unusual case has drawn curiosity from community members, who have expressed relief that the young cat emerged unharmed from the risky criminal scheme she was forced into.