Epstein Survivor Anouska De Georgiou Speaks Out

In my interview with Epstein and Maxwell survivor Anouska De Georgiou, she explains how grooming works, how the Trump DOJ’s “file dump” retraumatized survivors, and why she’s not done fighting.

For years, we have covered the Epstein Files and centered the voices of survivors who have carried this trauma for decades, often while powerful institutions tried to erase them, discredit them, or use them as collateral damage. In my latest interview, I spoke with Epstein and Maxwell survivor Anouska De Georgiou, who shared a clear-eyed account of what happened to her, how the system has failed survivors repeatedly, and what it means when a government tasked with protecting vulnerable people instead exposes them.

I would normally post my afternoon recap around now, but I am posting this in its place today because this story is far too important not to share. You can watch the full interview right here, and you can continue to read my write-up below. I hope you find this interview as powerful and important as I did, and I hope you consider spreading it far and wide. Anouska’s story deserves to be heard by as many people as possible.

Anouska and I spoke Thursday evening the fallout continues to grow over the botched partial release of the Epstein Files. What was framed as transparency has, in practice, been the opposite. We have witnessed a chaotic cover-up that has led to retraumatization for survivors who were promised protection. As Anouska explained, this was not simply a matter of distressing material resurfacing. It was the deliberate exposure of identifying and deeply personal information that survivors were compelled to provide under oath.

She described learning that her home addresses, phone numbers, driver’s license details, signature, and other private information were included in the release. “I had to pull over,” she told me, describing the moment she received the documents while traveling with her daughter. “Everything went into slow motion,” she said, explaining how the release effectively turned her life into an open file for trolls, harassers, and anyone seeking to intimidate her.

Anouska did not mince words about what it feels like when the state behaves this way. “The very people who are meant to lead this country… have completely retraumatized us,” she said. “It’s like being raped by the Department of Justice.” That is a brutal sentence, and it is not rhetoric. It is her lived description of betrayal by institutions that had one job: protect survivors while handling sensitive material.

She also addressed a common refrain survivors hear when they speak publicly: that being “out” should mean their private information is fair game. She explained the difference with painful clarity. She did not choose to be exposed online. She chose, later, to speak in her own name after being outed, and to try to reclaim some agency. “I have a child. I have a business. I’m a mental health professional,” she said. The release, she explained, created physical, legal, and emotional danger—not only for her, but for survivors who had remained anonymous until the government’s mishandling stripped that away.

From there, Anouska took us back to how this began.

She was 16 years old when she first encountered Ghislaine Maxwell, a woman Anouska described as “a very smart monster.” She explained that grooming does not begin with violence. It begins with attention, flattery, and the targeted identification of vulnerability. She had recently moved back to London after school in the south of France. She was transitioning, isolated, and trying to find stability. She also had accomplishments and ambition—she had earned a place at Oxford to read law. Maxwell, she said, seemed “extremely impressive,” someone who knew exactly what to say, and exactly how to make a teenager feel seen.

Maxwell emphasized similarities between them—shared schools, shared language, shared upbringing—and used them as a hook. She invited Anouska for tea near her mother’s home and asked “all the right questions.” In Anouska words, Maxwell noticed she was “lonely,” “vulnerable,” “shy,” “trusting,” and “insecure,” then offered “kindness and support.” Maxwell also dangled “an amazing boyfriend,” describing him as a philanthropist who loved helping young women.

That “boyfriend” was Jeffrey Epstein.

When Anouska arrived at Maxwell’s home thinking she was walking into an opportunity—something like an interview—she was immediately placed off-balance. She described being made to stand at the door while Epstein sat in sweatpants and stayed on the phone. She was never invited to sit down. She was kept waiting, nervous, trying to impress. Then came the testing: Maxwell made comments about her hands, her strength, and pushed her into physical contact in a way that seemed small enough to comply with, but significant enough to cross a boundary. Afterwards came praise—another classic grooming tool.

Soon, Maxwell called with a “favor.” Epstein’s massage therapist had “canceled,” and Maxwell pressured Anouska to come immediately. Anouska did not describe graphic details, and I want to be explicit that we do not need those details to understand the abuse. She said the first experience “became somewhat sexual” and that what followed escalated “in increments,” testing what they could do, pulling back when needed, then pushing further again. She described shame, dissociation, and the isolation of not knowing how to tell anyone—especially as a teenager raised to defer to adults and authority.

She later traveled to Palm Beach, about a year and a half after those initial interactions. She was just 18, without a cell phone, without a way to contact anyone outside the house phone in front of Epstein and Maxwell, picked up at the airport and taken somewhere she did not know. She described being “way out of my league” and “totally out of my depth.” She described how Maxwell laid out clothing for her to wear, directed her movements, and exploited the fact that she had nowhere to go. “They took advantage of the fact that I couldn’t leave,” she said. In Palm Beach, she described dissociation becoming daily, substance use increasing as a survival response, and the crushing realization that she was being treated as disposable.

Over time, she explained, it became “You come when you’re summoned.” Epstein was positioned as untouchable, unreachable—no one spoke to him directly—and the entire environment enforced hierarchy and fear. Staff were afraid. The urgency was contagious. It trained compliance. It trained silence.

Anouska also spoke about the dangers of misinformation and media manipulation—how narratives can be planted to confuse the public and discredit survivors. She discussed a planted 1997 Sunday Mirror story that falsely implied she was romantically involved with Donald Trump. She explained she was placed in an apartment by Epstein and Maxwell, and that the story contained numerous inaccuracies. What mattered to her was how false narratives become ammunition: once one part is proven wrong, bad-faith actors try to use it to dismiss everything that is true. “Misinformation and disinformation… serves people who would seek to discredit the real facts,” she said.

Then we discussed the legal process—moments of accountability that still come with enormous cost.

Anouska described how she coped for years through alcohol and medication, becoming “an alcoholic” and “an addict,” and how sobriety became a turning point. She has now been sober for 22 years. Sobriety, she explained, brought her back into her body—and into the reality of what happened. She described it as “a blessing and a curse.” It helped her build healthier coping mechanisms, but it also meant facing the trauma more directly.

In 2019, after Epstein’s death, survivors were given an opportunity to speak in court. Anouska praised Judge Richard Berman for allowing survivors to speak “truth, without a conviction,” calling it “unprecedented” legally and emotionally. She described standing “shoulder to shoulder” with other survivors, people linked not by choice but by the same pattern of abuse.

But speaking publicly came with consequences. She described being followed, harassed, intimidated, and forced to move. When she later appeared in the Maxwell indictment and the case advanced toward trial, she described how her life effectively stopped—never knowing when the next wave of threats would hit.

She also spoke honestly about the emotional complexity of Maxwell’s conviction. There was relief that Maxwell “can’t hurt anyone else,” but, as Anouska said, “It’s tragic when there is a woman who has to be incarcerated so she doesn’t hurt children.”

Finally, we discussed what it means to see Maxwell moved into a lower-security setting and treated with the kind of institutional leniency survivors never receive. Anouska described feeling “upsetting,” “disappointing,” “shocking,” and left with “hopelessness,” especially against the backdrop of the file release and the continued withholding of information without transparent justification.

She criticized the way this files “dump” was structured. Flooding the public with a mix of real facts, misinformation, and disinformation produces confusion by design. “It creates chaos,” she said, and chaos helps people who want to discredit survivors. If everything is tangled together, bad-faith actors point to one questionable item and try to dismiss the entire body of truth.

At the end of our interview, Anouska spoke about why she continues—even when the process is slow, even when the world does not change at the pace survivors deserve. She referenced other survivors, including those no longer with us, and described a moment before trial when she thought she could not testify. What changed her mind was reading about another survivor—someone with a child the same age as hers—who had died. “I realized that I had to do it,” she said. “Things are changing and we are making a difference and I will continue to fight.”

I want to thank Anouska for telling the truth with precision, courage, and restraint—refusing sensationalism, refusing to be used, and refusing to be silenced.

And that is what we owe survivors in our coverage: not just attention when it’s convenient, but care, accuracy, protection, and sustained pressure for real accountability, especially when powerful people would prefer the story to drown in noise.

Watch my interview with Anouska above or click here. Thank you for supporting our reporting.