Hunting Ghislaine: ‘All she has to do is feed him fresh children’
How Ghislaine Maxwell went from being in the thrall of one monster to procuring pedophilia for another.
The Hunting Ghislaine podcast taps into arguably the biggest story of the year — until it was swallowed by the pandemic and US election. Ghislaine Maxwell is being brought to justice for her alleged key role in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking.
John Sweeney, a former BBC Panorama, and Observer newspaper journalist examines how Ghislaine went from being in the thrall of her father Robert Maxwell, a press baron and fraudster, to procuring young girls for Epstein’s paedophilia, under the guise of massaging the financier. Heavy emphasis is placed on Ghislaine’s daddy issues with racy editorialising, “She loses everything when her father, the first monster in her life dies. She gets everything back, power, money, society when she meets the second monster. All she has to do is feed him fresh children.”
Picking up where the slick American podcast The Mysterious Mr Epstein left off, Sweeney mixes gumshoe reporting, interviews and debriefs with his producer, and samples audio from other media coverage of the case. He’s a gruff investigative reporter, sardonic. It’s a thrill hearing him calling numbers in Ghislaine’s little black book, or picking up the phone to the FBI, tenacious old school journalism that’s missing in a lot of rehash true crime podcasts.
Importantly, survivor’s stories are recounted, how Epstein’s victims were groomed. The local link is one of the survivors, Virginia Roberts Giuffre moved to Australia. What happened to her, and others is uncomfortable listening, but timely with Grace Tame being appointed 2021 Australian of the Year for her survivor advocacy.
Conspiracy theories abound with Epstein’s links to Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Leslie Wexner. His liaison to high society wasn’t through his financier money, but facilitated by his handmaid Ghislaine.
Sweeney says he will return to cover Ghislaine’s trial, but foreshadows the child sex trafficking charges stop in 1997, prior to Giuffre’s ordeals. That could mean it’s survivor Annie Farmer’s word against Ghislaine. Sweeney predicts she perjured herself in testimony given that differs from civil cases which are sealed having been settled. Her criminal trial is due to commence in July 2021.
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