Episode Transcript
The below text transcription was is intended for audience reference and search purposes. Because it is generated automatically by computer, please forgive mis-translations, spelling and the lack of really any structured grammar.
On August 10th, 2019 infamous sexual offender Jeffrey
epstein was found dead in his cell at
the metropolitan correctional center
after epstein’s death the world and
authorities began to take a closer look
at his longtime female companion an alleged right-hand woman
[Music]
This is episode 27 the Ghislaine Maxwell story
[Music]
All right Meghan before we
get started on your fascinating case for
the day we have a few patrons to shout out I’m
ready first i would like to say a big hello
and thank you to emily from
flugerville texas i did not know a place
existed flugerville i love the name
of it it’s right by austin oh okay thank
you hi emily thank you thank you and
then we have lisa perry from bridgewater
new jersey bridgewater right now haley
around the corner
thank you lisa i think lisa actually
wrote to us as well um which is great i
love the correspondence from our patrons
and then lastly thank you so much to
olivia r
thank you olivia thank you so much to
all of you who support us it means so
much to us
and without further ado today’s episode
with special guest
dr Alexa Sardinia
[Music]
so welcome back to women in crime
everyone this week and
we decided to give amy the week off so
we have a very special guest host this
week to discuss the many
topics related to Ghislaine Maxwell we
are here joined by Alexa sardina
professor of criminal justice at
california state university
in sacramento hi Alexa hello Meghan
thank you for having me we are psyched
to have you so for the audience Alexa
specializes in research on sexual
violence and more specifically female sex
offenders which makes her particularly
apt
to help us with today’s episode and
we’re really excited
i should also tell you all that Alexa
has a wonderful new podcast
which i have binged and i love and it’s
called “beyond fear: the sex crimes podcast” in
which she and her co-host Alyssa Ackermann discuss all of the
myths and realities of sexual violence
in the united states i highly recommend this podcast it’s
fabulous thank you thank you Meghan you’re welcome and
Alyssa we met because Alyssa
and i have been colleagues for a very
long time but more so we’re also
good friends and yes so Alyssa was able
to put us together which is very
exciting new friends new partnerships and very
cool so thank you everyone for tuning in this
will be a special episode and here’s
what I’m going to do today I’m going to start off like i usually do
by telling you about colleen Maxwell and
giving you the background
I’m not going to dive into every detail
of Ghislaine’s alleged crimes
because you can get a lot of that from
documentaries and other sources and
because what i really want to get to and the
reason Alexa is here is so we can really
look at the background of Ghislaine’s
offending her possible motives
you know what kind of offender she might
be and so that’s the more important part of
today’s episode uh also as a reminder
Ghislaine Maxwell is currently being held um with no bail
she’s been arrested but she has not been
convicted of a crime yet so when we
discuss today’s episodes i’ll
be referring to her alleged crimes
because she’s not convicted so let’s get
started who is Ghislaine Maxwell the question the world
has been asking
Ghislaine Maxwell was born on christmas in
in england to media baron robert Maxwell
she was one of nine siblings though
widely reported as favorite of her father and as evidenced
by the naming of his boat his yacht his
pride prized possession which was
lady Ghislaine educated at all the top
schools Ghislaine enjoyed a life
of privilege in oxford but her father’s
childhood was quite different and i
think helps helps give us a little background as to
Ghislaine as well
so her father was originally born in
czechoslovakia but fled to france once his country fell to
the nazis and he joined the british army
and um it’s also reported unfortunately that
many of his family members died during
the holocaust and died at auschwitz
so i did not know that part of the story
neither did i until i really started
digging in and i think that’s super
interesting um once the war
ended he married gallane’s mother
elizabeth Maxwell and she’s a
french-born holocaust researcher very well known
she’s interesting she wound up getting a
phd later on in life and she’s been
really integral she established a
journal in the field
um she’s very reputable after they got
married let’s see Maxwell bought pergamon press
I’m not sure if I’m saying that right i
hope and then more famously he bought the
mirror group newspapers and
and that’s the one everyone knows and
with that purchase he really became
a media tycoon who rivaled Rupert
murdoch so they had like a long kind of established
rivalry which was interesting i was
reading about that and i guess they
were trying to out buy each other and
whatnot so you know he’s really
up there in that world right so he’s
well established and he’s
very successful uh very hard worker but
then tragedy strikes robert Maxwell drowns
in november he he disappeared from
his yacht it was either late one night
or early one morning
and he was actually found by uh rescue
searchers in the water
off the canary coast the speculation
begins there though okay
so was it you know how did this happen
was it a homicide was it a suicide or
was it an accident so did he stumble and
fall off the boat
or you know was there something more
ominous going on here
was there anyone else with him on the
boat that’s something that i didn’t
find when i was they had a captain there
there was a crew there were people there was a whole crew
okay i don’t know how many were in the
crew but there was definitely
a small crew so yes it was
the reason why people speculated too
like what was this something more
ominous because it was revealed right
after Maxwell’s death that he had stolen
millions in pension funds from his
workers and he also
accumulated millions in debt that nobody
knew about so people were now going hmm was it you
know right did he accidentally fall off
the boat they say sometimes he would
like go to the bathroom in the middle of the
night or something off the uh you know
and so right i know exactly so did he fall off
the edge or did he was there a murder or was this
a possible suicide because he knew this
was about to be revealed
yeah well it was Ghislaine who addressed the
media on her father’s boat
after his death and she told the press
that she believed her father was
murdered but this also was kind of the downfall
financially for the family
so two of his sons were later indicted
on fraud charges
they froze all the assets you know all
the money they had a lot of money and
all the money
was seemingly gone so what does Ghislaine do
after her father’s death
she was very distraught family name is
kind of ruined
what she did Ghislaine moved to the united
states and to new york more specifically
though without the financial resources
she’s still bore the Maxwell name so
that’s what really
she had she was well connected she knew
people she had served as some type of
ambassador in new york so she was also
familiar with the new york scene
so i think it was a very easy transition
for her to come to new york
so that was in you know
and shortly after she arrives here in
she met Jeffrey epstein
and while the two dated for some time
theirs was more of a long-term companionship rather than a
romance as most of us now know and have seen
blaine worked as a business consultant
but most of her endeavors seem to
revolve around Jeffrey epstein whether
she was running his household which she did she
ran several of his households
or coordinating his travel plans or
planning social events and then
unfortunately
and allegedly organizing facilitating
and participating in
his sexual offending against underage
females her world seemed to really revolve
around epstein
and i just wanna i just want to keep
that as a point or i want people to keep
that in mind
actually when we’re taking this apart
for his part
epstein was first so i won’t go into
again the entire history
because um you can get a lot of this
information elsewhere and we’ll also
cite our sources at the end so you can
get that
for his part epstein was first
prosecuted in
for sexual abuse against minors though
his crimes were reported to the police
and the fbi by maria farmer as early as
for an assault on her
and her younger sister annie um you’ve
probably seen them in the news right
they’re very active in the
investigations
i think i watched the documentary on
netflix and i think that they were
also featured in that i do remember the
the two sisters that were
sort of the initial people to step
forward right and the fbi didn’t take
her seriously and it’s really
heartbreaking in the documentary when
you hear her talk about how afraid she
was and how she really changed her whole
life she kind of went into hiding she
said she didn’t have children for this
reason and
you realize how scared she really she
was and nobody
helped her so we have documented as
early as
allegations of assault against epstein
but nothing had come from that for
several years
when he was eventually prosecuted it was
in
and many people think that he struck a
very sweet deal with former u.s attorney
and u.s labor secretary alex acosta have
you seen the interviews with acosta
i’ve seen a couple yeah so okay what
happened was epstein pleaded guilty to
solicitation of prostitutes including a
minor
and in exchange he registered as a sex
offender
um but he served just over a year in
jail and
he was given immunity from federal
prosecution for
almost every other charge and he was
allowed to work
he was allowed on work release i mean it
was really
a sweetheart deal considering totally
what his crimes were
oh yeah and if you recall i mean alex
acosta he he stepped down
when this kind of hit when the news hit
and when he was he defended his actions
you know saying well we got him to
register a sex offender and we felt like
you know we got something
i would disagree with that and I’m sure
most people would yes
absolutely and you always have to look
back too and go wow had they
done the right thing then right what you
know what the outcome or
for so many women it could have been so
much better and different today i know
i know i think of so many other sort of
of these high profile
cases like if the initial accusers
against r kelly had
been taken seriously or cosby or
you know in the gymnastics uh usa
gymnastics scandal like there are just
so many
times where we see that again and again
so another example
another example unfortunately yeah what
is glaine’s
role then in geoffrey’s sexual offending
let’s get to that so according to many
of the victims of Jeffrey epstein Ghislaine
Maxwell was a scout for victims so to
speak
recruiting young females to come to
epstein’s home
and you know give him massages that’s
kind of the premise it always started
out with you know
come here and you know it’s he just
likes massages that’s
the way you know to get people in and
while many of them said like it was
weird
you know Ghislaine had a had a good way of
befriending these young females
she would take an interest in their art
she would take an interest in their
school or their personal lives
she offered assistance in many ways and
many of these
these girls were young and vulnerable i
mean that’s you know
one of the the key things that unites
them here and i think
step by step Ghislaine would then um engage
them
in sexual abuse with epstein and other
men in his circle
but it always began like a premise of
you know coming over to the house and
we’re interested in you and oh maybe you
can work for us and we can help you
right accusations include other
activities such as
Ghislaine undressing in front of young girls
massaging them as well
and having them massage her and on some
occasions galain is alleged to have
participated
in the actual sexual assault against
underage females
again these are still accusations and
still alleged
one of epstein’s most vocal victims
virginia roberts i think it was virginia
guthrie then or vice versa she
named Ghislaine as having facilitated sexual
trafficking
of her to several different men but
Ghislaine responded with a defamation
suit against virginia claiming she was
lying and defaming her good name
so what happened with that well the two
later settled the civil suit
but the testimony given by Ghislaine in
those depositions
is now going to be used against her in
criminal charges
so that’s really going to haunt her
having filed that suit against her is
now
it’s going to bite her in the it it
definitely is i don’t know if you saw
this Alexa but some of the stuff was
already
leaked some of the documents were leaked
and i mean
you know she’s naming the big names some
of the ones you’ve heard already
and yeah you know there’s some this is
explosive material
and as i understand it right now the
judge in her case
ruled that it can be used at her
criminal trial that’s kind of the
interest her lawyers are still fighting
it and
we’ll see if it’s a definite but yeah
it’s going to hurt it’s going to be a
big house let’s put it that way
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so what happens to Ghislaine after you know
this time well Ghislaine
moves in to manchester by the sea
in massachusetts
living with her then boyfriend datatech
ceo
scott borgerson and she managed to stay
out of the spotlight for
quite some time um distancing herself
from epstein
and you know keeping her distance
unfortunately for her following
epstein’s death she could no longer keep
herself out of the spotlight and
there was a good number of years too in
which uh
i read that Ghislaine had moved away and
this
this was early like in that
she had moved away she was starting a
new life she had a new boyfriend
like you know getting away from epstein
but he was
angry or and wanted you know he kind of
wanted Ghislaine to revolve
her life around him around him he
corralled her back in
um so she comes back in but it
seems that she she makes this this break
and she’s starting a different life
she was in the spotlight a lot for over
you know the last couple of years before
the last year she was still at public
events
and still being photographed and you
know she visited
england visited the the prince um so she
was still in the spotlight
a lot but the last year she went quiet
and there was all this speculation about
where did Ghislaine go in
so people were saying that you know
every foreign country has been named and
oh she’s here she’s hiding out here
and so there’s a lot of speculation but
she was located by the fbi and they were
surveilling her
probably you know for quite some time
they say so i would imagine they were
probably surveilling her for the year
where you know it was not reported where
she was
the speculation ran about her location
the fbi located her
and on july nd
Ghislaine was arrested at her square
foot
plus home on over a hundred acres of
property
in bradford new hampshire uh the house
was purchased in
cash in december . wow Ghislaine
and her husband we’re still not sure who
the husband
is but it’s been revealed that she’s
married this just came out in court
what i did not know that’s her not in
court proceedings at her pre-trial or
her bail hearing or preliminary hearing
whichever it was that she’s married
they were living um under fake names and
under a fake story under
fake guys she had she had security just
so you know
the home was literally called tucked
away that was the name of it
sorry i thought that was a great one too
but i couldn’t get
any more of her was arrested and she was
charged with multiple counts of sexual
abuse
and trafficking against minors in
collusion with Jeffrey epstein
she faces up to years in prison for
her alleged role in these crimes
she is currently being held without bail
now that is the nutshell summary of
lane and and Jeffrey epstein but now i’d
like to
it’s i mean it’s super interesting i
really want to turn to you now Alexa
to engage you with some of the questions
and i think these are questions that
other people
have even though this episode is about
Ghislaine Maxwell
i think we need to begin with Jeffrey
epstein right i think if
i if you could help us discuss briefly
his behavior and
how you might classify him in terms of a
sex offender it would also help us to
understand
Ghislaine and her behavior and also to
highlight the differences maybe between
male and female sex offenders
it might be a good base sure yeah and so
what’s interesting i think about
this case is that both Maxwell and
epstein diverged
so much from the norm or what we know
about most sex offenders for example
epstein
differs from the typical male sex
offender
because he’s extremely wealthy he’s
highly educated
he has no history of substance abuse or
mental illness
so he’s sort of hard to classify because
he’s simply very different
than other male sex offenders okay
it’s also so there it’s sort of
difficult to put him in any sort of
type or category but if we look at
some of the motivations of male sex
offenders
those are pretty consistent so i sort of
see him as somebody that’s
motivated by power and control and so we
know
in most instances sexual assault and
rape are about power control
and not sex more evidence of this is
that he really seemed to like to
surround himself with powerful people
which i think something
that’s something that Maxwell also
facilitated so not just
having those girls but like you said
when she got to new york she might not
have had a ton of money but she had that
rolodex of
important people’s names that she really
brought to the table in the relationship
in terms of what i read that’s how i
understood it the last thing i was going
to say is that he definitely i think
also
look back on his behavior it’s pretty
evident he operates with a certain level
of entitlement
so he’s superior to other people and
he deserves to have his needs met
despite
what happens to others or whatever
impact that might have on others
does he fall into the groups i’ve taught
this before
where certain pedophiles differentiate
based on age so his victims all seem to
be between the age of and or to
.
is that um that would make him in a
group of like a fibophiles or
any of the does he mean any of those
yeah so what’s difficult about
using the term pedophilia is that it’s
really
not indicative of it’s just indicative
of attraction okay
um so you could say that yeah maybe he
is and that he’s attracted to young
women that fall into
that age group but you know his
categorization that the way i looked at
it would be more
based on his actions and so to me i see
i would see him more
as falling into a category of a rapist
versus a child molester
and when you start to look at those
different typologies there’s several of
them
but most of them are sort of divided
into types
that either focus on anger
power and control or humiliation and so
i do think that he would be that sort of
power and control type you know he
he doesn’t seem to have used any
sadistic violence against
these victims that we know of and the
anger rapist is
typically trying to express some anger
hostility that’s built over time so i
don’t really see him as doing that i
think when you
look at the totality of what we know
about him the power and control part
really
fits in that makes perfect sense and I’m
glad you thank you for distinguishing or
differentiating too because i think
there will be
people who are going to use the
pedophile term and not not
have this background so thank you Alexa
how does this
differ from female sex offenders
how does epstein and his typology differ
so what we
know about female sex offenders is that
they are significantly different in
certain aspects of their demographics
and characteristics
so they are similar to males in terms of
things like age and race and education
and uh types of sex crimes they commit
so in this way
Maxwell like epstein differs from your
typical female sex offender because
she’s wealthy
highly educated she has no history of
substance abuse either
no diagnosable mental illness okay but
then when we look at the research that’s
compared male and female sex offenders
we see that female sex offenders are
more likely to report
significant histories of physical abuse
emotional abuse or sexual abuse so a lot
of people who offend sexually have
those histories but what we found is
that the stories
in the background that female sex
offenders have are usually much more
extreme
females sex offenders are more likely to
report coming from a dysfunctional home
to have psychological issues including
suicide attempts
and they’re more likely to actually have
male victims
ah okay so she sort of diverges there
too but really the key difference
between male and females is that
approximately half of female sex
offenders have
a co-offending partner and usually
this is their partner is usually a male
romantic partner
and so in that way she’s very consistent
with what we know about female sex
offenders
when you say what we know about female
sex offenders i just want to be
clear i know there’s research on it but
there’s not much right
no there’s really not much part of the
reason is because of the prevalence
rates of female sexual offendings
according to most sources the best guess
is that
of sex offenders are female but there’s
also reason to believe
that the that there are more female sex
offenders out there than
we know but this research is based on
women who have been
convicted of sexual offenses so we have
a very small sort of sample population
there to derive this information even
when i teach women in crime and we look
at this section they always say it’s so
limited and most of what we know comes
from the sort of school
teacher conviction pool so it’s you know
I’m like wow that’s not going to provide
us with
you know uh information about all and
some of the reason that
there’s an assumption that there are
more female sex offenders than the
official numbers suggest have to do with
um the way we view women in society
right so there’s there’s this notion that uh
female sex offenders go
more easily unnoticed because they can
sort of disguise their behavior
in their interactions with children so
it’s very normal to see a woman
changing a baby or bathing a baby
it’s very normal to see women touching
children whereas maybe the same
behaviors done by a man would raise
concern that makes perfect sense yeah
and so and there’s also sort of connected to
this this idea that we have that female
sex offenders are this teacher
that’s you know kind of young and hot
and has a relationship with like a
year old boy you know that perpetuates this notion
that female sex offending isn’t harmful
yes and so it’s not taken as seriously
still um even by the criminal justice
system right um bringing it back to Ghislaine i
would like to get a little bit into
i think the question everyone wants to
know well what were Ghislaine’s
motivations and you know is this typical
of most female sex offenders you know i know you
said in some ways she diverges but
can you talk about this aspect for us a
little bit yeah sure so i actually read
something interesting i think it was in a vanity
fair article in which she was described
as half ex-girlfriend half employee
half best friend and half fixer which i
thought was very a very interesting way to describe her
relationship with
i read that too um but she’s also yeah
it’s it’s a really kind of great
explanation because that does seem to be
like she filled all of these roles right
so you know given that and given you know
that this she’s definitely a
person that has a co-offending partner
like half of female sex offenders
that category is usually further divided
into male accompanied offenders and male coerced
offenders so i believe she’d fall under
male company because she seems to have not been
abused by epstein in any physical way and she
didn’t seem to fear him
and those are usually the the main ways
that we would distinguish between the
two but i think she’s motivated by the need
to please pepsi
i think that has a lot to do with her
behavior when you were sharing about
uh how she would be doing all of these
things for him and sort of her life
revolving around him
and taking care of his properties and
whatever it seems like
the need to please him was a driving
force really into all of her behavior there’s
also the possibility though that she did
want to engage in the sexual acts with
him in these young girls
and it could have been a combination of
both you know and one could have
developed separately after you know a certain time
that makes sense it was a long period of
time that she was engaging in this
recruitment grooming
I’m glad you brought up uh grooming um
this word is being used a lot and i just
want to make sure that we all understand
what what this is so can you explain to
us what grooming is yeah sure so grooming is um basically a
premeditated behavior that’s used to
manipulate a victim into compliance so
people that engage in child sexual abuse
or in rape can use these behaviors and
there’s you know a variety of different
types of grooming behaviors but
really the most common is some sort of
emotional manipulation
so this can happen through talking the
victim into having sex or doing favors in exchange for sex and
so i think that we see her engaging in a lot of this
grooming as well when we think about you know how
she interacted with a lot of these girls
she tried to befriend
certain victims it seems like asking
about their lives taking them shopping
and importantly she really acclimated
them to his behavior to fct here so tried to put
them at ease and really they if you think about it
from a perspective of
your you’re a young woman you’re getting
advice basically from an older woman
who you think you can trust um about how
to behave around this powerful person
right and she also um encouraged them to
take money from him so he would pay for
trips in school and she would encourage
that behavior as well
so she definitely engaged in grooming
behavior i thought so as well um yeah
interestingly by this token glean engaged in grooming
behaviors but do you believe that she was also
groomed herself by Jeffrey epstein
it’s really hard to say because we don’t
know that much about
their relationship their private
relationships right right like every
we can talk about people from the
outskirts looking in but
i think that in order for her to be
like so able to explicitly follow
his instructions on what he wanted and
his needs so specifically that she would
have to have been manipulated or groomed in some sort of
way but i don’t want that notion to diminish
her responsibility
or to put her in the light of being
victimized this looks like a very fine line the
same thing i thought when i was asking
the question and i realized I’m like i don’t want
anyone to misinterpret this and think
that uh we’re then describing Ghislaine as a victim it just
struck me that possibly she was i think the way you
said it i think he was able to
manipulate her and i think i it it sounds like that she
was so i don’t want to see obsessed but
so concerned with him that she just
wanted to please him at all costs so
you know that maybe she didn’t take that
much through me i also think that she
was um so happy to be back in the spotlight
and to have all the attention and
financial resources and i think
part of her motivation here is that she
didn’t want to lose her lifestyle again
you know she kind of had to build it back and i
don’t think she wanted to jeopardize
that as well yeah i agree i agree so it’s i look at
it as him sort of having those finances that she
lost and she had more of the contacts
that he needed to be in that sort of big you
know wealthy upper cross society that
they became more of a part of i see it that way as
well one of the things that i want to
ask you about is the charges here include sexual
offending but also sexual trafficking and sometimes these
two are now getting lumped together can you
talk a little bit about the difference
between offending and trafficking
sure so when we’re talking about sex
trafficking that usually means that there’s a recruitment
harboring or transportation of an
individual under some sort of horse broad or
coercion and they’re induced to perform
a commercial sex act okay
so it does not have to include any
travel or transportation
or movement across borders essentially
characterized by the sexual exploitation through force
fraud or coercion okay so that’s
how you can sort of think of sex
trafficking when we talk about sexual offenses or
sexual assaults that’s a little bit different for
example sexual assault can include
things like attacks or even just threats of attacks
that involve unwanted sexual contact between a victim
and offender with or without force um it can also
include verbal threats
and so sexual assault is kind of a broad
term okay um for various you know sexual
offenses so i think that the best way for me to
conceptualize or the way i conceptualize
what happened is that
these girls were trafficked they were
also sexually assaulted some of them forcibly
raped um which is another definition but you
know that those sort of fell
within the context of all that’s
happening so you can consider them
victims of all of these events
and also we’re looking at trafficking in
new and different ways now
as well so thank you for helping to
clarify how we can view that and why it
doesn’t have to be that
when we think of you know smuggling
someone across the border
it’s it’s definitely a little bit you
know it’s broad
it’s not broader than that but it’s I’m
not sure how to say it but
it’s it’s not the typical image that we
have in our head
right and you know just like when we
think about human trafficking like it’s
it’s they’re very they’re more general i guess than
you would presume
right the the characterizations are yeah
well thank you for that
no problem this is speculation here and
i know we’re getting into speculation a
little bit on this one but
i wonder if galain would have been this
type of offender on her own if she never met
Jeffrey do you think that Ghislaine might have been
an otherwise you know
normal law-abiding person or would she
have offended in some other way or would she
have you know it’s speculation i realized but what do
you think well I’m I’m honestly really
curious to hear your opinion on this
because oh god you are interested here as well
and i am very very curious to hear what
you have to say i promise I’m not going
to change my opinion
based on what you say okay so i
my opinion is that if she never met
Jeffrey she probably wouldn’t have been
a sexual offender
but i think she would have been an
offender of some type because of
greed i agree i don’t yeah i think that he
sort of brought out the
sexual deviance in her but yeah i think
we talked about her backstory
her father’s and brother’s proclivity to
sort of scam people and the way that she
lost everything that she was used to i think
that she would have
offended in some other way i agree which
is also interesting about sexual
offenders right because sex
offenders will recidivate in many ways
that are non-sexual as well right
absolutely a lot of people don’t
know that that actually sex offenders
typically and especially those that
complete treatment
tend to recidivate at very low rates for
sexual offenses and you know moderate to low
rates for other events we’ll have to see
if that’s going to apply to Ghislaine and
we’ll get to that in a minute right so
because we are you know criminologist i
wanted to briefly discuss possible criminological
theories that might also
explain Ghislaine’s behavior because i
immediately not sure what you think but
i immediately think of
control balance theory by charles tiddle
um okay for anyone who doesn’t know control
balance theory charles tittle said that
when people have a controlled deficit
or they don’t have enough control over
their lives they will offend
and if people have a control surplus
meaning they have way too much power and
control to exercise
they will also offend but they’re going
to offend in different ways
so people with a deficit are going to
offend in like
ways this might explain actual maybe it
explains rape when people are trying to
exert their power over someone because
they feel powerless I’m not sure
but crimes that they’re trying to you
know exert a certain amount of power or
gain their power back
but the the surplus part is where people
are committing crimes of greed because
they have no oversight and because
why not they can so this is the theory
that i think of and especially when you
started talking
about the power and control does this
fit or are there other theories that you
think fit with
either Jeffrey or Ghislaine’s behavior so i
hadn’t um
initially thought about control balance
theory because it doesn’t really come up
much when we talk about sexual theories
of sexual offending which is interesting
because i can see
logically how that would make sense but
for me i think the best explanation um
and we have to be really careful because
there are different theories
based on um the sex of the offender so
theoretically speaking female sex
offenders would
require different explanations for their
behavior
but what comes to mind a lot for me are
is this idea of cognitive distortions
if you give me a second i will connect
that to a
broader criminological theory okay but
um anyways for those of you that don’t
know cognitive distortions are these sort of
irrational thoughts
that distort our perception of reality
and so we
all have them but they do play a
significant role
in sort of perpetuating our
psychological state so
these are often patterns that are
automatic and can be hard to identify
if you’re not aware of them so some
common ones that everybody engages in are if i
fail at something I’m a loser
i can never do anything right so
many sex offenders use these to justify
and excuse their behavior
and so they minimize or deny the damage
caused to victims
minimize the violence used in their
offense so
you know i raped her but i didn’t hurt
her i already know what theory you’re
gonna link this to just so you know but
keep going sorry denying responsibility
for the offense
so she was asking for it or she was
drunk denying planning
and then the last is entitlement so that
idea that people
some people are superior to others and
deserve to have
their needs met so i think that
entitlement distortion
would be something that applies to
epstein and Maxwell and so Meghan
in theoretical terms this is the these
are the techniques of neutralization
yeah mistakes and mata situational
excuses that
allow an offender to engage in behavior
with by but relieve them of the guilt absolutely
so these have really been well
documented in male rapists and
child sexual abusers right so we have to
be careful um because although they’re
documented amongst female sex offenders
we don’t have that much much research to
support it
right understood so yeah so if there’s
you know a sense that these sort of same
rules apply
um what was interesting is to me is that
when the entitlement component was identified
in female sex offenders
they didn’t reference the self as being
entitled they referenced
their male co-offender as being entitled
ah understand yeah i thought that was very
interesting and very
telling in in this case as well wow
okay that makes sense techniques of
neutralization okay that makes sense to
me too
I’m seeing both of it I’m seeing your
point of view now on uh on a last note
here i want to briefly discuss even though we
don’t know what’s going to happen right
now to Ghislaine in the criminal justice
system but i’d like to maybe discuss
what we think amy and i usually do this we end
off what we think is appropriate
like well what should the criminal
justice system do with Ghislaine Maxwell
um so would she benefit from punishment
um would she benefit from rehabilitation
what do you think is is appropriate here
so it’s really i think it’s so
complicated when we say
would somebody benefit from going to
prison because I’m just
i don’t know I’m anti-incarceration so i
find that that hard to say however in this case
especially because epstein is no longer
around to be held accountable
i do feel that it’s appropriate for her
to spend some sort of time
you know fulfilling a prison sentence of
course i do also think though that a treatment
sex offender treatment program is
necessary for her
i think it’s important would it work
perfectly that’s a good question
so it really if she is able to
understand and sort of empathize with
the harm that she’s caused it can work
and people can learn to do that for the
most part um but so far she’s not really showing
any signs of
you know being held accountable like
taking accountability or holding herself
responsible
so you know i think that she needs a lot
of treatment
and a lot of treatment or that sort of
focuses on her relationship with males
in her life
like how did she get caught up in this
relationship
how does she avoid that in the future i
mean i know she’s like
in her s now she’s . so you know
she might not get out till she’s a lot
older if we’re assuming she’s going to
go to prison
for a significant period but she needs
to understand sort of what led up to
this happening and
why her behavior why she let her
behavior sort of get so out of control
okay i just i do have faith in some sort
of treatment and rehabilitation
I’m glad to hear that actually you know
i was i was thinking about this myself
i like to think about you know how
people are worried that she’s going to
strike a sweet plea deal and she’s not
going to serve any time i actually don’t
believe that’s going to happen i believe
the charges are so significant and
there’s people really want justice um especially
after epstein’s death so
i believe Ghislaine Maxwell is going to
serve serious prison time and i believe
it’s deserved
however that being said if she is going
to get out at any point
i definitely would like to see her have
some type of
rehabilitative program and whether you
know it’s treatment whether it’s therapy
whatever it is i’d like to see her be able to
manage and i think
you said it really well or figure out
manage these her behavior and help
figure out how it’s st where it came
from and and maybe work on
like as you said changing her
relationship or dynamic with the men in
her life i think that’s really important yeah and
that ends up you know what’s also
interesting is
there’s currently no treatment model
specifically for female sex offenders
it’s based on a male model
like that’s how new we still are in all
of this so
even though we know the need for like
gender responsive programming
for female offenders and all that stuff
that has not
made it over yet oh to focus on sex
offenders but
the proposed programs all say that you
need to work on
if there’s a co-offender like what was
that co-offending relationship
and then the other significant part
would be her history of trauma so the
death of her father i think played a
role in shaping
her relationships with men and you know
she might have never
dealt with that trauma and if she truly
believes her father was murdered
that’s you know that would weigh on you
psychologically
so i would be hopeful that if she got
that treatment she’d eventually be able
to
say this is what i did and I’m sorry for
it
and I’m taking steps to make sure it
doesn’t happen again best case scenario
i i agree with you Alexa i appreciate
that point of view and uh
let’s hope that Ghislaine Maxwell can take
responsibility and hopefully her victims
will get the justice they deserve
thank you again Alexa for being with us
uh i would like you just to remind
everyone the name of your podcast and
your platform so where they can find it
sure so we are um beyond fear the sex
crimes podcast
and my co-host Alyssa ackerman and i
talk about
myths and realities about sexual
violence and you can find us
on spotify apple podcast google podcast
stitcher basically any place you get
your podcasting
wonderful I’m sure people are going to
be really interested to check it out
again it’s fabulous
so thank you so much thank you women and
crime listeners and
we’ll see you next time on women in
crime bye.
[Music]
Meghan thank you for an amazing episode
as usual
now our favorite part we get to our
patron questions
no problem are we ready for that one
yeah all right you want to read us off
the first one
sure so the first one is from ali hi ali
hi ali
the question is when they’ve researched
a particularly gruesome case
what do they do to get to a happier more
positive place
i’d be interested in hearing from both
amy and Meghan given the state of things
today and the challenges we’re facing i think
it might be helpful for listeners to
hear how two people
who deal with some of the most
devastating aspects of human nature cope
what a cool question that’s a great
question you want to take that one first
i have a feeling our answers will be
similar here can i say wine and my puppy you can
absolutely say one in your puppy um
i have to be honest somehow i do a
decent job
compartmentalizing what we do i also
even though I’m a pessimistic person i
am somewhat hopeful for the justice
system somehow somewhere i guess it’s from
working with
offenders and just seeing how redeemable
people are it just gives you like a
sense of hope so
i think maybe i am one of the lucky ones
who works in the field that
i don’t feel that i need to cope per se
exactly but having a puppy helps i know
savion blanc from marlborough new
zealand helps i know
i i actually agree with you you’re right
our answer is the same i don’t usually
feel like i need to cope in fact i feel
almost like invigorated by some of these
cases even though
they are hard sometimes and they’re
devastating I’m also like you I’m like
well what can we do
yeah let’s talk about it let’s let’s
figure it out how do we make this better
so i feel like it actually motivates me more so there have
been a few cases that i did find very
difficult i i think i told you shane to
share was so hard and honestly there’s really not much you
do but you know what i mean
like for that one i mean i even cried on
that one and then i moved past it and i
worked on the next one yeah for the most
part i feel inspired to keep working harder to make
the system better oh i also wanted to
add that a lot of these cases are so gruesome and
such awful things happen but
somehow there’s always a light part of
it whether it be a new
victim advocacy organization or there’s
some there’s something
there’s usually something good that
comes from the bad yes and even if it’s
you know a new new legislation passed to
change something that we were doing
wrong or you know that led to
so that kind of helps as well okay all
right then we have a question from
saga and wait till you hear about where
saga lives okay she’s awesome i grew up in sweden
and had been living the last couple of
years in tokyo japan
love it awesome japan is considered a
very safe country to live in but
living there has also made me very
curious about the justice systems in
different countries
and crime within different cultures and
how it all differs between them
as criminologists have you come across
anything that relates to female victims
or female offenders in other countries
that you think the us could learn from
or even implement in its own
justice system yes yes and yes oh my god
yes we do it worse like we do with the
worst out of everyone
agreed Meghan and i had the opportunity
to take students with us
over to the uk we taught a class on
comparative justice systems
and i won’t steal all of it i’ll let you
talk a little bit but i do want to
talk about the difference in prisons we
took our students to
court police facilities but taking our
students to a prison
in new jersey and then taking students
to a prison outside of london
wow you just really see how we do not
know what we’re doing well they treat
they’re very they’re just humanizing you know there
are programs for rehabilitation you can
physically see too that people are
working they’re taking pride in their
institutions they grow some of their own
food i think that we’ve definitely seen our
prisons are are among the worst they really are and
with female victims i
I’m sorry i cut you off amy but yeah
i’ll just say that i think what we
should be doing better is really
focusing on rehabilitation
medical needs absolutely we do not do
that enough mental health needs and especially we
still we’re doing it a little bit more now but
treating a lot of these women
as victims and not offenders because
most of them have been seriously
victimized i think that especially she mentioned
she is from sweden and we know that
sweden has one of the best systems
i don’t know exactly the numbers but i
know their recidivism rate is
very small compared to ours everyone’s
recidivism right as small compared to
ours but i know that
they they’re doing things really well we
also criminalize um crimes committed by
women for survival purposes
here and we make them bad women per se
and that’s something we really need to
reshape our focus and how we’re dealing
and and not criminalizing but helping yeah
and talking about everyone not just
women the way we criminalize drug use
of course our sentencing our all of our
policies all of them punitive we could go on and
on for hours we’ll stop on that yeah
and then lastly we have jamylah who has
a gorgeous name love it out of all the cases that you’ve
both studied which case either fascinates or boggles
you to the most two cases i am fascinated with and just
can’t get enough of are darley rodier
we hear you on that one and aaron
hernandez obviously
she says i know he’s not a woman but
still yes aaron hernandez case is
quite fascinating I’m not as fascinated
with his only because
i understand it like i get it so I’m
more fascinated with cases that i don’t
know the outcome or i can’t
you know what i mean yes so i i was
interested i love the documentary but
yeah darley rudier I’m obviously i
covered it what else amy who else for you oh for me
i don’t want to spoil it too much
because we have an upcoming episode but
i have to say cindy james one of the most boggling
pieces one of the most boggling cases of course
there’s the cases of natalie holloway
and jonbenet and i could go on and on
about cases but I’m gonna have to say if i had
to pick one right now it is cindy james
what about you I’m still I’m gonna go jonbenet always
melanie mcguire because i
want to solve this and martha moxley
which is one i forget to mention
yes what happened to martha moxley i
covered that also in an episode and i
I’m coming up so those are the ones that stay with me
great and as always please send us your
case suggestions we get some of our best
ones from you all thank you thank you again we love the
questions
[Music]
sources for today’s episode include:
vanity fair, the documentary Jeffrey Epstein filthy, rich a report from cbs news, NPR, and Forbes