Making Surviving Jeffrey Epstein

August 26, 2020 Mansha Daswani

A panel organized by the Royal Television Society explored the event doc Surviving Jeffrey Epstein with A+E Networks UK’s Dan Korn, producer Robert Friedman of Bungalow Media + Entertainment and directors Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg of Break Thru Films.

Broadcast by Lifetime in the U.S. earlier this month, the four-part Surviving Jeffrey Epstein is now making its way across the globe, with Crime+Investigation in the U.K. airing the doc event this week. Distributed globally by A+E Networks, the series investigates the alleged sexual predator and the sex-trafficking network he created over two decades. Featuring testimony from his victims and exploring the aftermath of his death last year, it also includes new footage of the arrest of Epstein’s ex-girlfriend, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell. She has been charged with sex-trafficking crimes and is currently being held in prison ahead of her trial in the summer of 2021.

“It is, in my view, a journalistic tour de force in its efforts to expose two decades of the most systematic and appalling abuse of young women and underage girls by a man who was a trusted friend and confidante of some of the leading lights in the political and commercial establishments on both sides of the Atlantic,” Korn said of the doc. “Location by location, residence by residence, the series forensically peels back the layers of a sophisticated international sex-trafficking operation, constructed by Epstein and his co-conspirators, from his lavish Palm Beach estate and his now-notorious Manhattan townhouse to his isolated ranch in New Mexico and his private island in the Caribbean. In each of these locations, the series provides new insights and information on the sheer scale and extent of the targeting, solicitation and trafficking of underage, vulnerable young women.”

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Korn continued, “More than anything else, and as the title suggests, this series gives a voice to the survivors of Epstein’s crimes.”

Asked about the origins of the event series, Friedman noted, “We knew others were telling this story, but how we wanted to tell it was very different. We wanted to tell this story through the lens of the survivors. I’m thrilled to say all the survivors we worked with felt very comfortable. And it was important for us to create a context. Toward that end, we worked with Daniel Bates from the Daily Mail and Christopher Mason, who had been friends with Ghislaine early on and who could corroborate the context of the world they were operating in. Probably the biggest challenge is that three days before we were going to deliver the series, Ghislaine was arrested. We were very fortunate to be able to go back to the survivors and redo much of what we had done.”

Asked by Korn how Surviving Jeffrey Epstein differs from Netflix’s book-based Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, Friedman responded, “We decided to go into this story of this very sophisticated web of female recruiters, allegedly led by Ghislaine, who weaponized class and gender in a way that many have never seen before to put the victims at ease and to deliver them to Epstein. Our looking very deeply at the grooming and the recruiting, for the most part by women, we felt had not been seen before.”

Stern backed up this perspective, noting, “It’s very much told first-person from the women’s point of view. Anne and I gave [the survivors] space and the security to, in their own words, tell us their stories. The series reaches you on an emotional level.”

Sundberg added, “As we did our own research and spoke with the lawyers who represent these women, it became clear that each voice in this series speaks to a very specific approach by Epstein, with the aid of Maxwell. It was important for us to understand what made these women psychologically susceptible. We have experts who speak to what happened, emotionally and psychologically. The thing we found remarkable was Epstein, with the help of Maxwell, really had an ability to sniff out the specific vulnerabilities for each category of the women they targeted.”

As for what justice looks like for the survivors now, Friedman said the team behind the doc hopes that the trial of Maxwell will give them some form of closure. “If not for the dogged work of journalists and lawyers—and I’d like to include us filmmakers and brave networks who wanted to tell this story—it’s possible the story would never have been told.”

Asked about what impact the doc can have on viewers and society at large, Friedman referred to Lifetime’s Surviving R. Kelly, about the famous singer-songwriter who is finally facing charges over decades of alleged abuse of young women. “So much of that storytelling had an action at the end to try to make for change. In the States, it was