Warning: This story contains graphic sexual descriptions<\/p>\n
Joanna Harrison never wanted to speak about the abuse she faced at the hands of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n
Like many survivors, she says Epstein’s assault filled her with shame and embarrassment. But after her name was unintentionally made public in the release of millions of files by the US government, she told BBC Newsnight’s Victoria Derbyshire she felt she had to speak out.<\/p>\n
“It gets to a point where you’re being suffocated and you need to breathe, and I feel this is my way of trying to breathe,” Harrison said.<\/p>\n
BBC Newsnight brought Harrison and four other Epstein survivors together for the first time in the same room. During the hours-long discussion that followed, there were supportive gestures and, as they studied photos of themselves from the time when they first met Epstein, there were tears.<\/p>\n
In the wide-ranging interview, the survivors told their stories of grief and anger. Some recalled their time at Epstein’s infamous private island, Little St James, while others recounted “eerie” moments at his New Mexico ranch.<\/p>\n
They said they believed the powerful figures with whom he associated himself would most likely have known what was going on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warning: This story contains graphic sexual descriptions Joanna Harrison never wanted to speak about the abuse she faced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":494213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-494212","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494212\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}