Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What warnings are given about the content of this episode?
The following podcast contains accounts of child sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. Tara Brown, senior reporter for 60 Minutes, joins us to unpack the Epstein files. We focus on her documentary, The Reckoning Inside the Epstein Files, exploring the network and influence of Jeffrey Epstein, the experience of survivors and the fallout after his death.
That documentary is available on Nine Now and also on Stan. In exciting news for us, this interview will also air nationally on our brand new Kiss FM radio show. It's called True Crime Tonight and it's on every Sunday around Australia at 6pm. This is Australian True Crime.
We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation.
I too felt completely overwhelmed by the information coming at us. I don't want to make it sound like it's an explainer, but in a way that's what it evolved into. We certainly couldn't cover everything that had been dumped in the Epstein files, but it was just to try and get an understanding of it.
Chapter 2: Who is Tara Brown and what is her connection to the Epstein files?
I was on that journey myself. The horror of the Epstein saga crime is that so much of what seems outlandish is actually quite believable.
Right. Absolutely. My daughter is saying to me, she's 16 and gets all of her information from TikTok.
Chapter 3: What themes are explored in Tara's documentary 'The Reckoning'?
And she's saying to me, you know, they killed children. They killed babies. And I'm saying, darling, no, I don't believe that. That's insane. That's crazy. And I still, I haven't seen any evidence to that, but I think there is a feeling of things that we thought couldn't be true have turned out to be true.
Well, that's right. I mean, right now in New Mexico, following a tip, there's allegations that there were two young girls who died during violent sex on Epstein's ranch. Zorro, it was called at that time. And that they were buried either near or on the ranch somewhere. I mean, that's a tip, and that's an allegation, so it is yet to be verified or even investigated properly.
But sadly, as your daughter's identified, that is perhaps not far from the truth. Obviously, it's yet to be investigated, but... As you're identifying, in the past you'd go, oh, that's ridiculous, and let's move on. And there is a lot of ridiculousness in this, I think.
There are lots of extraordinarily outlandish allegations and tips, and that's part of the issue with the Epson files, working through that. But the fact that there is a sense of possibility is something kind of new.
Well, more than one person has mentioned Pizzagate to me recently. The old conspiracy theory that the Clintons were involved in this high-profile pedophile ring was run out of the basement of a pizza shop, which is a whole other detail.
But I remember when I first read that thinking all of it is insane and also we've become such a conspiracy-driven culture that I think that makes things easier to dismiss, actually, as well, when you don't like them. But now it feels like years later... we know that there was a huge pedophile ring of important people, powerful people around the globe.
So I'm not saying Pizzagate happened, was true, but the most important element of it has been proven true, hasn't it? Well, that's right.
But I think if you can remove yourself in some way from the more crazy conspiracies, because the truth itself is terrible. In a way, I get the point that understanding what is truth and what is a conspiracy theory is a very difficult thing to determine in this case.
But I think the true horror is the stuff that's not made up of conspiracies, but the allegations made by the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein.
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Chapter 4: What shocking allegations are associated with Jeffrey Epstein?
You know, one might want to be a musician, one might want to be a professional masseuse, one might want to be a ballerina. And what Jeffrey Epstein dangled was that opportunity.
He had the means to do it, didn't he? He had the means to send some girls to university, to send them away on amazing trips and educational trips and things like that. And he did that for some girls.
He did. And he offered the bait to many others and he always kept it alive. It was always something to come back for. And I don't know, you know, it's a very difficult thing to explain because And I'm not the best person to explain it, but the pull that he used was very clever and it robbed the women and girls of real choices, I think. It made them feel complicit in what was going on.
That's interesting because it's not the first time I've read about or heard about pedophile rings utilising victims, turning victims into co-conspirators. And again, we're talking about very young people whose boundaries have already been torn down and saying to them, go and bring your friends over here and tell them I'll give them $200.
And these young people don't understand that that's making them complicit in a crime.
Yes, and, you know, some girls brought dozens of girls and they live with the guilt of that today.
Yeah. When you're describing, you know, going over to Geoffrey's house to give him a massage, I've read Virginia's book, which is excellent, and it goes a long way to, I think, really humanising and explaining the psychology of how this can happen, how a young woman can find herself in this situation. But I have to visualise Ghislaine.
in that room, in the car, in the conversations, making those young women feel comfortable. Is there any evidence that Jeffrey was offending before he and Ghislaine teamed up together? Do you think this could have happened without her?
That's a good question, Michelle, and I'd be lying if I knew the answer to that. I'm just trying to think of the dates because there's some suggestions that he was abusing girls as early as 1985.
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