The Writers Who Helped Expose Epstein Say There’s More to Come

Years after the Jeffrey Epstein scandal first exploded into public view, the story still refuses to settle. The financier at the centre of one of the most notorious sex-trafficking networks in modern history died in jail in 2019 before standing trial. His longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell is now serving a 20-year prison sentence. And yet, even after the US Department of Justice released more than three million pages of documents tied to the investigation, questions remain unanswered.

According to two writers closely connected to the story, things are far from over. Speaking at the All About Women festival in Sydney, British journalist Emily Maitlis and author Amy Wallace reflected on the years they have spent reporting on and investigating the scandal — and why they believe the public conversation is far from finished, particularly because Epstein’s crimes were never confined to just him.

Wallace, who co-authored and posthumously published alleged victim-survivor Virginia Giuffre’s memoir Nobody’s Girl, said she came to see Maxwell as a central architect of the system that sustained it. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 on charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy for recruiting and grooming underage girls for Epstein, but Wallace suggested the public still doesn’t fully grasp the extent of her alleged involvement in the operation.

“She [Maxwell] had the connections,” Wallace said. “Virginia referred to her as an ‘apex predator’, because remember, this is not a woman who just recruited. She had sex with the girls, she forced them to sexually service her. This is not someone who just wanted to keep him [Epstein] happy… She was fully involved in the predation.”

Also among the most high-profile figures allegedly linked to the scandal is Prince Andrew — now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor — whose relationship with Epstein became a global controversy following a disastrous 2019 BBC interview with Maitlis. The interview, which saw Andrew attempt to explain his friendship with Epstein and deny allegations of wrongdoing, quickly became one of the most infamous television moments in modern British media.

Maitlis said his arrest last month was shocking, but also symbolically powerful. “I mean it was an extraordinary thing. For a member of the British royal family to be arrested, a man in that position… we do not have moments like that,” she said. “What’s interesting is, of course, that he was arrested for misconduct in public office, a white collar crime — it had nothing to do with the allegations that pursued him for the last 15 years.”

That detail, she suggested, highlights the strange and often indirect path accountability can take in scandals involving powerful institutions. Still, she said it signals that investigators are willing to pursue accountability around the broader Epstein network through whatever legal avenues are available. “I would be surprised if there wasn’t more to come,” she said.

Alleged victim-survivors, journalists, and investigators have continued to push for greater transparency around the network that surrounded Epstein, arguing that his conviction alone would never have revealed the full scope of the operation. While new developments continue to emerge, Wallace said the sheer number of potential victims highlights how much of the network remains unexplored. “There are at least a thousand, maybe more,” she said.

Still, Wallace said she feels cautiously optimistic that Mountbatten-Windsor’s arrest could mark “the beginning” of something. “The one thing I would try to be hopeful about is this idea that sometimes the cover-up is worse than the crime, but sometimes the cover-up is what gets the guys. And that’s what is going on now,” she said. “I think what’s happening now is the beginning of a potential opening up of all these cover-ups… I’m hopeful that has power, and that ends up in something that really rights a wrong.”