The Guardian
In this painful, candid book, a reporter with a history of abuse sits in on Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial, identifying bias in all its forms and dramatising the lives of the victims
t the heart of Lucia Osborne-Crowley’s account of the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, The Lasting Harm, is a question about who is permitted to speak on the subject of sexual, particularly childhood, abuse. Osborne-Crowley is the author of two previous books, I Choose Elena and My Body Keeps Your Secrets, both of which examine the ongoing trauma of her childhood grooming by a sports coach, and a violent rape by a stranger at 15. This, then, is the indelible experience she brings to her court reporting on this most sensitive of issues, and she takes pains to clarify what that means at the outset:
“I have been accused many times of being a biased journalist because of my history of abuse. To that I say: yes, I am biased. Everybody is, whether we own it or not.” She goes on to say, “the journalists I met at the Maxwell trial – mostly men in their 40s – who did not have any experience of sexual trauma are also biased. These issues have never affected their lives and so they subscribe to a patriarchal, societal and defensive narrative”; one that does not, she argues, take into account the pervasive effects of trauma and shame on victims, particularly when it comes to speaking up about the crimes.
Later, once the guilty verdict is in, this question rears up again, after Osborne-Crowley secures an interview with one of the jurors, who tells her of his own childhood abuse – an experience he did not disclose in advance but which he shared in the jury room, and which, for several weeks, threatens to derail the outcome as the defence files a motion for a retrial.
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