The Adult Women Caught in Epstein’s Web of Abuse

**Jessica Mendoza** (0:05)
The uproar over Jeffrey Epstein has been focused on his crimes against underage girls. It was what he was convicted of, and it's what led to his arrest before his death. Some of the girls who were trapped in his web for years were as young as 14 But as the Epstein files reveal, that wasn't the whole story.
After he was convicted of soliciting a minor in 2008, Epstein didn't stop being a predator. He just changed his strategy. Epstein focused on trafficking adult women, coercing them into sexual favors for him and his friends.

**Khadeeja Safdar** (0:41)
He obviously was convicted in 2008, and the takeaway from that was that he was going to continue his sex trafficking operation, but he was going to find adults that looked like teenagers.

**Jessica Mendoza** (0:54)
That's our colleague Khadeeja Safdar. We interviewed her as she was recovering from an illness, which is why her voice sounds a little scratchy. Khadeeja has been covering Epstein since 2019

**Khadeeja Safdar** (1:06)
As long as they're of legal age, he felt that that would mean that the authorities wouldn't come after him. And unfortunately, he was right that he didn't get as much scrutiny because he was sex trafficking adults. And so that was how his scheme worked, and he was actually running, I would say, an international sex trafficking operation where he was moving women from other countries to the US.

**Jessica Mendoza** (1:31)
Women who felt they had no choice but to do what he told them, even when that meant coercing other women into being victims too.
One of those women was Svetlana Pozhidaeva, a woman who had been in Epstein's control, where she was abused and coerced into recruiting other women for him. Her name can be found in some of the millions of documents that have been released related to Jeffrey Epstein. Now, Svetlana says she's struggling to regain control of her own story and make sense of what happened to her.

**Khadeeja Safdar** (2:07)
There's a lot of complexity to the way Epstein operated, and there's more than meets the eye. He was very manipulative, and there's what you see on the surface, like in the emails, and then there's just like really what's happening behind the scenes.

**Jessica Mendoza** (2:24)
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Friday, April 3rd. Coming up on the show, inside Epstein's scheme to manipulate, abuse, and traffic adult women.

**SPEAKER_4** (2:53)
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**SPEAKER_5** (3:21)
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**Jessica Mendoza** (3:58)
Svetlana Pozhidaeva is from Russia. She has blue eyes, dark hair, and she's tall. She went to a top university in Moscow, where she studied political science. She speaks Russian, French, Italian, Spanish and English. Svetlana's dream was to become a model. And in her 20s, she was living in Milan to try and make that dream come true. By the way, Svetlana isn't her current name. The Wall Street Journal isn't publishing that.

**Khadeeja Safdar** (4:26)
She had real jobs at the time. She was working with famous Italian fashion brands.

**Jessica Mendoza** (4:32)
In 2008, Svetlana connected with someone who said they could open doors for her.

**Khadeeja Safdar** (4:37)
And she met an individual who built himself as a modeling scout who told her that she could get an audition with Victoria's Secret and that she had all the talents to be able to do that. And that all she needed to do was meet a billionaire who had those connections and could get her this opportunity.

**Jessica Mendoza** (4:57)
And so that led her to Jeffrey Epstein. Khadeeja, you've been talking to Svetlana for years. What was the relationship like when they first met?