That denial is dark and strange because, if so, it means that all these women who say that Maxwell was a handmaiden to a mega-rich paedophile are deep in a conspiracy of lies, all the darker because they didn’t know one another at the time and, pretty much, they all say the same thing. Find out what John Sweeney really thinks about his interview with Vlad Demchenko, the Ukrainian soldier who arrested him on Day 2 of Putin's war on suspicion of being a Russian spy. Available exclusively on Global Player. Sweeney theorises that, like a cult victim, just as Ghislaine could never bring herself to believe her father was the monster he palpably was, so she “blinded” herself to Epstein’s depravity, even as she became a willing accomplice to it. A former acquaintance sees it differently, observing that Ghislaine would not be the first woman who “possesses a sexual pecadillo of sharing women with her boyfriend. Underlying all of this was her libertarian sexual appetite.” As Epstein’s girlfriend, his alleged pimp and partner in a series of sex crimes Ghislaine has remained in the shadows. When Epstein’s life began to unravel, Ghislaine vanished, only to reappear when she was arrested by the FBI last year. She denies six charges of enticing young girls for sex with Epstein and perjury.

That’s probably a fair assessment, except to say there are many greater monsters active out there. Who’s hunting them? Every now and then, reporters go to hellish places - I’ve stepped unwittingly in other people’s blood from the Romanian revolution in 1989 to the Bataclan in 2015 – but listening to a host of “nubiles” claiming sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell was grim indeed. Epstein is dead but Maxwell is very much alive and denies everything. Detained, tortured, stabbed, and sentenced to death. This is Aiden Aslin’s astonishing story, from the heart of the conflict in Ukraine. Aiden fought with the Ukrainians and was captured by Russian forces during the siege of Mariupol. After a normal childhood in Nottinghamshire and ambitions to be a policeman, how did he find himself a prisoner of war? And how did he survive it? As such, it’s a perfectly sensible proposition, which may well be true, but as Maxwell herself has never really spoken about any of it – she elected not to give evidence at her own trial – it’s hard to know how damaged she was before she began damaging. Robbie Ashcroft, Managing Partner, Entertainment Development of The Story Lab said, “As soon as The Story Lab heard John Sweeney’s vision for the Hunting Ghislaine podcast we saw its potential to evolve from sound to screen. We’re thrilled to continue on this collaborative journey with our wonderful partners John and Global, and we are delighted to connect with Paula, Eve, Jill and the passionate team at Eleventh Hour Films to develop this story into a television drama event.” Jon CreamerThen there was the shared interest in sex. Epstein – as Donald Trump observed – had a widely known enthusiasm for young girls. According to one visitor, there was only one book on view in his home: the Marquis de Sade’s The Misfortune of Virtue. Sweeney methodically chronicles the steps of grooming; spotting the victim as being vulnerable, unstable, from a broken home; the friendly approach, the offer of a job, advancement or simply ready cash; the seemingly innocent suggestion of giving Epstein a massage; the ensuing abuse and entrapment.

Sweeney concludes: “Ghislaine was both the double victim of monsters and, to those without power and money and connections, a monster in her own right.” Why so much swearing? “Swearing is very much part of me and the mood of the podcast. I want this to be like having a pint with someone in the know.” He thinks his rough-and-ready persona is refreshing. “The public like my stuff. I have that attitude of not being cowed.” Indeed, Sweeney is probably best known for screaming at a Scientology spokesman during a 2007 Panorama.Ghislaine’s father, Robert Maxwell, was a sadist, a war criminal, a monster. His cruelty deformed Ghislaine Maxwell long before she met Jeffrey Epstein. Her one-time lover was convicted for being a paedophile. So Ghislaine’s life has been spent serving not one monster but two. One of the unexpected pleasures of making the podcast was bumping into old friends from Fleet Street like Kenny Lennox, the great Daily Mirror photographer who ID’d the body of the drowned publisher in 1991 and Noreen Taylor, a feature writer on the paper who recalled Maxwell “dragging people into this nightmarish maze and making demands and then cancelling the demand, then making fresh demands. But not because he could get joy out of it. He was just in his own swirling nightmare as well.” Just so you know, this is fiction: but Heawood and his compadre Kennedy Fisher are played so brilliantly by Barnaby Kay and Jana Carpenter that they’ve started to feel like real people. I find myself rooting for the cynical, intrepid Fisher in particular, despite this series’ dark questions around who she is and what she’s really been up to. This is a new element, and means that our two heroes are not working together as closely as before; Fisher is in a small coastal town in the US, Heawood in Mosul, though there might be a sinister connection between both places… Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial?

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After bullying the secretary, she blurts out what the Sun editor said: “I don’t want to talk to that fat Czech c**t.” The secretary vanished, never to work at the Mirror again.