The Lasting Harm

Longlisted for the 2024 Walkley Book Award

'Lucia Osborne-Crowley is a lighthouse of a writer: steadfast, illuminating and patiently cutting through darkness and horror to lead us to safety.' - Benjamin Law

'Lucia Osborne-Crowley is a writer of depth, determination and uncommon insight.' - Julia Baird

I understand - and sympathise with - the feeling you might have that you already know the Jeffrey Epstein story. But I am not here to tell you a story about Jeffrey Epstein, or even Ghislaine Maxwell. I am here to tell you the stories of these women, many of whom have never spoken at length before, and about the real impact of sexual trauma on their lives.

In December 2021, Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of five counts of sex-trafficking of minors, and is now serving 20 years in prison for the role she played in Jeffrey Epstein's abuse of four girls. The trial was meticulously covered by journalist and legal reporter Lucia Osborne-Crowley, one of only four reporters allowed into the courtroom every day.

The Lasting Harm is her account of that trial, a gripping true crime drama and a blistering critique of a criminal justice system ill-equipped to deliver justice for abuse survivors, no matter the outcome.

Centring the stories of four women and their testimonies, and supplemented by extra material to which Osborne-Crowley has exclusive access, The Lasting Harm brings this incendiary trial to life, questions our age-old appetite for crime and punishment, and offers a new blueprint for meaningful reparative justice.

'A courageous silence-breaker. We need more journalists like her.' - Jennifer Robinson

'Powerful, vivid and affecting.' - David Nicholls, author of One Day

'Lucia's work is urgent, necessary and courageous.' - Elizabeth Day, author of How To Fail