In the week after the sex-criminal financier Jeffrey Epstein died, Anya (not her real name) opened the door of her New York apartment. Outside was Epstein's brother, Mark, telling her she had to leave, she says. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing BBC News.

Anya had lived for years in one of several flats on East 66th Street in Manhattan used by Jeffrey Epstein to house women he abused. In one moment, she lost her home but escaped a nightmare. (Mark Epstein denies he was aware of his brother's wrongdoing.)

"I'm still struggling to reconcile with the fact that I was abused for years," Anya says. "You were not chained to a door or something, right? You were not locked up in a basement. The chains were less obvious, but they were there."

Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting charges for sex-trafficking children, used to say that his operation was "like a cult, and he was the cult leader", Anya says.

She has given the BBC a rare account of life as one of Epstein's "assistants", detailing how the financier maintained a hold over so many of his victims for so long.

The assistants were a group of women - roughly a dozen at one time, Anya estimates - who were housed by Epstein, worked all hours at his beck and call, and were regularly sexually abused by him.

Anya says they were drawn in with elaborate deceptions and empty promises of work, before he began to coercively control nearly every aspect of their lives, exploiting any weaknesses he could uncover.

She says he controlled their finances, dictated who they saw and psychologically demeaned them. He monitored their bodies obsessively, Anya says, and forced her to have unnecessary, disfiguring surgery.

Her account of Epstein's control is echoed by Sarah Kellen, another former assistant. She told the US House Oversight Committee earlier this year how Epstein presented himself as the assistants' saviour. "He was very good at just decimating your ability to make your own decisions and have your own autonomy. And it made you more and more dependent on him," she said.

There is a bias which tends to make people think that only children are susceptible to this type of coercion, but "you can be groomed as an adult", says Dr Tara Quinn-Cirillo, a clinical psychologist who has worked with victims of coercive control. "You can be vulnerable to this," she says.

After Jeffrey Epstein was convicted in 2008 of abusing a teenage girl - whom he lured to his homes with the offer of work as a masseuse - he changed tactics. He began largely targeting adult women, mostly from Russia or other parts of eastern Europe.

Anya says she and many of the other women recruited still looked like teenagers, however, and she showed the BBC photos of herself at the time to demonstrate.

Anya had grown up in a Russia emerging from communist rule, with strict parents who drilled into her that "education will be your success", she says. But opportunity was scarce and, armed with her degree, she left Russia to work as a model.

She worked in Europe for luxury brands such as Fendi and Chanel. She had friends, a support system and family she could fly back to see whenever she wanted.

In her early twenties, she came into Epstein's orbit when she visited a Paris agency and met modelling scout Daniel Siad. He complimented her intelligence, "which is not typical in the modelling industry", Anya says, and suggested introducing her to a friend of his with connections in the fashion business: Epstein.

Anya says she used to wonder what would have happened if she had not stopped by the agency that day, but now she believes she was purposefully targeted. "It was a complete set-up," she says, describing Siad as "essentially a professional trafficker".

Siad's name appears thousands of times in the Epstein files - the massive collection of documents about the financier released by the US government in January. Siad's lawyer said he was not available for comment, but he has previously denied any knowledge of the threat that Epstein posed.

Anya says she first met Epstein at his sprawling 18-room Paris apartment, decorated with pictures of himself posing with people such as Bill Clinton and other world leaders. She says she felt comfortable because there were two other women present, one Russian and the other Epstein's then-girlfriend from eastern Europe.

Epstein asked Anya to undress so he could see her body for modelling, she says. As she stood in her underwear, she says the financier told her she was "not in shape" and needed to "start working out", calling her lazy.

Comments such as these were common in the modelling industry, Anya says, and she believed his claims that if she worked hard, he would introduce her to the right people.

Anya says he asked her about her family, her interests, "what I was trying to accomplish in life, why I was doing modelling, all things that mattered for me". "You don't get asked those questions in fashion," she says. Several women have told the BBC that Epstein liked to learn what mattered to them so that he could later use the information against them.

He also addressed her concerns head-on. "I see that you're smart and you're suspicious," she recalls him telling her. "I don't want to sleep with you."

Anya says this put her even more at ease. "I was telling myself, gosh, this guy is just incredible. He can see right through me," she says.

This was just the start of a grooming process that would unfold over many months, stringing Anya along with empty promises and an extended deception.

Over the course of almost a year, Anya began exercising "religiously" to get the body Epstein wanted, she says. Lesley Groff - his executive assistant who managed his diary -