I never thought day would come, says British accuser

A BRITISH alleged victim of Jeffrey Epstein arrived at court in New York yesterday to ‘show solidarity’ with Ghislaine Maxwell’s accusers.

Sarah Ransome, whose father is Lord Macpherson, the second baron of Drumochter, has claimed she was raped up to three times a day during months imprisoned on Epstein’s private Caribbean island.

Miss Ransome told reporters outside Manhattan’s Thurgood Marshall Courthouse: ‘I have so many emotions. I never thought this day would come.’

The 37-year-old, who will not be testifying in Maxwell’s trial, was born in South Africa and moved to the Scottish Highlands when she was a teenager.

She has previously alleged in a lawsuit that she was lured to Epstein’s US Virgin Islands hideaway – nicknamed ‘Paedophile Island’ – in 200 , when she was 22, and raped by the American financier and other men.

She said that she was so determined to escape that she hatched a plan to swim across the surrounding shark-infested waters.

However, she was spotted on the video cameras Epstein had installed across the island and stopped by his cronies. Miss Ransome has also said that Maxwell was complicit in the abuse, claiming it was the 59-year-old socialite who showed her ‘how to please Jeffrey’.

She claimed Maxwell threatened to assault her if she refused to provide sexual services.

Miss Ransome told Panorama in 2019: ‘Ghislaine controlled the girls. She was like the madam. She was like the nuts and bolts of the sex trafficking operation. She knew what Jeffrey liked.’

Miss Ransome settled her lawsuit with Epstein and Maxwell in 2018.