Epstein was the monster... but Ghislaine spun the spider’s web around him
British victim Sarah Ransome tells how she tried to escape ‘Paedo Island’ after being repeatedly raped by the billionaire – and mentally tortured by his ‘evil’ right-hand woman
girl got dressed as if nothing had happened.’
When she arrived on the island, Sarah’s passport and mobile phone were taken from her.
Deeply unsettled, she and the other girls were housed in a bungalow away from the main residence.
That night Sarah had dinner on the patio of the main estate, overlooking the sea.
‘Jeffrey sat next to me and said he needed a foot massage,’ she recalls. ‘He shouted at me because I didn’t do it properly. Another girl showed me how to do it.’
The following day Sarah was approached by her friend from the nightclub, saying: ‘Jeffrey wants to see you.’
She was led to Epstein’s master bedroom suite in the main house, where he opened the door wearing just a white robe.
‘That was the night he first raped me. He told me to take off my dress and lay on the massage table.
‘He said, “Tonight I am going to teach you how to be a woman.”
‘I sobbed and screamed for him to stop.’
When the rape was over, Epstein led Sarah to the bedroom door. As she opened it another girl was waiting in the shadows.
Sarah was sexually abused every day on the island, often two or three times a day.
Yet, almost unbelievably, when they returned to New York she moved into an apartment owned by Epstein and the abuse continued.
The promise of a place at a prestigious fashion school combined with Epstein’s death threats against her and her family sent her into an emotional spiral which, she says, allowed her to become trapped in a web of abuse.
‘Jeffrey told me he would kill me and kill my family if I told anyone. I became financially dependent on him. I still believed he would help me get to fashion school,’ she says.
She first met Ms Maxwell on the island. ‘Jeffrey told me I had to do everything she said.’
Sarah filed a civil lawsuit against Ms Maxwell and others, which was settled out of court in 2018.
In legal papers filed in that lawsuit, Ms Maxwell’s lawyer Laura Menninger vehemently denied she was involved in any abuse, saying: ‘This is not and never will be a sextrafficking case. It is the story of a brief, consensual relationship between two adults.
‘Ms Ransome may have come to regret her consensual relationship with Mr Epstein but that does not mean she was the victim of unlawful sex trafficking or that Ms Maxwell is somehow liable for it.’
Sarah says she blames Ms Maxwell as much as Epstein: ‘He was the monster but she facilitated
Ghislaine was a Jekyll and Hyde character. She was kind, then mean
the spider’s web around him.’ Evidence admitted into court during Ms Maxwell’s trial included a 58-page ‘rulebook’ of the house.
Sarah says: ‘We were told to see nothing. I couldn’t speak to the other girls about what was going on. When I got close to one girl, a ballerina, she disappeared.
‘I thought she was dead. I later found out she is alive and we reconnected. I lived in constant fear.’
Sarah also claims that Ms Maxwell ‘bullied’ her about her weight. At 5ft 9in, she weighed 10st 5lb, a healthy weight for her size but ‘Ghislaine told me I needed to drop 30lb’. She was placed on a diet of cucumbers and tomatoes. ‘I was starving every day. Ghislaine told me I was fat.’
Epstein sent her to a psychiatrist who prescribed powerful antidepressant drugs which, Sarah says, left her in a more vulnerable state because she was ‘drugged up’.
Ms Maxwell was ‘constantly’ in Epstein’s world, according to Sarah. ‘She tries to claim she was out of his orbit by the time I was there, in 2006 and 2007, but she was a constant presence.
‘She was a Jekyll and Hyde character. She could be mean one minute and then kind the next.’
Sarah says she believes Ms Maxwell used ‘intermittent reinforcement’ to control Epstein’s victims; a psychological term in which manipulation is used to ‘bond’ a victim to their abuser. Girls who
‘satisfied’ Epstein’s depraved cravings would be given designer handbags, treated to £500 sessions at the hair salon and some were even given free dental work, including expensive crowns.
In Sarah’s case, Epstein promised to pay for her to go to New York’s prestigious Fashion Institute of Technology and said that he had friends who would ensure she got in.
‘Ghislaine blew hot and cold, vacillating between madam boss lady and nurturing mother figure,’ Sarah says.
‘She could be kind, smiling, charming, what I called “Gracious Ghislaine”. That was the side of her the celebrities saw. But then she could be angry, cruel.’
Sarah was terrified of Epstein’s powerful friends: ‘There were pictures everywhere of him with Presidents, the Pope, world leaders, royalty. I was scared that if I ever spoke out he would have me killed like he’d threatened.’
Sarah believes Epstein’s powerful friends, including Prince Andrew, were constantly monitored on hidden cameras. ‘I once lit a cigarette and Jeffrey, who hated smoking, came out of nowhere,’ she recalls.
‘When I tried to escape I purposely chose a remote spot yet Ghislaine and security guards were there instantly.
‘Jeffrey once told me, “I have tapes of every person who has ever been on my properties”.’
Another time Sarah refused to go to Epstein’s home. He drew up in a limo alongside her shortly afterwards. She thinks there was a tracking device in her cellphone.
In court, Epstein’s pilots testified they never saw any abuse. Sarah says: ‘I don’t know how anyone can be around Jeffrey and not realise what was going on.
‘I was at dinner one night with a major figure from Silicon Valley and there were pre-pubescent girls at the table. How can so many people have turned a blind eye to what was going on?’
Epstein once raped her in the foyer of his New York townhouse, the same property where the Duke of York was infamously photographed peering around the 15ft-high oak front door. There is no suggestion Prince Andrew ever witnessed any criminal behaviour and, indeed, the Prince has insisted he never saw anything which led him to believe Epstein was abusing young women.
After one particularly brutal series of assaults by Epstein, Sarah fled back to England: ‘It was in May 2007. I just ran. I was broken.’
She called her mother, who bought her the plane ticket back to Heathrow. Sarah lived in fear, moving 47 times in the next few years.
When Epstein was arrested on child sex charges in 2019 she celebrated. Then he committed suicide in jail. ‘We survivors never got our day in court but when he died it was the first time I felt safe,’ she says. ‘I could stop looking over my shoulder.’
She believes Ms Maxwell will be found guilty. ‘Ghislaine enabled Jeffrey to do what he did,’ she says. ‘I believe she is evil. She’s a narcissist who thinks she has done nothing wrong. To her, we were nothing. I hope justice is done.
‘This was a spider’s web, a sophisticated trafficking operation. I was lured in because I was approached by girls my own age. It was only when I was trapped on the island that the energy changed. I was mentally raped as well as physically raped. It took me years to pluck up the courage to even talk about it.’
Sarah has written a book Silenced No More, which will be published in the UK this week.
When the Maxwell trial ends – it is scheduled to last until around Christmas – she plans to return home and work helping other rape survivors. ‘I pray justice will be done in court,’ she says, ‘but I am a very spiritual person and I believe whatever happens, Ghislaine will burn in hell for all eternity.’
M Silenced No More: Surviving My Journey To Hell And Back (HarperOne) by Sarah Ransome is out now.