EXCLUSIVE: ‘Jeffrey Epstein was the monster… but Ghislaine Maxwell spun the spider’s web around him’: Victim Sarah Ransome tells how she was repeatedly raped on ‘Paedo island’ and mentally tortured by his ‘evil’ right-hand woman
- Sarah Ransome claimed she was repeatedly raped for 3 days by Jeffrey Epstein
- She claimed she tried to escape ‘Paedo Island’, his private Caribbean hideaway
- Sarah said when she tried to escape, she was taken back by Ghislaine Maxwell
- Ms Maxwell is now on trial in facing six charges of sex abuse and sex trafficking
Shaking in terror, the sobbing young woman stumbled down the rocky outcrop towards the ocean.
For three days she had been repeatedly raped by billionaire abuser Jeffrey Epstein on ‘Paedo Island’, his private Caribbean hideaway.
Thousands of miles away from her home in Britain, Sarah Ransome had been abused and starved, effectively a prisoner. Now she was prepared to risk everything to escape.
‘I knew there were sharks in the water but I had to get away,’ she says. ‘At that point the sharks were a welcome alternative to the hell I’d been through. In that moment death felt preferable to one more rape.’
Yet, as she prepared to plunge into the blue waters, the air was filled with the roar of an approaching quad bike. And sitting aboard it was one of the last people that Sarah wished to see: Epstein’s close companion Ghislaine Maxwell.
‘She placed her hand on my back and said: ‘It’s OK honey. Come with me.’ And I went back with her into the monster’s lair.’
Today, in a world exclusive interview, Sarah, now 37, gives a detailed account of her claims that she was lured into Epstein’s perverted world by what she calls a ‘sophisticated sexual abuse network’ which, she alleges, included Epstein’s ‘right-hand woman’ Ms Maxwell.
Sarah Ransome (pictured) claims she was lured into Jeffrey Epstein’s world by what she calls a ‘sophisticated sexual abuse network’, which, she alleges, included Ghislaine Maxwell
Ms Maxwell, 59, is on trial in New York facing six charges of sex abuse and sex trafficking which could see her spend the rest of her days behind bars, if convicted.
She has pleaded not guilty to all the charges and will vigorously contest the allegations in the defence part of her trial next week.
Sarah made headlines around the world when she was photographed wearing a striking red outfit on the steps of the courthouse on the first day of the trial.
She tells The Mail on Sunday she felt she had to travel from her home in a remote village in the north of England because, although she is not directly involved in the case (which involves four women who say they were abused by Ms Maxwell, two when they were 14), because she wants to ‘look Ghislaine in the eyes’ if she is convicted.
Sarah said: ‘It’s a matter of principle. I lived in fear of her and Jeffrey for so many years. If I have to rent a tent and sleep on the court steps before the verdict is delivered then that’s what I will do.
‘I want her to know I’m there when her sentence is read. I want justice to finally be done.’
In some ways Sarah’s story is atypical. Most of the children preyed upon by Epstein were from poverty-stricken backgrounds.
Sarah, in contrast, was from a well-educated background. She was born into an aristocratic Scottish family – her maternal grandfather was Lord Gordon Macpherson, second baron of Drumochter.
Her parents split when she was a child. After her father moved to South Africa, Sarah’s alcoholic mother was unable to cope and so the young Sarah moved in with her aunt and uncle just south of Inverness and attended grammar school in Grantown-on-Spey.
Afterwards she secured a place at Edinburgh University but dropped out after becoming involved with a violent boyfriend and running out of money.
Sarah made headlines around the world when she was photographed wearing a striking red outfit (pictured) on the steps of the courthouse on the first day of Ms Maxwell’s trial
She had been sexually abused by a friend of her brother’s and describes herself as ‘a broken soul’. And in that way at least, she admits, she was ‘perfect prey’.
It didn’t help that she was broke too, after her wealthy grandfather had remarried and stopped supporting her mother.
In 2006, when she was 22, she decided to make a clean break and head to New York. ‘I was young and naive. I knew no one. I had no idea of the viper’s nest I was walking into,’ she says.
Two weeks after landing in the city, she was in a Manhattan nightclub called Quo when she was approached by a beautiful young woman called Natalya.
‘She was my age and I was so excited to find a friend,’ Sarah says. ‘She asked me all about my family, what I was doing in New York.
‘I told her everything; how I was all alone, my dreams of studying fashion. She asked for my number and I gave it to her. It seemed the most natural thing in the world.’
Within days, Natalya had called her to say: ‘I know this great guy who is incredibly wealthy. He’s a philanthropist and he helps lots of girls achieve their dreams. He wants to meet you.’
Later that week, Sarah found herself sitting next to Epstein in a cinema. ‘There were ten girls with him, all young and beautiful, she says.
‘Looking back I realise I was targeted for my vulnerability. I was alone in the big city. I’d already admitted I was a lost soul.
‘Jeffrey was charismatic, charming. He seemed genuinely interested in me.
‘He homed in on my background, just like Natalya had – why did I want to study fashion, where in the UK was I from, did I have siblings? He was old but I didn’t think of him as a dirty old man. I felt safe because there were so many girls my age with him.
‘They were well-groomed, they seemed happy.
‘In my naivety I felt grateful that I’d landed on my feet by meeting these new friends.
‘I had no idea I was being groomed to enter hell.’
The following week, Sarah received a call from Natalya.
‘She told me a group of girls were going for a girls’ weekend to Jeffrey’s private island in the Caribbean. Would I like to go?’ she recalls.
‘The private jet was leaving the next day and I didn’t need to bring anything because everything I needed was on the island. What 22-year-old would have said no? I thought I’d hit the jackpot.’
Instead, Sarah says, she was about to enter the paedophile’s lair.
She flew down to the island on Epstein’s private 727 jet, now nicknamed ‘the Lolita Express’.
Ms Maxwell (pictured with Epstein) is on trial in New York facing six charges of sex abuse and sex trafficking which could see her spend the rest of her days behind bars, if convicted
Prince Andrew’s accuser Virginia Roberts claims she flew to Epstein’s 70-acre ‘Little St James’ island on the jet alongside Prince Andrew.
Ms Roberts alleges she was ‘sex trafficked’ to the Prince when she was 17 and was forced to sleep with him at Ms Maxwell’s London home, in New York – and on the island.
The Prince has vehemently denied all allegations against him. In his infamous BBC Newsnight interview he claimed he could not recall ever meeting Ms Roberts.
But he has admitted travelling on Epstein’s jet and, as The Mail on Sunday exclusively revealed last week, flight logs show that he travelled on the ‘Lolita Express’ at least four times, including a flight to the island.
While Sarah was never on the island with Andrew and makes no suggestion he was in any way involved in – or even aware of – the events that happened to her, she gave an insight into what life was like for the girls in Epstein’s orbit.
The first warning bell sounded on the four-hour flight from New York’s Teterboro Airport to St Thomas.
She was taken aback when Epstein asked one of the girls for a foot massage. And even more so when he asked Sarah to massage his feet.
Today, she says a photograph of Ms Maxwell massaging Epstein’s feet, apparently aboard the plane, which was entered into evidence in court last week, immediately triggered flashbacks.
‘When I saw that picture I threw up a bit in my mouth,’ she says.
‘I have post-traumatic stress and seeing that photograph, seeing Ghislaine’s face and Epstein’s face, it took me straight back. I feel sick now even talking about it.’
During the flight, while most of the girls slept (or feigned sleep), Sarah nodded off only to be woken by loud moans coming from a bed at the rear of the jet. ‘Epstein was having full-on sex with one of the girls. They made no attempt to hide,’ she says.
‘I was horrified, I’d never seen anything like that before.
‘But no one said anything. The other girls kept their eyes closed. When it was over Jeffrey and the 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.
Sarah claimed she was repeatedly raped for three days by billionaire abuser Jeffrey Epstein on ‘Paedo Island’, his private Caribbean hideaway (pictured), before she tried to escape
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 sex-trafficking 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 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 anti-depressant 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 said she felt she had to travel from her home in north of England because she wants to ‘look Ghislaine in the eyes’ if she is convicted. Pictured: Ms Maxwell and Epstein in 2005
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.’
Silenced No More: Surviving My Journey To Hell And Back (HarperOne) by Sarah Ransome is out now.
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