Ghislaine Maxwell: Filthy Rich (2022) Movie Script

Look, if there's something we can do
to minimize Ghislaine's involvement,
I'd appreciate it because there's nothing...
It's... it's just unfair because she...
she really plays no role.
And Ghislaine was never...
never ever a part of any of thisstuff.
It turned out not to be,
you know, truthful
that she was involved in procuring women.
The whole thing's ridiculous.
I... I'm willing to take the heat
for, you know, the situation
I've been involved in.
She's already fragile.
You know, to bring innocent people in
simply because she's well-known,
I... I just think is unfair,
and I'm telling you, it's defamatory.
And it's bullshit.
Speculation has abounded for several days
as to the whereabouts
of Ghislaine Maxwell.
After Jeffrey Epstein's death,
the inevitable question was,
"When is Ghislaine gonna be arrested?"
Maxwell has been accused
of recruiting underage girls
to act as sex slaves
for Epstein and other men.
She's accused
of being not only a coconspirator
but also an abuser herself.
All our friends
who'd known her at the time were like,
"Where the hell is Ghislaine?"
Maxwell, who is allegedly now under
a new FBI investigation, is in hiding.
Ghislaine Maxwell
has multiple citizenships.
She could flee to a country
where we could no longer prosecute her.
It's been nearly
half a year since Epstein's death,
and Ghislaine Maxwell
is still nowhere to be found.
I was thinking in my head,
"Well, she better stay hidden,
because they are gonna just destroy her."
Ghislaine Maxwell
was hiding from the public.
She was hiding from the press.
She was hiding from authorities.
She was hoping
that everybody would forget about it.
Clearly, that didn't work.
Authorities have been
searching for Ghislaine Maxwell.
At 8:30 this morning,
they found her here, in New Hampshire.
It was an aggressive raid.
And she ran into the other room.
They found that she was trying
to hide her location
by putting tinfoil on her cell phone.
She clearly did not want to be found.
Today, we announce charges
against Ghislaine Maxwell
for helping Jeffrey Epstein
sexually exploit and abuse
multiple minor girls.
I firmly believe that she didn't think
she was doing anything wrong.
Now the question is, was it fate?
Was it always going to happen?
Or was there that point where
she could've gone down a different road?
If convicted on all counts,
the 58-year-old Maxwell
could face up to 35 years in prison.
And now that Ghislaine
has been arrested,
the more important question is,
will power and money stand in the way
of justice once again,
the way it has so many times before
in this twisted story?
I'm a survivor of the abuse
at the hands of Maxwell and Epstein.
And I'm going to be testifying
in her upcoming trial.
I met Maxwell and Epstein
when I was just 16 years old
through my sister, Maria Farmer.
We were both abused by Maxwell and Epstein
in separate instances in the '90s.
We reported it to the authorities,
and nothing was done.
My sister went to the FBI in 1996
and told them.
We both talked to reporters in 2002.
Come on.
Then, we talked to the FBI in 2006,
but still, nothing was done.
And then in 2019, I was so hopeful
that we would finally get accountability.
Fox News has learned
that billionaire Jeffrey Epstein
has been charged by federal prosecutors
with sex trafficking.
Epstein is charged
in a two-count indictment.
First, conspiracy to commit
sex trafficking and second,
the substantive crime
of sex trafficking of underage girls.
We were finally hoping to get justice,
but then my husband
woke me up early in the morning
with the news of what happened.
And I felt sick to my stomach.
We do want to start here
with breaking news right now.
Sources telling ABC News
that accused sex trafficker
Jeffrey Epstein has died by suicide.
Epstein's accusers are furious tonight,
saying he won't have to face justice
while they have to live with their scars
for the rest of their lives.
It was the summer of 2020,
and it had been some time
since Epstein had... had died.
I woke up the morning of my birthday
to a phone call very early
that I was not expecting,
and I saw that it was Sigrid calling me.
Sigrid McCawley and David Boies
are my attorneys,
and I've worked with them
for several years topursue justice
against Epstein and Maxwell.
When I answered the phone,
Sigrid told me that Maxwell
had just been arrested
and that I was one of the women
that had been included
in the charges against her.
I've been working with victims
of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell
for about seven years now.
What's so incredible about Annie's story
is that she started telling it
decades ago,
and finally, now, Ghislaine Maxwell
is being tried for those crimes.
- Hi, David.
- Hi.
The Maxwell and Epstein
sex-trafficking enterprise
is a good illustration
of how slow society moves
and how slow the justice system moves.
This is, finally, an opportunity
for vindication for the survivors.
The current criminal case
against Ghislaine has three victims,
all underage victims.
Two of whom are not public,
and one of whom is Annie Farmer.
I chose to use my name at the trial
because I had been working already
to bring attention
to what had happened in this case.
And I was just highlighting
the indictment...
David and Sigrid
are helping me to know what's coming
and to help me think
about how to clearly present my story.
I think we see, you know,
the indictment, there's a lot in here
that's, uh, really critical to her story.
I think what I was taken by
was the focus on grooming.
- Yeah.
- The grooming was such a big piece
of what she went through
and how they lured her into this.
Annie presents incredibly well.
She has a degree in psychology,
a doctorate.
And frankly, the consistency
of her story over many, many years.
At the trial, I expect that
they're gonna get into the details
of what happened to her.
I think they're gonna pick it apart
quite a bit.
And I think being put on the stand
and being cross-examined
by these really ferocious lawyers
is gonna be hard.
She's a wonderfully strong,
articulate young woman,
but she's not an experienced witness.
And we're gonna have to be sure
that she knows the kind of questions
that Maxwell's attorneys aregonna ask
on cross-examination.
This process of waiting
to get to trial is hard,
because on the one hand,
I'm dreading testifying...
Come on.
...and on the other hand, I'm really ready
to close this chapter of my life
and move on to other things.
Yeah, your sister's nervous.
I've been fighting for justice
on behalf of now more than 65
of Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein's
victims for over 13 years.
I represent one of three victims
that is going to be called to testify
in the Maxwell trial.
My client is gonna proceed
under the pseudonym "Kate,"
as this case has international attention,
and she has a young daughter.
She wants to be protective of her.
She wants to be protective
of her own privacy.
And she feels that it's very important
to bring Ghislaine Maxwell to justice,
as do I.
After accumulating
100 banker's boxes of material,
this is just a small fraction
of the information that we compiled
regarding Ghislaine Maxwell's whereabouts
at certain times.
Photographs, witness statements,
police reports, timelines,
spiderwebs of victims,
all of the evidence
that showed direct interaction
between the victims and Ghislaine Maxwell.
The identical evidence that
the prosecutors are gonna show the jury
in the upcoming trial
against Ghislaine Maxwell.
My best guesstimate,
just based on everything that I know,
is that Jeffrey Epstein accumulated
more than 500 victims.
At this point,
I think Jeffrey Epstein is the undisputed,
most prolific sexual predator of all time.
But without Ghislaine's help,
he could never have pulled off
such an elaborate scheme
and abused so many.
She fed a monster.
You have to kind of be a monster to do it.
Jeffrey Epstein is molesting
hundreds and hundreds of girls
from the time that Ghislaine meets him
until he's arrested.
And yet, the only trial
that's going to happen
related to the sex trafficking
is against Ghislaine.
My law partner, Brittany Henderson,
David Boies, Sigrid McCawley,
and I have worked for years
to put this puzzle together.
Even though we represent
different clients,
we have a united front
and are now helping the prosecutors
to make sure they put
the strongest case forward.
Four sex-trafficking charges.
And now there's a lot of work to be done.
The victims and witnesses
are gonna be ready.
They've always been ready.
I think the strongest arguments
for the prosecution are really the voices
of these young women.
I think the biggest challenge
is that Ghislaine Maxwell
is very effective
at presenting herself incredibly well.
She is well-educated.
She comes across
as a very sophisticated woman,
which gives people comfort
because they assume
that somebody of that stature
is, of course, not going to be somebody
that they would envision
as being an abuser.
I met Ghislaine in November 1989.
At the time, she was visiting from London.
I was going to a nightclub
and having dinner with some friends,
who had been at Oxford with Ghislaine.
She was the life of every party,
knew absolutely everyone,
extremely popular, vivacious personality.
I remember Ghislaine told
a lot of very funny, dirty jokes.
That night, I went home
and wrote in my diary,
"Met Ghislaine Maxwell,
hilarious sense of humor,
incredibly good fun,
and she's just a really live wire,
and I hope I get to see her again."
I met Ghislaine in New York,
and we had a fair number
of friends in common.
A couple of people I knew had dated her.
And she was a connector.
She was gregarious and quite glamorous
and a bit raunchy and quite wild.
And made more interesting
by the fact that her father
was this rather notorious business figure,
Robert Maxwell.
Captain, you might come
and take this bag from my secretary.
Robert Maxwell
was this larger-than-life character.
Notorious press baron,
a wheeler-dealer,
and just a monstrous ego,
a kind of successful scoundrel.
Her father had set her up
in this life
which allowed her to be, you know,
at the fulcrum of New York society.
She was, you know, like
the sparkling debutante or something.
So, the bottom picture, uh,
we were at an event in, um, Los Angeles.
And I'm in, like, my early twenties.
And yeah, we were having,
like, a lot of fun back then.
Yeah, she was definitely, like,
a kind of flirtatious character, for sure.
She exuded this mysterious air about her.
Like, you never knew,
like, which tropical location
she'd just jetted in from.
She was like a... a Bond character.
She never stayed in one place very long.
She didn't really even need
to be a social climber,
because she already was
at the top because of her father.
She knew everyone.
And these people
were, like, running countries
or were, like, famous musicians, or...
You know, she... she knew, like,
the very top percentage of the people
that basically rule the world.
Could she read a room?
Yeah, for sure, definitely.
She knew exactly, like,
if she was going to an event,
who was gonna be there.
And she would've scoped it out,
and she would know all about them
and who she's gonna spend time on.
On the scale of shark,
she'd probably be a great white shark.
She's never been
really sensitive
to the feelings of others.
She had no boundaries.
She was overtly sexual
but more as an arranger and a teacher.
And I remember one party,
Ghislaine, who I hadn't seen for a while,
sort of appears from nowhere,
grabs my hand,
and suddenly suggests
that she gives me a lesson
in the art of performing oral sex.
Um...
I was absolutely flabbergasted.
She would encourage girls at parties
to flirt with the men there
and do even more than flirt.
I mean, literally, to go to bed with them.
I remember meeting Ghislaine
for the first time
at Headington Hill Hall,
the family home of the Maxwells,
and being very struck
by how beautiful she was.
Um, she was just delightful.
I was there for a dinner party,
and I don't remember anybody else
in the family being there.
Ghislaine was 29 at the time,
and most of the people there
seemed to be around that age
or slightly older, in their mid-thirties.
We had a very nice meal.
There was a lot of laughter.
Then Ghislaine stood up and disappeared.
She came back with a handful of scarves
and then sort of, you know,
demanded everybody's attention
and then described the game.
And the game involved
blindfolding the men with these scarves.
And then she explained the women
would take off their tops and bras
and would parade before the men,
and the men would then
be able to fondle the breasts
and would then attempt to identify
to whom the breasts belonged,
relative to the other women in the room.
This was my idea of, uh...
the... the ultimate nightmare.
I just remember feeling incredibly shocked
and immediately started working
on my escape plan.
But it's haunted me ever since.
The women had no power,
and the men were being invited
by a woman to be assaulted.
Ghislaine Maxwell
grew up with sexism.
Her father believed
that women were basically there
for men's pleasure and convenience.
He really did view women as objects.
I met Robert Maxwell for the first time
at my father's house,
and I remember noticing that his wife,
Betty, was like a sort of poor dormouse.
She hardly said a word.
Maxwell immediately started
to flirt with my mother
and then flirt with me,
which is something he did a lot.
He treated his wife badly.
He was unfaithful to his wife.
I think the fact
that her mother stayed with her father,
even though he had,
like, multiple affairs,
I think that probably
did have an effect on her.
She probably, like, in her head
thought that that was normal.
But still, she was
desperately, desperately fond of her dad.
Ghislaine doted on her father
and vice versa.
Robert Maxwell used
to go around with Ghislaine
as a kind of mascot.
It... it was an odd relationship
because it was more like
a kind of man-and-his-lover relationship.
I don't mean in a physical sense,
but he was very proud of her figure
and the fact that she was attractive
and glamorous,
and he liked having her on his arm.
In a rather unhealthy way,
he was her anchor and ballast.
The board of Mirror Group
Newspapers announces with deep regret
that Robert Maxwell,
chairman of Mirror Group Newspapers, PLC
and Maxwell Communication Corporation,
is missing at sea.
Maxwell was last seen before dawn
off the Canary Islands in the Atlantic.
Hours later, searchers found his body.
His death was big news.
And it was this big mystery.
Had he been murdered?
Had he just fallen off his yacht?
Ghislaine seemed
utterly devastated by her father's death.
I want to take this opportunity
to thank all the many hundreds of people
who have sent messages of support to us
at this very, very sad time.
I think without him,
she was like somebody
who'd been chucked into the sea
without a life belt.
The news of his death
was followed very shortly thereafter
by these revelations that he had plundered
the pension plans of his workers.
The scandal was so big
that it would have been very difficult
for her to continue existing in London.
And I think that she really had
to move away.
I remember visiting her
in her apartment on the Upper East Side,
and she was suddenly out of money.
Robert Maxwell had left his family
in the lurch.
It was as if she was sort of
bravely weathering this challenge
of, you know, the mysterious death
of her beloved father.
I'm extremely sad
that my father is no longer here,
but I don't feel in any way smaller
or lesser than what I was before.
The future is the future. You just get on
and do whatever you can do.
If I have a wish for myself,
it's to do something positive
with my life.
And she veered towards
a replacement Robert Maxwell,
a bombastic man
who was also very, very rich
and had many of the traits of her father,
and he was called Jeffrey Epstein.
Ghislaine Maxwell
is facing new federal charges
of child sex trafficking.
The new indictment adds
a fourth alleged victim.
Prosecutors accusing her of trafficking
a 14-year-old girl in the early 2000s.
This is on top of six charges
Maxwell was already facing
tied to Epstein's alleged
sex-trafficking network.
It could be
effectively a life sentence for her
if she's convicted
and given the maximum here.
The newest victim that's been
added to the criminal indictment
lays out how Maxwell got her
to try to solicit other people to join
the sex-trafficking, uh, enterprise.
So this takes the indictment
to another level.
I always say, in this case,
truth is stranger than fiction.
So, I think it's really hard
for people to understand
the vast depth
of the trafficking that occurred,
and that's so unnatural to so many people.
So, I think people are fascinated with it
for those reasons.
After the hearing was over,
Ghislaine stood up,
she stood around her attorneys,
and I saw her look over to her sister
who was waiting in the gallery,
and, um, she tapped her eye,
and she also waved at her,
and that was the first time
we've seen one of Ghislaine's relatives
appear before the court in support of her.
Does she look okay to you?
Ghislaine is in very,
very, very difficult conditions,
conditions none of us would wish
on our worst enemies.
I've never seen anything like it,
how she's being treated.
It's the "Epstein Effect."
The first time I remember
hearing about Jeffrey Epstein
was, Ghislaine invited me
to a party she was giving for her mother
in New York,
and she explained that it was
at the house of this guy she was dating,
Jeffrey Epstein.
When I first met Jeffrey Epstein,
I thought he was a wildly successful
investment banker-turned-money manager,
for whom everything in the world,
you know, had fallen into his lap.
The story Ghislaine told
over and over again
was that you didn't have a chance
of Jeffrey taking you on as a client
if you had
less than a billion dollars to invest.
That was part of the mystique
of the man that Ghislaine was dating.
So, I remember thinking,
"He's clearly talented, successful,
well-dressed, handsome,
but he made extraordinarily little effort,
frankly, as a host."
It was an odd dichotomy
between the two of them,
with Ghislaine flitting around,
making everybody comfortable,
getting drinks, champagne,
whatever you wanted.
Ghislaine, kind of, orchestrating
the waiters bringing people snacks
and so on.
Have you got drinks?
She knew how to be a hostess
in a grand, old-fashioned way,
and I think somebody like Epstein,
um, who was very much new money,
was attracted to this,
'cause he probably saw her
as upper-class English accent,
been to Oxford,
you know, wears designer clothes,
has lots of well-known friends.
Suddenly, they were seen together
at all these smart parties,
all the expensive parties,
seemingly as a couple.
She seemed genuinely deeply
in love with him.
She would be
quite touchy-feely with him.
She'd touch his elbow
or touch his shoulder.
And they seemed intimate.
Whenever you saw Ghislaine,
it was, "Jeffrey this and Jeffrey that,"
and all she spoke about was him.
You got this feeling
that she was just, like, so loyal to him.
I met Ghislaine Maxwell
in the fall of 1994
while I was a senior
at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
At the time, I was 21.
I worked at Henri Bendel.
One day, while I was working,
Ghislaine came into the store.
When she told me her name,
I remember I was...
I couldn't figure out
how you would spell that.
And I said, "That sounds like
a French spelling of 'gasoline.'"
And she laughed at me, and she said,
"My boyfriend thinks
I'm a lot like gasoline."
"He's a match, and I'm gasoline."
And we laughed over that.
And I helped her shop.
And she picked out things,
and we continued the conversation.
It was... easy to talk to her.
I felt like I had met a friend
in Ghislaine that I could trust.
I felt safe.
So when we wrapped up the transaction,
she let me know that she wanted me
to deliver her packages that evening
at a hotel that was close by.
When I arrived,
the concierge escorted me into the bar,
where I met Ghislaine
and, ultimately, Jeffrey Epstein.
If I thought Ghislaine was electrifying,
Jeffrey was... on fire.
They explained to me that the residence
was undergoing renovations at that time,
and they asked me
if I would come up to their room
to deliver the packages.
We went up to the room,
and we were just having
normal conversation.
At one point,
Jeffrey got up
and went into the bathroom,
and Ghislaine followed him.
Jeffrey and Ghislaine
both came out in bathrobes.
For the most part,
it was pretty light-hearted,
until it wasn't.
The tone of everything changed
in a moment.
They started talking about relationships
between men and women,
and they started
to kiss each other in front of me.
As Ghislaine and Jeffrey started
to become increasingly intimate,
I was sitting across from them, watching,
and I was in shock.
I was completely taken aback.
I thought I was there
in a professional capacity,
and I really didn't know how to react.
Ghislaine encouraged me to join,
and Ghislaine started to instruct me,
kind of as a big sister,
about what he liked
and how she pleased him,
and the alarm bells in me were going off.
Ghislaine was insistent
that I participate,
and I was scared that
this was going to potentially turn
into an assault.
And it did turn into an assault.
I was visibly freaked out
and not wanting to participate.
And, as soon as I could, I backed away.
I reminded Ghislaine that my boyfriend
was coming in for the weekend,
and that's how I got out
of the hotel room that evening.
We used to gossip
about Jeffrey and Ghislaine
to try and make sense
of this slightly odd relationship.
It was a rather strange mixture of facets.
I mean, it wasn't
a normal relationship,
but it was the kind of relationship
she obviously needed.
She couldn't feel secure without money.
And he was a good catch
for her financially.
They became totally dependent
on each other in a weird way.
As far as Jeffrey Epstein
was concerned,
there was something
that... that sort of reeked of vice.
I mean, it's not that we were all saints.
You know, we all did things
that we shouldn't have done.
But there was something
that was... charged in negativity in him,
which few people that I met had.
He could be quite dismissive
towards Ghislaine.
There was a darkness
about the whole thing.
And actually,
the funny thing is, is that he owed her
all these entries into society
that he might not have had otherwise.
You know, like royalty.
Ghislaine's connection
to the Royal Family
really dates back to her father,
Robert Maxwell,
who knew the Queen of England.
Ghislaine Maxwell met Prince Andrew
while she was studying at Oxford.
And because of her father's business ties,
she was already running around
in circles with Royals.
Sometime in the late '90s,
Ghislaine said,
"My old friend Andrew's in town."
"Will you come for dinner?"
I said, "Of course.
I'd love to. Thank you."
And I remember Prince Andrew
being distinctly bored by the whole thing.
And it was almost, sort of, competitive
between, uh, Epstein and Prince Andrew
as to who could seem more haughty
and bored and... and disdainful
of the whole event.
I remember Andrew cheering up a tiny bit
when there was a younger female
sitting and talking to him
and otherwise having
practically no interest
in anything else or anyone else.
It was a sort ofunhealthy scene.
The story I started hearing was
that apparently... Jeffrey Epstein
kind of likes younger women
and that he kind of likes,
um... schoolgirls,
um, uh... and that
Ghislaine introduces him to girls
because that's... He... That'shis thing.
And people were speculating that Ghislaine
was hanging out with seniors
at a very fancy private girls school
on the Upper East Side
and that
she was introducing these girls
to Jeffrey.
Just seemed deeply weird.
Why would Ghislaine be dating a guy
who liked younger women?
Girls I knew
had talked about being invited for tea,
and they didn't always want
to talk more than that.
So, I got the sense, at the time,
that there was something... a bit strange.
In retrospect,
it seems so horrific
to think that we were hearing about this,
and we weren't outraged.
But honestly, it just seemed like...
flirtation.
But what the hell was I thinking?
What were we all thinking?
In 1997, Ghislaine had contacted me
and asked me to meet her at her apartment.
Shestarted off very confident,
saying, "I'm going to change your life."
"I'm gonna give you a lot of money,
and you're gonna meet everyone."
And then she asked me
to help her write her book.
She says, "I want you
to live with me for a full year
so you can learn everything about me."
She's staring out the window
somewhat dramatically.
She says, "You have to write
this book for me."
She says, "Because I want Jeffrey
to marry me."
And she says, "I need for Jeffrey
to see me in a more elevated light,
and I believe that with this book,
that will be achieved."
And then she starts to tell me
that Jeffrey has been medically diagnosed
by the best doctors in the world,
and he needs three orgasms a day.
At this point, I realize...
Um... I...
"Am I on drugs?
Is she on drugs? What is going on?"
I'm also thinking to myself,
"Which chapter does she want me
to put that in? I mean, is this for real?"
Then she says she picks up
three girls a day for Jeffrey.
And the phrase that she used,
which she thought explained it all was,
"I cannot keep up with his needs."
"I drive around. I search for a girl
that looks like Jeffrey's type."
"And then I go and make a deal
and ask them if they'd like to give him
a massage for a couple of hundred bucks."
And I say, "Who are these girls?
Who are you talking about?"
And she says... And this is such a reveal.
She says, "They are nothing."
"They are trash."
And it tells you everything.
It tells you everything about
how she compartmentalized people.
I mean, she's not even acknowledging them
as human beings.
And of course, I didn't know
we were talking about children.
Had I, I would've called the police then.
I think that society people
are quite protective of their own.
You know, if somebody you know
has secrets that...
Secrets ought not to be talked about.
People would tend to be silent.
Ghislaine Maxwell
has been in a Brooklyn jail cell
since her arrest in July of last year.
And as the world
awaits her fate, we're all wondering,
will this formally missing puzzle piece
sing like a bird or suffer in silence?
There are those who say Ghislaine
might have "other dirt"
on other powerful men.
Thoughts on that?
No question about it. Uh, Maxwell knows
where a lot of the bodies are buried.
If I was somebody who had participated
in their sex trafficking,
um, I would not be sleeping
easily tonight.
Now, she's at the top of the pyramid,
and if she doesn't do a plea deal,
uh... she is facing
maybe the rest of her life in jail.
Unattractive though it may be,
at some point, you have to face reality.
There is going to come a point in time,
if it hasn't happened already,
and I'd be shocked if it hasn't,
when the prosecutors are going to offer
Ghislaine Maxwell some plea deal.
Uh, it's going to consist
of many, many years in prison.
I don't know what
Ghislaine Maxwell's pain threshold is,
if she's gonna roll the dice
and go to trial.
But if it seems like
something that's tolerable to her
and less than what she would likely get
if she goes to trial and loses,
I'd imagine that Ghislaine Maxwell
is going to consider taking it,
because the credibility of the victims
testifying against her is very high.
I knew of Epstein
and Maxwell before I met them,
because my sister, Maria,
was working for Epstein,
and she had described him
as a very generous patron of the arts
and someone who was interested
in supporting people
who were pursuing higher education.
One of the things Epstein brought up
was that it might be beneficial for me
to do something to make
my college application stand out.
And so he talked about
taking a trip abroad.
He said he wouldfinancially help me
with a trip like that.
And I was really excited
about that possibility.
And so arrangements were made
for me to fly to New Mexico
to meet with Epstein
and Maxwell on Epstein's ranch.
They were both really warm
and excited for me to be there
and immediately started
giving me a tour of the property.
It was very impressive, and right away,
I felt like I was sort of swept
into this world of theirs.
But I soon realized
that I was the only other person
staying at the ranch with them
and tried to just, you know,
convince myself that this was normal,
and this would still be a good experience.
They took me into town to a Western store
where they had me pick out
some cowboy boots.
So they really made a lot of effort
to make me feel special.
But once we returned from shopping,
there were moments
when things were very uncomfortable.
One was when Maxwell said
that it was important
that I learn how to rub Epstein's feet.
So, she took one foot
and had me take his other foot
and showed me how to massage them.
And I, uh... you know,
was not... was not wanting to do this,
but it seemed like this was just expected.
Maxwell talked quite a bit
about massage, generally.
And she said that
she would be happy to give me a massage.
Eventually, I said, "Okay."
And so, she got out her massage table
and set it up in my bedroom
and asked me to undress
and lay on the table.
Once I was on my back
and she had pulled the sheet down,
she touched my breasts.
And I felt very uncomfortable
and was, you know, just thinking about
wanting to get off of that massage table
and have this be done.
The next morning,
Epstein came into the bedroom
and, uh, said that he wanted
to cuddle with me.
And so he, you know, got into bed with me
and held me from behind.
This was now a situation that I knew
in the pit of my stomach was not right.
That was very scary, because I realized
that I was very isolated.
I didn't know what else might happen next.
I just wanted to try
to get away as soon as possible.
This incident, of course, did affect me.
It was over 25 years ago,
and it's heartbreaking to think
how things could've been different
if someone had listened
when my sister reported
Epstein and Maxwell.
This is the victim file. I wanna...
I began working with survivors
of Jeffrey Epstein in 2007.
I had two survivors
referred to me by the FBI.
And then, I had the opportunity of getting
to know some of the attorneys in the area
who were working with victims,
who referred more victims to me.
I have treated survivors
who have been manipulated by Ghislaine.
With the upcoming trial
being only months away,
I'm really concerned about how significant
the triggers are going to be
for the survivors.
When Jeffrey Epstein
was arrested again in 2019,
a number of the survivors
returned to therapy,
because many of their memories
were triggered.
Many were experiencing a number
of trauma reactions and flashbacks,
and it brought them back to the abuse that
they endured by Jeffrey and Ghislaine.
Hearing Ghislaine Maxwell's name
on the news can produce memories.
These triggers can have
all of these symptoms to resurface.
When somebody has been sexually abused,
it doesn't matter
if it was 20 years ago or 50 years ago.
This is something
that will never be forgotten.
After the assault
in that hotel room,
I wanted to completely forget
Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.
So, I went to another high-end retailer
in Manhattan.
And I wasn't there for very long
when Ghislaine Maxwell
came into the store one day.
And I asked her,
"How did you find me here?"
And she said that some of the people
that I worked with had told her
that I had moved on.
She again encouraged the friendship.
Uh, we started talking again.
And she began to invite me out socially.
And I tried to stave off her advances.
I tried to make excuses
for why I couldn't do things.
But she knew everyone in fashion,
and I understood how important it was
for my future to not upset them.
One minute, I was Ghislaine's best friend,
and the next minute,
I was her worst enemy.
She was making me question myself
so that she and Jeffrey
could use me for their purposes.
But I knew what was happening
between us was not right.
Every time I tried to get away from them,
they found me.
I would change phone numbers,
locations.
There was nothing that I could do
to get away from them.
So, there was a lot of fear,
and they were connected
to some of the most powerful people
in the world.
I knew that if I told anyone,
my life was in danger.
I think the pursuit of me was definitely
a game to Ghislaine and Jeffrey.
And finally after three years
of harassment,
Ghislaine and Jeffrey stopped pursuing me.
Ghislaine was in love
with Jeffrey.
She was so spellbound by him.
And my impression was Ghislaine
would have done anything for... for Jeffrey.
I always, like, thought it was
really weird that they never ended up,
you know, getting married.
I did think that was strange, like...
You know, it's like,
"What is going on in this relationship?"
But Ghislaine also played
this kind of hybrid role
as social fixer,
social secretary.
And the notion was that they had dated,
and sometime in the late '90s,
they stopped.
But now they were best friends.
The way that it felt
that she was doing the job of a wife
without, you know, having
an intimate relationship with him anymore.
I think she was too old
for Jeffrey Epstein.
He really liked much younger girls.
But there was this bond between them,
and she needed money.
She couldn't feel secure
without Epstein's money.
It felt that she was entrapped
in that whole thing.
It was the price that she had to pay.
She basically played a role of a madame.
Ghislaine didn't only groom
underage girls.
Many, many victims
were just barely the age of consent
yet considered adults legally,
so they can't testify
in Ghislaine's upcoming trial.
A victim who is over the age of 21,
they feel it's their responsibility,
and they made the decision.
They blame themselves.
And these women often have
a harder time coming forward to get help
or talk about what happened.
It is the first time
I'm speaking out.
I wanted to tell my story,
but I'm just not ready
to completely expose myself.
I have gone through therapy,
and I wanted people to know
that it's okay to talk about it.
In my twenties,
I was a licensed massage therapist,
and that's when
I first met Jeffrey and Ghislaine.
Ghislaine asked me to do things
while I was massaging Jeffrey.
And I said I didn't feel comfortable,
and she's like, "Well, why wouldn't you?
It's... it's just part of the body."
"This is what a man needs
in order to have a complete massage."
And I just felt as though
I couldn't say no
because I was abused when I was younger.
So when the abuse started,
I did exactly what I did
when I was a little girl.
I just detached, and I became numb,
and I just did it.
When you've been abused younger,
you don't have the ability
to just say, "No."
There were times when I was exposed
to someone other than Jeffrey.
Some were CEOs and founders
of large, well-known brand companies.
Some of them were politicians.
And the expectations were
do what you do for Jeffrey.
Ghislaine got off on this.
She empowered herself with that.
And she knew
that she was also going to make
these high-powered men happy.
She was being validated.
Felt as though
Ghislaine was worse than Jeffrey.
One time, I was finished
giving Jeffrey a massage,
and Ghislaine came in,
and I was not expecting her.
She handed me the $200,
and then she started
taking off my clothes.
Then she proceeded to... start things
I didn't want to happen.
And...
I was just numb.
I didn't have any words.
And that's why...
That's why, when all of this came out,
I remember,
it's not so much Jeffrey
as it was Ghislaine
because she was just the one
that was guiding it all
and leading it all.
And I just kept on talking
to myself through this
and holding back the tears.
The whole thing just sucks.
Female abusers compriseabout 5%
of the sexual crimes that are reported.
Um, so it's a low number.
Ghislaine Maxwell doesn't necessarily
fit the mold of a female abuser.
You know, class can cloud reality.
So, somebody wholooks like Ghislaine,
well-dressed, beautifully put-together,
it will give more victims the opportunity
to relax and let their guard down.
This one is good. That's ready.
So, it was very easy for Ghislaine,
because of how she presents herself,
to take advantage of these victims
and groom them so successfully.
Based on the survivors that I treat
and with everything
that I have read about Ghislaine,
Ghislaine exhibits characteristics
of that of a psychopath.
Characteristics like inability
to maintain healthy relationships,
uh, manipulation, deception, bullying.
She also exhibits signs of a narcissist.
That sense of entitlement,
the sense of, "I want power
and control at any cost."
A judge has denied bail
for Ghislaine Maxwell
with the concern
that she is a flight risk.
The judge in Maxwell's case
recently determined
that Maxwell still has
international connections,
funding, and experience evading detection.
Six times thus far,
bail has been denied
in Ghislaine Maxwell's case.
And the basis for that
is a number of things.
She is charged with crimes against minors,
and that does have a much higher
standard with respect to getting bail.
In the eyes of the public,
Ghislaine is a monster.
And so, Ghislaine's family
needed a way to counteract this narrative.
And they built a website
called Realghislaine.com.
Imagine yourself arrested
and imprisoned in solitary confinement,
deprived of bail for nine months.
Whatever your feelings
about the allegations,
she's entitled to a fair trial,
to due process
and to the presumption of innocence.
My brothers and sisters and I
will never stop fighting for Ghislaine.
We've got whatlooks like
a new development.
Uh, you may have seen this already.
Maxwell's lawyers are asking
for all of our files.
A lot of discovery that
they're not ever entitled to get.
It looks incredibly broad.
I mean, they're seeking all of our files
for all of the victims
that we ever represented.
That would be, you know,
giving over records
of individuals
who weren't even ever public.
They don't have a right
to pore through our files
and just see what they can find
to embarrass some of our clients.
It's a fishing expedition.
They don't know
whether there's anything there.
They just figure the more stuff they get,
maybe they'll find something they can use.
And I... And I...
And I think to some extent,
it... it shows the Court
how desperate they are.
I hope that Maxwell is held accountable
and that she sees jail time
for what she's done.
But we know that she has a history
of evading, uh... evading justice.
Annie first told me
about Epstein and Maxwell in 2004.
So Epstein and Maxwell have...
have been a big part
of our lives for years.
I've been married to Annie for 14 years.
We met 18 years ago in Bethel, Alaska,
where she was a children's advocate.
And it took me, kind of, years
to... to get to a... a point
where I kind of understand
how best to support Annie.
I'm definitely nervous.As it gets closer,
I'm a little more nervous.
I did talk to Sigrid,
and I think we're gonna have
a conversation
with the government attorneys
sometime soon.
It's hard not to feel some pressure
just 'cause I know so many people,
uh, want to see justice.
Is there any, like, feedback
they've given you
or... or, like, advice
in terms of being on the stand?
I think mostly to slow down.
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.
And just to really listen to the questions
because... especially
during cross-examination, right?
They try and confuse you or ask you things
that, um... you know, might throw you off.
I want to do as good a job as I can
in telling my story clearly
so that the jury understands
this predatory behavior
and that she's held accountable.
I think you'll do great.
Jeffrey Epstein
had a very precise system
for grooming and abusing young girls,
and that was a system that was established
through Ghislaine Maxwell.
And for a time period in Florida,
Ghislaine was able
to introduce Jeffrey Epstein
to young females,
and these people
start being abused by Jeffrey Epstein,
and the pyramid begins.
Those females were instructed
to go get other females,
and it began growing
into this sex-trafficking operation.
Starting in the early 2000s,
the local police in Palm Beach
became aware of Jeffrey Epstein.
There was suspicious activity.
There were young girls in taxis,
crossing the bridge from West Palm Beach
to the very wealthy Palm Beach.
He had actually created
a sex-trafficking pyramid scheme
in a local high school,
and it was starting to get out.
A New York billionaire
with a home in Palm Beach
is at the center of a scandal.
He's charged with soliciting a prostitute.
The voluminous
22-page probable-cause affidavit
details in graphic language
alleged sexual encounters
between billionaire Jeffrey Epstein
and several under-18 girls
at his seven-million-dollar
358 El Brillo Way home in Palm Beach.
When Epstein was first arrested,
it's hard to know why Maxwell
was not arrested at the same time.
One of the detectives that I deposed
testified that he attempted
to contact and interview Ghislaine Maxwell
and got no cooperation.
But her name
is listed in the police materials.
She's on bank accounts
with that house in Florida.
She's in message pads,
going back and forth
showing that she's at the location,
even though she says she wasn't.
And that's why investigators
were interested in trying to talk to her.
How she evaded it is another story.
Epstein himself got
essentially a slap on the wrist.
He spent only a year in jail.
This was one of the worst miscarriages
of justice that I've seen.
A secret non-prosecution agreement
kept Epstein and his coconspirators
from being charged
with federal sex crimes
in the Southern District of Florida.
And that's the story here
that we've seen go on for so long
of power and privilege.
That the powerful and the privileged
were able to avoid being held accountable
in this circumstance.
The person Jeffrey Epstein
wanted to protect the most
was Ghislaine Maxwell.
He had to know that
if Ghislaine Maxwell ever flipped on him,
then he was cooked.
She essentially stopped coming to Florida
and began to create significant buffers
between her and Epstein.
But we know that
there was still a relationship
between Ghislaine and Jeffrey
because we have pictures of them
in 2006 and 2007.
I was 22 years old
when I first met Ghislaine in 2006.
These are the photos that were taken
during the time that Ghislaine had said
that she was slowly phasing out
of Jeffrey's life.
And my photos clearly indicate
that that was not the case.
Ghislaine was very much
a part of Jeffrey's life.
Ghislaine was always onher phone,
always organizing.
At this stage,
Ghislaine didn't need to go on the prowl
for new victims for Jeffrey,
because Ghislaine effectively started
training and recruiting other girls,
and then they would train
and recruit other girls.
I was in a nightclub
when I was targeted
and befriended by a girl my age.
A couple days later,
my new friend invited me to join her
and another group of girls
to go to the Virgin Islands.
And the island was owned
by Jeffrey Epstein.
I remember Ghislaine
getting off the helicopter,
and I said to her, "Hi, I'm... I'm Sarah."
And she looked me up and down
as if I was invisible,
as if I didn't even exist.
I had been on the island for a few days.
I was sitting on the patio,
and Ghislaine marched over
and grabbed my arm
and forced me into Jeffrey's room,
where I was raped.
She knew exactly
what was going to happen to me.
She is as guilty as Jeffrey, if not more.
So many young girls were abused
during that period of time.
There was an arrogance there.
They just thought they were above the law.
They'd gotten away with it so long,
for years and years,
hiding in plain sight
the sex trafficking that was going on.
But life changes dramatically
for Ghislaine Maxwell in 2011,
when an underaged victim
named Virginia Roberts
decides to come out publicly
and name Ghislaine Maxwell
as Epstein's partner in crime.
In 2000, my client, Virginia Giuffre,
was recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell
at Trump's Mar-a-Lago
and brought to Jeffrey Epstein
for purposes of sexual abuse.
And in 2001,
Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein
flew Virginia over to London,
and they introduced her
to Ghislaine Maxwell's good friend,
Prince Andrew.
I wanna begin
with the scandal
that has the Royal Family in an uproar,
allegations that Prince Andrew
had sex with an underage girl.
There is a photograph
that has been widely circulated,
that was taken of her and Prince Andrew.
And you can see her standing
with Prince Andrew
and then Ghislaine Maxwell
in the background.
And that's when the focus
also shifted to Ghislaine Maxwell.
Can I ask you about all the
allegations that have come out, Ghislaine?
Happy New Year.
Can...
Obviously, they're very damning,
involving British royalty.
Have you got no comment at all?
I've made a statement, thank you.
Do you know Virginia?
Can you at least say
if she's been in your house?
Ghislaine's reputation
was in tatters.
She was a broken woman,
and she seemed to be desperatelytrying
to repair her reputation.
She invited me over
to her townhouse on the Upper East Side.
And she was talking
in this very fevered, passionate way
about saving the world's oceans.
I'm passionate about the ocean,
the deep sea,
and the wild animals that live there.
The ocean is essential to life on Earth,
yet despite the ocean's importance to us,
we know so little about it.
In 2012, I founded the TerraMar Project.
So this was a new topic for Ghislaine.
TerraMar was her great cause.
This was something she was doing
for the planet, for humanity.
So while Ghislaine
was still welcome in high society,
and she had her charities,
and she's speaking on these panels
about saving the ocean,
she appears to be repairing her image.
Your Excellencies, presidents,
lords, ladies, and gentlemen, um,
I just would like to thank you so much.
It's such an honor to be here.
TerraMar was linking herself to a cause
that was much greater than herself.
It seemed a whole lot more respectable
than being the former girlfriend
of Jeffrey Epstein.
I met Ghislaine Maxwell
at a conference.
Uh, it was at Kiawah Island,
outside Charleston, South Carolina,
in February 2014.
She was very elegant, very put-together.
She was very confident.
She just told me all about TerraMar.
And everything she said, to me,
was completely convincing.
I'm a media producer, uh,
and a marketing professional.
And Ghislaine floated this idea,
like, "We really need a one-minute promo
to get people to sign this pledge
to save the ocean."
I was like, "Just shoot something,
like, while I'm here."
So, after we had come up
with the idea for her one-minute promo,
we're like, "Great.
Let's go have a drink."
Now, we're at the hotel bar.
That's when things got a little weird.
I think I said, you know,
"What are you wearing tomorrow
when we shoot you
down by the beach for this promo?"
And she said, "Well, I've got my TerraMar
T-shirt that I'm presenting in.
You know, like, 'I heart the ocean.'"
I was like, "That's perfect."
And then she goes...
..."You know, you should see me
in my full-length leather outfit,
you know, with my weapons."
And I just kind of dumbly stared at her,
like, "What is she talking about?"
She had an incredibly electric,
sexual energy about her.
She turned to me, and she said, uh,
"You know Lara Croft from Tomb Raider?"
She's like,
"Well, I'm the real-life version."
And then she gave me this look, right?
I was really taken aback.
There was something just a little... creepy.
Something just a little off.
So we met in the lobby the next morning.
And she was wearing stilettos, right?
She's wearing stiletto heels.
And I don't know what she thought
about us shooting down on a beach
or what it was gonna be, but she ended up,
like, walking down to the ocean and back
in these stiletto heels.
I was trying to have a vision of,
like, "Show me your love of the ocean."
Show your love.
Sign the pledge.
Thank you.
- Again?
- Let's do three.
- There's a rule of threes.
- All right.
Show your love.
Sign the pledge. Thank you.
But it ended up kind of absurd.
There was almost like a glamour shoot.
The irony of her trying
to reinvent herself with the ocean
and then just being the same...
the same person.
You know, none of us can run away
from ourselves, you know?
None of us can run away from our past.
None of us can run away from our actions.
Victims of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein
are finally getting their day in court.
Opening statements in a trial
that is expected to last six weeks
begins today.
And it is one of the most eagerly
anticipated criminal trials in years.
Morning, everybody.
It's gonna be a great day.
We, the people, deserve to know.
We deserve honest
and fair and ample coverage
of the trial of the century.
This is a case
that has international attention.
People all over the world
are going to be watching.
I hardly slept a wink
last night. I was up every hour.
It was important for me to be here,
to show solidarity
to the survivors that are testifying.
They are so brave and courageous,
and they are standing in their truth,
and they are not backing down.
If she's convicted
of all six chargesleveled against her,
she'll likely die in an American prison.
So it's an incredibly high-stakes trial
clearly for Ghislaine Maxwell.
It has been one hell of a saga,
leading up to this moment.
The charges seem so utterly devastating.
Ladies and gentlemen,
members of the jury,
during the course of the trial,
you will learn
that the defendant and Epstein
lured their victims
with the promise of a brighter future,
only to sexually exploit them
and forever change their lives.
She knew exactly what she was doing.
She was dangerous.
She was setting young girls up
to be molested by a predator.
Ever since Eve
was tempting Adam with the apple,
women have been blamed
for the bad behavior of men.
The charges against Ghislaine Maxwell
are for things that Jeffrey Epstein did.
But she is not Jeffrey Epstein.
She is not like Jeffrey Epstein.
In opening statements,
the defense lawyers
used biblical references,
talking about Adam and Eve
and trying to paint
Ghislaine Maxwell as a scapegoat
because she's a woman.
That was really offensive to hear,
trying to allow Ghislaine Maxwell a pass
because she's a woman
was really something below the belt.
An accuser
of Ghislaine Maxwell,
a woman known as "Jane,"
began testifying today.
Jane was chosen
as one of the testifying victims
for many reasons.
She was extraordinarily young
when she was recruited
by Ghislaine Maxwell.
There was direct abuse, not just grooming,
but direct abuse by Ghislaine Maxwell.
Jane claiming
her first sexual contact with Epstein
was at his Palm Beach house in 1994,
when she was just 14.
Her story was really hard to hear,
'cause it included multiple offenses
over many years,
with not only Ghislaine Maxwell
but with others.
And then, the defense was relentless
in their attack of her,
because her background
is that she is an actress,
and so they tried to use that against her.
You're able to cry on command?
No, not always.
It's not really how it works.
Are you acting here today?
No.
The defense's strategy
is memory, manipulation, and money.
They're trying to say that these witnesses
are only trying to manipulate people
and are after money,
and they really pressed
some of the details.
When Jeffrey Epstein died,
there was a victim compensation
program set up.
During the testimony, it was revealed
for the first time publicly
that some of the determinations
through the program
were in the millions of dollars
for victims.
How much money did the fund award you?
Five million.
The defense
made me really angry.
I found the defense, uh,
incredibly victim-shaming,
and I think we're in the era
where victim-shaming
and victim-blaming really needs to stop.
It's kind of a night and day,
or in this case
"day and night" difference,
because in the morning, I've...
I entered the courtroom pretty convinced
that she was going away
for a long, long time.
But when the defense began,
I have to say I was astonished.
Trying to imagine
how the jury was reacting
to hearing these... huge amounts of money.
It has to be feeling like sunshine
for Ghislaine Maxwell at this point.
Hey, guys.
Move out of his way, please.
I am very pleased to have attended,
uh, today in court, in person,
together with Isabel,
and in support of our sister, Ghislaine.
Um, on a personal note,
it was atremen... gave me
a tremendous sense of relief,
uh, to be close to her,
uh, to be able
to actually see her in the flesh.
Uh, even to be able to speak with her.
And that's the first time
that I've spoken to her personally
in over 500 days,
uh, since her pretrial detention started.
How is Ghislaine
holding up, Kevin?
What did she say to you?
I understand why
her brothers can't recognize
that something evil ever happened.
How could you recognize
something like that?
And I think you have to protect your own,
especially your own family.
It's not that you want to find excuses
for the evil that people have done,
but you try to understand
where they come from.
Once upon a Christmastime,
in a big house on a hill,
there lived a man,
his wife, and their eight children.
When Father Christmas came last year,
I was fast asleep, and he put...
I took my daddy's stocking away
from his bedroom,
then I hung it up on my bed,
then Father Christmas put some toys
in my daddy's...in my daddy's stocking.
A really big part of the image
of Robert Maxwell
was that he had the perfect family.
But no one really knew
that behind closed doors,
it was actually very dysfunctional.
His wife, Betty, told me
that the children hadto stand up
at the dinner table
and tell their father what they'd done
during the course of that year
and what they were hoping to achieve.
And then if he didn't like something
that somebody had said,
he'd whip them with a belt.
And then, after giving them
a good sound bashing with the belt,
they had to write a letter
to their father of apology.
I remember well... I met Ghislaine
for the first time in September 1984.
She was about 22 at the time.
It was at a regular Sunday lunch
at Headington Hill Hall
with business executives
that Robert invited.
And Maxwell was presiding,
that rather as... as a Roman emperor
or Henry VIII, this sort of large figure.
But kneeling at his knee was Ghislaine.
And she was sobbing,
um, very, very profusely and dramatically.
There was snot.
I mean, this girl was crying her eyes out,
trying to persuade her father
to agree to something.
And he was ignoring this.
And this went on, to the embarrassment
of everyone else who was there,
but everyone was just completely ignoring
this bizarre sight.
I think with Ghislaine that her affection
for her father was unconditional
and that the urge to please him
was probably a huge driving force.
And, you know, perhaps she devoted
the same sort of acclaim
that she had to her father
to Epstein instead.
And now, to week two
of Ghislaine Maxwell trial,
here in Manhattan.
Today, another woman is going to testify
about her decades-long interactions
with Maxwell and the late Jeffrey Epstein.
My client Kate is protected,
and she is able to proceed
under a pseudonym.
And Kate was first abused
by Jeffrey Epstein when she was 17.
And she was abused
for many, many, many years.
Kate was a teenager,
an aspiring British model,
a talented musician,
just a brilliant person.
In fact, she was accepted to Oxford.
Ghislaine had gone to Oxford.
So Ghislaine, in a lot of ways,
was everything Kate wanted to be.
And one of the first things
that Ghislaine told her was that
she had this very powerful boyfriend
who was a philanthropist,
who could assist Kate
in getting her foot in the door
in basically any industry she wanted.
What was originally
an innocuous introduction
to Jeffrey Epstein
had her in the devil's den,
being abused in no time,
and then,
with literally no realistic way out.
Did Epstein engage in a sex act
with you during the massage?
Yes.
After it ended, where did you go?
I left the room
and started walking down the stairs.
And who, if anyone, did you see?
I saw Ghislaine Maxwell.
What, if anything, did Maxwell say?
She said, "How did it go?"
"Did you have fun? Was it good?"
She seemed very excited and happy.
She thanked me again.
My strategy for preparing Kate for trial
was pretty simple.
Just tell the truth
and don't worry about
all of the othernonsense
that Ghislaine Maxwell
is gonna throw your way
to try to discredit you.
It's not gonna work.
Now, you've testified there was a time,
I think upwards of ten years,
that you used drugs. Correct?
Yes.
Fair to say
that using and abusing those substances
over a ten-year period
has had an impact on memory. Correct?
It has not had
an impact on the memories
that I have always had.
I'm very proud of Kate
and... and many of the other, uh, clients
and victims and survivors
that were willing to come forward
and many who did, so...
She... she... she was what she always is,
just a completely honest person.
I think that
the most significant contribution
that Kate made to the trial
was explaining how Ghislaine Maxwell
specifically invoked the grooming process
in a way that facilitated Jeffrey Epstein,
that particular perpetrator's ability
to abuse little girls.
I would believe that the jury
had a light bulb go off
and appreciate, "Oh, wait.
Now I understand how this happened."
They finally caught up
with Ghislaine,
and that's something
I never thought I'd live to see happen.
And so, I wake up at 4:00 a.m.
every morning to be at the trial.
I take the two-hour journey
from Philadelphia to New York.
And every day,
I wear a pair of Gucci loafers
that were given to me
by Jeffrey and Ghislaine.
And I think
that it's important symbolically
that I'm taking my journey every day,
walking in these shoes.
These are gifts
that Ghislaine and Jeffrey gaveme
over the three years
that I was involved with them.
This is a gown that I wore
to a New Year's Eve party with them.
Ghislaine picked it out for me.
I realize that some people
might not understand
why I held onto all of these things
for so many years,
but it's validating my experience.
Having those items really helped me
to understand what happened to me
and were an integral part of my healing.
It's grueling physically,
traveling for hours to the trial.
But there is nothing in the world
that can stop me
from going there every day.
It is a new day of testimony
in the sex-trafficking trial
of GhislaineMaxwell,
and a third accuser,
who's going by the name "Carolyn,"
taking the stand.
Carolyn was 14
when Maxwell allegedly set her up
for Epstein's abuse
that went on for years.
What's the last grade you attended
before dropping out in middle school?
- Seventh.
- Why is that?
Because my mom
was an alcoholic and a drug addict.
When you were
between the ages of 14 and 16,
how did you make money?
I went to Mr. Epstein's house
and got money that way.
Whether it was an apartment
or a car or a phone,
they will dangle that carrot
in front of them
in order to string them along
and make them succumb to sexual abuse.
What, if any, conversations
do you remember having with Maxwell
about your bra and hip size?
I was upstairs
setting up the massage table.
And she came in and felt my boobs
and my hips and my buttocks
and said that I had a great body
for Mr. Epstein and his friends.
Carolyn becoming emotional
several times
over the course of her testimony,
as she detailed the abuse,
saying she ultimately went
to Epstein's Palm Beach mansion
over 100 times.
The experience, Carolyn said,
contributed to mental health issues
and addiction issues
that continue to today.
Carolyn's story
was particularly hard to hear.
But I think the jury connected with her.
She was powerful on the stand.
She didn't back down,
even when challenged by the defense.
The defense's strategy has been
to really try to attack
the victims' credibility,
but I think that wasgoing to backfire
for them.
This morning,
we're expecting to hear
from perhaps the most powerful
and compelling witness of all.
She's an American woman
named Annie Farmer,
who claims she was sexually abused
by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell
at Epstein's, um, ranch in New Mexico.
I was outside of the courtroom
with my husband and my attorney, Sigrid,
and my heart was pounding.
Once the door opened,
one of the FBI agents led the way,
and I walked into the courtroom.
I wanted to make eye contact with Maxwell
to communicate that I'm not afraid
and that I'm there for a purpose.
So, I start to walk past the table
where she's sitting.
I did make a point
to look in her direction.
And I think that she looked like
she was trying to kind of busy herself
by looking down and looking at notes,
and she didn't want to make eye contact.
Sitting up there on the witness stand,
I feel... very nervous.
Physiologically, very nervous.
My feet are sweating profusely.
My hands were shaking.
I made eye contact with Sigrid,
and, you know, she gestured,
putting her hand on her heart,
um, and I knew, you know,
that she was... she was there with me.
Annie kept a journal
at the time that she was abused
by Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.
And as part of the case,
that became evidence at the trial.
Maxwell's defense attorneys
had me read a portion of my journal
in the courtroom, in particular
where I was going back and forth
about how to interpret Epstein's behavior.
"One night, we went
to the movies with Jeffrey Epstein."
"It was a little weird,
one of those things
that is hard to explain."
"We were sitting next to each other,
and he put out his hand for me to hold."
"Then he kind of caressed,
rubbed my arm and shoe/foot."
"Overall, I decided it was no big deal."
"It just made me mad,
because he is being so amazing."
"Paying for a summer program for me.
Helping me with college."
As a 16-year-old,
I was trying to make excuses,
because in my mind, it didn't fit
that he was being so generous andnice
and then doing these things
to make me so uncomfortable
and violate my boundaries.
The defense's strategy
is to use the nuance that,
when she was trying
to explain to herself in the journal
and say that it wasn't that bad,
the defense tried to use that to say,
"Well, it wasn't that bad."
Then, as a part of the cross-examination,
they bring up a brown paper bag
with these cowboy boots in them,
the boots that Maxwell and Epstein
had purchased for me in New Mexico
back in 1996 and asked me
to... to show them.
And I started to realize
that what they were insinuating here
is that because they were well-worn,
it hadn't, in fact,
been such a bothersome memory to me.
I actually had worn the boots
in order to, you know,
reclaim this part of my history
and not just avoid itor feel stressed
when I saw these in the back of my closet.
I think what was
most really disgusting to me
was the way that her defense attorneys
tried to minimize and downplay
what my experience was.
Her defense attorneys asked me
about this incident
when Maxwell gave me this massage,
and she had touched my breasts.
They tried to... challenge
the language that I used.
They tried to get her to admit
it wasn't the nipples.
It was really, sort of,
the outside portions of the breast.
But what we're talking about here
is a 16-year-old child
being rubbed by an adult woman
on her breasts.
Regardless of which part
of the breast it is.
It just infuriates me
to see someone equating those two
and trying to confuse
the public about what sexual abuse is.
I think that was just
a really powerful moment,
to see her on the stand,
saying that and speaking her truth.
I was just barely
making it out of the courtroom
before I started crying.
It took a little while to get composure.
My husband came, telling me
I'd done a good job and that it was over.
And that was really...
It just was such a huge relief.
You can't ever predict
what a jury's gonna do.
But they haveall the evidence now.
So, hopefully, they do the right thing.
No matter what happens,
I don't think there's anything more
that any of our clients
or any of the women could've done,
and we're really, really,
really proud of them.
I agree with that.
The case is now
in the hands of the jury,
and a verdict is possible
before Christmas Day,
which will be
Ghislaine Maxwell's 60th birthday.
Just before 10:30 this morning,
the jury asked for office supplies,
including Post-its, a whiteboard.
Also asked for the definition
of the word "enticement."
I know people are impatient
that there hasn't been a verdict.
They're really putting thought into this
and consideration,
and I think if you were Ghislaine Maxwell,
you'd be happy about that.
We were hoping, of course,
that there would be a very quick verdict,
but as the days go on,
certainly it becomes concerning
that there could be a hung jury.
We're standing by,
and we may have a verdict any moment
or not today. Who knows?
I was at home,
and I had been trying to distract myself.
And so my mom and I decided
that we would go thrift shopping.
And I didn't realize my ringer was off,
and so I looked at my phone,
and I had a missed call from my husband,
and I had a text message
from another Epstein survivor.
I've just rushed out of the courtroom now.
To give you a sense of the picture
inside that courtroom,
Ghislaine Maxwell is sat
behind the defense table,
as she has been throughout this trial.
She's wearing a...
a maroon turtleneck jumper.
Judge Alison Nathan took her seat
in the courtroom and said,
"I have a verdict."
So, I ran into the parking lot
and called my husband,
and he was on the computer
and read to me as the verdict came out.
Ghislaine Maxwell
has been found guilty
of five of the six charges,
including that most serious
sex-trafficking charge.
She faces, for that charge alone,
a maximum of 40 years in prison.
I started crying in the parking lot
and jumping up and down,
and Sigrid called on the other line.
Of course,
the very first thing, I called Annie,
and we just had an incredible moment.
I think we both cried together.
It was... It was very emotional.
- Kevin, will you be speaking?
- Mr. Maxwell?
What's your reaction?
Tonight marks the final fall
from grace for Ghislaine Maxwell.
A jury has decided
that she wasn't just a bystander
to the sexual offenses by Jeffrey Epstein.
They decided that she was,
herself, a predator.
What was her...
What was her reaction backstage?
Was it emotional?
Ghislaine's reaction to the guilty verdict
was a little bit surprising.
She didn't break down.
She didn't cry or say anything.
It just seemed like
she took a sip of water and sat down,
and that was it.
Ghislaine is going to go down in history
as one of those rare female predators.
And that's highly unusual.
What is her legacy now?
Um, it's one of disgrace.
The charges that Maxwell
has been convicted of include
sex trafficking of a minor,
transporting a minor
to engage in criminal sexual activity,
and three conspiracy charges
related to sex trafficking.
Miss Menninger! Miss Menninger!
You have to make way, please.
One way or the other.
Will there be an appeals process?
Do you intend to appeal this verdict?
We firmly believe
in Ghislaine's innocence.
Obviously, we arevery disappointed
with the verdict.
We have already started working
on the appeal,
and we are confident
that she will be vindicated.
Everyone, be healthy.
Have a happy New Year.
How is Ghislaine doing?
With the counts that
Ghislaine Maxwell has been convicted on,
she could be in prison for up to 65 years.
So, this is really
a tremendous verdict for the survivors.
Ghislaine Maxwell
was charged...
It really shows
that the jury heard them,
believed them,
and did the right thing
by convicting Ghislaine Maxwell.
For a few minutes, I cried uncontrollably.
I never thought I'd ever see the day...
where she was convicted.
It's very much been
a group effort to bring her down.
And it's taken many, many years
to finally get justice.
It's one of the happiest days of my life.
I think I've spoken to over 50
of my clients about this verdict.
And one of them put it, I thought, best.
She said, "I feel like
we've finally been heard."
Breaking news
out of Buckingham Palace,
just weeks after
the Ghislaine Maxwell verdict,
the fallout continues for a man
associated with Maxwell
and Jeffrey Epstein.
Britain's Prince Andrew has reached
a settlement with his accuser
in a sexual assault lawsuit.
Miss Giuffre had, of course,
been suing the Duke of York,
claiming that he sexually assaulted her
on three occasions when she was 17.
The figure that's been touted widely
this morning
in all the newspapers and outlets
is about12 million.
Prince Andrew settled
with Virginia Roberts Giuffre,
and the Queen stripped him
of his royal title.
An unprecedented situation,
this, for the Royal Family.
This is the Queen's favorite son.
That has been his persona
for his entire life.
He has been His Royal Highness,
Prince of England,
and Virginia's lawsuit is important
because of that.
I was so proud of Virginia
for fighting to have
Prince Andrew held accountable.
I mean, I could not have imagined
that she would, you know,
be able to accomplish this.
I think it is really important to me
to make a statement
about how I've stood up for myself
and for other women and girls.
- Thank you so much for meeting me here.
- Of course.
And not being afraid any longer
of Maxwell or Epstein
and their powerful friends.
I think I told you, they kept my boots,
uh, after the trial.
I don't know if I'm getting them back.
So I would like to buy
a pair of nice boots for myself.
I think that this experience
has made me more aware
of how it's not uncommon
that people who are predators
have come to occupy positions
with a lot of prestige
or, uh, power in some way.
I didn't recognize this
as the systemic issue that it was.
I actually was looking on your website
and saw you had a boot called "The Annie."
- We do. We do.
- Ooh. Could I try some on?
Yeah, sure.
This whole story has been about
how money and power overcome justice.
And what we're seeing now
is something vastly different.
And I think that shows you,
regardless of stature,
you will be held accountable.
All of the time and energy
and effort and sleepless nights
and fighting was worth it.
The justice system worked.
These are good boots.
They should rename them
"The Annie Farmer Boots."
It's a real lesson to people
about the need to pay attention
to what's going on
and the need to protect
the vulnerable people in our society.
- I got 'em. Are you ready?
- You got 'em. Yeah. You?
- Good night. See you.Bye.
- Good night. I'll see you. Bye.
My new boots mean to me
stepping into a new phase of my life.
There was a lot of darkness
around what happened
with Epstein and Maxwell,
and I'm leaving that behind.
And I'm hoping to be able to do more
to share what I've learned
and to connect with other people.
And I think that, in a way, these boots
just feel like a powerful symbol
of me stepping into that new future.