Annie Farmer, the Only Ghislaine Maxwell Accusing Witness to Go Public, Testifies Against Her in Sex Trafficking Trial
Ghislaine Maxwell’s only alleged victim to identify herself to the press and in court documents under her real name told a federal jury on Thursday that Jeffrey Epstein abused her when she was 16 years old — with Maxwell’s help luring her to his ranch. One of the two siblings described by the New York Times as “The Sisters Who First Tried to Take Down Jeffrey Epstein,” Annie Farmer testified that she was subjected to a topless massage in Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico in 1996. “Can you see anyone in this courtroom who has ever given you a massage?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Elizabeth Pomerantz asked.
The now-42-year-old witness also recounted Epstein taking her and her older sister Maria Farmer to see the play “Phantom of the Opera” and then a movie, where the younger sister said she sat next to Epstein. Annie Farmer recalled Epstein first “caressed” her hand, before moving onto her arm, shoe, foot and leg. “I felt sick to my stomach. It wasn’t something that I was at all expecting,” Farmer recounted. The witness inspected entries from her journal at the time. The first glossed over the movie theater and gave a rave review of the play. “I bawled. It was fantastic,” a then-teenage Annie Farmer wrote, referring to the play. Annie Farmer returned to the movie theater in a separate entry, writing that she wanted to add about “a couple of quick details about New York that I didn’t mention earlier.” “It was a little weird. One of those things that was hard to explain.” At one point, she wrote that Epstein “caressed, rubbed” her arm, shoe and foot. The journal entry played down the incident. A teenage Annie Farmer wrote that it may have appeared that she was “trying to justify him doing something weird, but it isn’t.” Reflecting on what she wrote now, Annie Farmer testified: “I was trying to come up with excuses or justification to make it try to feel okay.”
She Told Me to Get Undressed It was in New Mexico where Annie Farmer recalled first meeting with Maxwell. “She was a trim, attractive woman,” Farmer said. “Well dressed.” She recalled Maxwell having dark hair, speaking a British accent, and being “well spoken” and “articulate.”
Recalling being less than eager to meeting with Epstein again after New York, Farmer testified that Maxwell’s presence made her feel more comfortable. “I thought that they were romantic partners,” she said, adding that they appeared intimate with each other. Then came another trip to the movies: Annie Farmer said that she, Maxwell and Epstein went to see “Primal Fear.” “He right away tried to hold my hand and caress and hold my foot and my arm,” Annie Farmer said, referring to Epstein. Back at Epstein’s Zorro ranch in Santa Fe, Annie Farmer said, Ghislaine Maxwell “instructed” her to massage Epstein’s feet. She says that Maxwell massaged one of Epstein’s feet and gave the other to her.
“I felt very uncomfortable,” Annie Farmer said, of the massage. “I wanted to stop, and I was hoping it’d be over quickly.” Later, Annie Farmer said, Maxwell gave her a massage. “What were you wearing during the massage?” the prosecutor asked. “Nothing,” she replied. Asked why she disrobed, Farmer said she she was following Maxwell’s direction: “She told me to get undressed.” Farmer told the jury that once she was lying on her back, Maxwell pulled the sheet down, exposed her breasts and touched them. She said that Epstein later went into her room and cuddled with her, and she recalled that though she didn’t say anything at the time, she did not want to cuddle with Epstein.
Well after her trip in the summer of 1996, Annie Farmer said, she recalled: “I told my mom I was not raped, and I didn’t want to talk about it.”
Annie Farmer said she also kept the cowboy boots that she says Epstein bought her on the trip, while Maxwell was present. The witness testified that she stuffed them in the back of her closet at first, before being questioned about them by federal agents and wearing them in order to “reclaim” them. Prosecutors have told jurors that Epstein and Maxwell sometimes gave their alleged victims presents in order to “groom” them for sexual abuse.
https://lawandcrime.com/live-trials/ghislaine-maxwell/annie-farmer-the-only-ghislaine-maxwell-accusing-witness-to-go-public-testifies-against-her-in-sex-trafficking-trial/
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