Over a two-day hearing, the victim, identified as Victim 1 (a composite version of all the victims), has described the abuse by her friend Ghislaine Maxwell as unrelenting and often nearly fatal. “I’m in the hospital right now because Ghislaine would choke me and hit me and all of that was the form of torture,” she said. Maxwell, who is married to Guy Ritchie, was a friend and business associate of Epstein and “known to have a darker side to her,” according to prosecutor Joe Morrissey.
Victim 1 told the court that she met Epstein in 2009 at Miami’s Art Basel when she went for a weekend with him at his home. She said she was introduced to Maxwell, and the two were inseparable in the following weeks. When Epstein arrived in London to attend the 2011 wedding of Tamara Ecclestone and Jay Rutland, he approached Maxwell, and told her he planned to give her an exclusive British interview in order to celebrate his presence at the wedding. Maxwell is pictured above on the right in a photograph submitted by law firm Addleshaw Goddard.
“I thought that would make me feel good and make me feel important,” Victim 1 said. She met Maxwell on a flight to New York with Epstein and she was later invited to his hotel room. “At some point, she took my hand and put it inside her vagina and she forced it down my throat and I told her to stop. She pushed down my face,” Victim 1 said. Maxwell then played porn videos she had collected and described them to Victim 1. “She said these are for use to beat people. They’re used to beat men. I asked her why this is for beating men, and she said ‘you don’t have a penis, so you don’t have any strength’.”
However, she said Maxwell only told her she needed to have sex with Epstein, and Victim 1 said Maxwell would repeatedly tell her she would pay for her virginity and stay friends with her to have sex with Epstein in future. After her first rape, she said Maxwell told her to treat the rape like any other drug-induced orgasm. “I felt like my body wanted to come and take over,” she said. Maxwell allegedly kept her silent with a mixture of emails, facials, chocolate and money. She did not attend a visit by Epstein to the United States because, she said, she did not think she could stand there in front of all the cameras.
Victim 1 said Maxwell warned her against telling police about the rape, and later, she was allegedly told to “not bring it up.” “She said I’d get killed and no one would believe me, and that she’d shut down all my books and films, so I had to respect her wishes.”
A key issue at the hearing was how Maxwell could testify, if she were ever to be convicted. The London Evening Standard reported that Maxwell planned to testify in 2013, when she pleaded guilty to one charge in the US. Maxwell also faced a rape charge in a Florida court in 2011. However, she allegedly walked free from court when her attorney decided to not contest the sex crime charge. She is also due to be extradited from Britain in August.
Read the full story at The Telegraph.
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