Ghislaine Maxwell trial: Annie Farmer gives disturbing details of time with socialite and Jeffrey Epstein
One of the women accusing Ghislaine Maxwell has described a disturbing incident in which Maxwell allegedly massaged her.
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Annie Farmer, the fourth of Ghislaine Maxwell’s accusers, has claimed the socialite gave her a massage, exposed the then-16-year-old’s breasts and touched them.
In her testimony Ms Farmer, the only one of Ms Maxwell’s four accusers to be identified publicly, revealed she met Jeffrey Epstein through her sister, Maria, in New York, where he took her to see The Phantom of the Opera and “caressed” her hand and rubbed her leg.
“I felt sick to my stomach. It wasn’t something that I was at all expecting,” she told the court.
She said that when Maria looked over he would stop, then begin again when she turned away.
Ms Farmer said she wrote about the incident in her journal at the time, saying Epstein “weirded me out”.
“He sort of caressed, rubbed my arm, shoe and foot,” she wrote.
Ms Farmer also wrote that she did not want to bring it up with her sister.
“She worships him [Epstein] and it would just create problems.”
Ms Farmer said she next saw Epstein in New Mexico in April of 1996, when she was 16.
She said this was when she met Maxwell for the first time. She initially felt more comfortable knowing Maxwell was there, given what had happened in New York.
She said Ms Maxwell took her shopping and bought her cowboy boots that cost more than $US100. She then went to the movies with Epstein and Maxwell to see Primal Fear.
“He right away tried to hold my hand and caress and hold my foot and my arm,” Ms Farmer testified, adding he touched her for most of the movie and did not hide that he was doing it.
Back at the ranch, Maxwell allegedly sat and held one of Epstein’s feet, instructing Ms Farmer to massage the other.
“I just watched what she was doing and she instructed me,” she said.
“And so I did what she told me. I felt very uncomfortable. I wanted to stop, and I was hoping it’d be over quickly.”
Ms Farmer claimed Maxwell subsequently asked her whether she wanted a massage. She set up a massage table and instructed Ms Farmer to strip naked.
“She started rubbing my body, rubbing my back and my legs. She was making small talk, then at some point she had me roll over so I was laying on my back,” she testified.
“She pulled the sheet down and exposed my breasts. She started rubbing on my chest and on my upper breasts.”
Ms Farmer said she felt “frozen”.
“I wanted so badly to get off the table and have this massage be done.”
She said she had a sense that Epstein might be watching as the door to the room was open.
During cross examination, Maxwell’s lawyer Laura Menninger sought to downplay the massage, asking whether Maxwell had touched Ms Farmer's nipples.
Ms Farmer answered no.
Ms Farmer also said that, one morning, Epstein came into her room, crawled into bed with her and said he wanted to “cuddle”.
“He climbed into bed with me, reached his arms around me, pressed his body into mine,” she recounted.
“I just wanted the weekend to be over. I was very aware I was isolated on this ranch with these two people.”
She did not like it and went into the bathroom and shut the door and waited.
Ms Farmer told court she thought Epstein and Maxwell were aiming to normalise the sexualised behaviour.
“It was all a pattern of them confusing my boundaries, making me question myself about what was right and what was not right,” she said.
Maxwell, 59, is accused of recruiting girls and even participating in sexual abuse by financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died while in custody in 2019. She’s charged with several felony counts, including the trafficking of minors.
Originally published as Ghislaine Maxwell trial: Annie Farmer gives disturbing details of time with socialite and Jeffrey Epstein
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