One of Ghislaine Maxwell’s accusers, who testified at the socialite’s trial, has said she feels “tremendous relief” following the verdict.
Annie Farmer said she “wasn’t sure that this day would ever come”, after Maxwell was convicted on Wednesday of sex-trafficking young girls for Jeffrey Epstein to abuse.
Speaking on ABC’s Good Morning America, she said: “It’s a tremendous relief.
“I just feel so grateful that the jury believed us and sent a strong message that perpetrators of sexual abuse and exploitation will be held accountable, no matter how much power and privilege that they have.”
Ms Farmer, the only accuser to testify under her full name, told jurors at Maxwell’s New York trial that she was left “frozen” when the socialite asked her to undress for a massage and rubbed her breasts.
She said the defendant encouraged her to have a massage after teaching her how to rub Epstein’s feet, at the age of 16.
In the ABC interview, Ms Farmer said that “ultimately, seeing the inspirational stories of other women… telling about what had happened to them and creating momentum for criminal charges to be filed, I felt like it was the time for me to do so”.
She added: “I understand completely why it might not have been the right time for others, so I think it’s really important that women don’t have to do that, but for me it felt like it was the right time and it was important to be able to do so.”
She added that in her work as a psychologist she recognised it was “a very rare opportunity” to tell one’s story in court and “to see the person who perpetrated the abuse held accountable”.
Asked if the verdict “felt like justice”, Ms Farmer said it was a “complicated term”, but when speaking to another survivor in the case they had said it was “one important step towards justice”, and that she hoped others involved in perpetrating the abuse would now be held accountable.
Ms Farmer said there needed to be more public education of the ways in which perpetrators groom their victims, and that when she had met Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell she had not understood what grooming meant and had “never heard that term”.
