Sarah Ransome.Photo: Lauren Fleishman
It was 2006 and she was living in Scotland when she decided to start anew in New York City with dreams of attending the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Within weeks of moving to the big city, her dream would quickly become a living nightmare upon meeting financierJeffrey Epsteinand his socialite partner,Ghislaine Maxwell.
“I was naïve. I was vulnerable. I was broken,” Ransome, now 37, tells PEOPLE. “I was literally the perfect victim for them.”
Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in 2005.Joe Schildhorn/Patrick McMullan via Getty
In her new book,Silenced No More: Surviving My Journey to Hell and Back, (published Dec. 7), Ransome reveals the details of her horrific nine-month ordeal with Epstein and Maxwell — and how she was determined to heal.
To read an excerpt from Sarah Ransome’s book,Silenced No More: Surviving My Journey to Hell and Back,subscribe now to PEOPLEor pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.
“It was Ghislaine who was the real enforcer,” Ransome says. “She was the enforcer. She was the groomer. She controlled everything.”
In June 2020, Maxwell, now 59, was charged with six felonies, including conspiracy to entice minors to engage in illegal sex acts, transportation of a minor to engage in illegal sex acts and perjury. She pleaded not guilty to all charges and has been held without bond in a Brooklyn, N.Y., jail.
Epstein, who was found dead in prison at age 66 while awaiting trial forsex trafficking in 2019, deprived many accusers the chance of seeing him brought to justice. Before dismissing his case due to his death, U.S. Judge Richard Berman allowed more than two dozen accusers the chance to read an impact statement, including Ransome.
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“That day was very emotional for me,” she recalls. “We’d been denied our day in court because of what happened to Jeffrey. That one day gave me my day in court.”
On Monday, Maxwell’s trial started in U.S. Federal Court in Manhattan. And Ransome flew from the United Kingdom to be there with her fellow survivors, once again.
“I thought that it was really important to show support to the other survivors, and to the other survivors testifying,” she says. “They almost broke me, but they didn’t.”
source: people.com
