Accuser testifies Maxwell, Epstein violated her at age 16: ‘I felt sick to my stomach’
Global News
Annie Farmer testified Friday that she met Jeffrey Epstein at age 16 on a 1996 trip to New York City to visit her older sister, who was working for him at his Manhattan mansion.
Another key accuser at the sex-abuse trial of Ghislaine Maxwell testified Friday that Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein forced themselves on her during a 1996 visit to the financier’s sprawling New Mexico ranch when she was just 16.
Annie Farmer told jurors she accepted an invitation to the ranch hoping that Maxwell and Epstein wanted to help her with academic endeavors. Instead, she said, Maxwell ended up fondling her breasts and Epstein climbed into bed without her permission, she said.
Farmer recalled the unwanted physical contact making her feel like she “just wanted the weekend to be over. I wanted to be done with it.”
She added: “All these experiences made me feel like they had a very different interest in me.”
Asked by a prosecutor at the start of her testimony if she saw anyone in the courtroom who had ever given her a massage, Farmer identified Maxwell, who was sitting at the defense table.
Farmer, now 42, took the stand using her true identity — a departure from the decision by three other accusers with similar stories who testified under pseudonyms or first names only to protect their privacy.
The three others claimed Maxwell recruited them to give Epstein massages meant as a ruse for sexually abusing teens. Two said they were just 14 when the abuse started and that Maxwell sometimes participated in the encounters.
Maxwell, 59, has denied charges she groomed underage girls for Epstein, who killed himself in jail in 2019. Her lawyers say the government is making her a scapegoat for alleged sex crimes committed by her onetime boyfriend.
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