The fourth and final accuser to testify in Ghislaine Maxwell’s child sex-trafficking trial said Friday that she was 16-years-old when Maxwell massaged her naked chest at Jeffrey Epstein’s New Mexico ranch.
The accuser, Annie Farmer, also told the courtroom that soon after her unpleasant encounter with Maxwell, Epstein climbed into her bed and said he ‘wanted to cuddle.’
She described feeling ‘kind of frozen’ in that moment.
Prosecutor Lara Pomerantz asked, ‘Do you see anyone in this courtroom who has given you a massage?’
Farmer replied: ‘Yes, I do,’ saying that she was ‘wearing a brown sweater,’ and was seated across the room, to her right, the Guardian reported.
‘Let the record reflect that the witness has identified the defendant,’ Pomerantz said.
Farmer, who is now 42, is the only accuser to testify using her full name in Maxwell’s federal trial in New York. Other accusers have only used their first name, or have given a pseudonym to protect their identity.
Farmer told jurors she met Epstein in Manhattan in 1995 because her sister worked for him as a fine arts painter. He had told her sister he was interested in helping her with her education. Like other accusers, Farmer at the time was also struggling with financial instability.
The next year, when she was just 16, she was flown out to visit Epstein in New Mexico. There she met Maxwell, who showed her how to massage Epstein’s feet.
‘She asked me if I’d ever had a professional massage,’ Farmer told the courtroom. ‘She said she wanted me to have that experience and would be happy to give me a massage.’
Pomerantz asked Farmer what she was wearing when Maxwell gave her the massage.
‘Nothing,’ Farmer said.
‘Why were you wearing nothing?’
‘She told me to get undressed,’ Farmer said.
‘She said to get undressed and get [under] the sheet on the massage table, and I did. And then she, you know, started rubbing my body and rubbing my back and my legs,’ Farmer said. ‘And while she was doing this, she was just, you know, making small talk, and then at some point in the massage, she had me roll over, so I was lying on my back.’
‘She pulled the sheet down and exposed my breasts, and started rubbing on my chest and on my upper breast.’ As Farmer recounted this, Maxwell looked toward her accuser.
‘I just wanted so badly to get off the table,’ Farmer said.
Her distressing experience continued the next morning, when Epstein ‘bounded into the room, saying he wanted to cuddle,’ she said, recounting when she was 16.
‘He climbed into bed with me,’ she said, adding that Epstein put his arm around her.
‘He pressed his body into me.’
She told Epstein she had to go to the bathroom so she could escape the situation. That summer, she went on a cultural immersion trip to Vietnam, funded by Epstein. She did not have any contact with Epstein or Maxwell upon her return.
When asked to describe the experiences she had with Epstein and Maxwell that weekend, Farmer said she believed the pair were working to normalize the inappropriate behavior in an attempt to sexually abuse her.
Farmer is one of four women testifying in Maxwell’s criminal trial in a Manhattan federal court. All the accusers have recounted sexualized ‘massages’ that they claim Maxwell normalized, oftentimes participating in them herself.
Maxwell, 59, has been accused of recruiting and grooming young girls to be abused by Epstein. She has denied all charges.
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