Sarah Ransome, an alleged victim of the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his purported “pimp” Ghislaine Maxwell has a memoir coming out this autumn, ahead of the disgraced socialite’s trial set for November.
Ransome's “Silenced No More: Surviving My Journey to Hell and Back” is scheduled to be released on 17 November. The granddaughter of Lord Gordon Macpherson, second baron of Drumochter, claims she was 22 when she met Jeffrey Epstein in 2006.
A student at the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan who had just arrived in New York from Scotland, Sarah Ransome says she was approached at the time by a young woman at a nightclub, who introduced her to Epstein as a possible benefactor. Soon she was flown to his private island in the Caribbean, where she found herself trapped without a passport and “imprisoned by a web of co-conspirators on an island”.
Maxwell purportedly oversaw and trained recruiters for the sex offender, who “repeatedly raped her”. According to Ransome, the tycoon’s alleged “pimp” helped conceal the abuse from law enforcement.
In an interview in 2019, Ransome described attempting to flee from the late tycoon’s retreat by swimming several miles to the island of St Thomas.
“I had been raped three times that day. A shark would have been my best friend at that point,” she said.
In a civil lawsuit she described Ghislaine Maxwell as the “highest-ranking employee” of Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking network.
In a statement released by HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, on Tuesday, when announcing the book, Ransome said:
“Though my own story is centred on sexual abuse, all trauma lives in the body. It changes the shape of one’s soul.” She continued:
"By sharing my testimony — by using my book as a platform to start an evocative conversation, among all readers, and particularly among women — I hope to see both minds and laws changed… More than anything, I want to encourage a culture in which women, even if they haven’t led the perfect lives, even if they’re not proud of every one of their choices, still feel the right to stand in their truth. That, in these years, is what I’m still learning to do.”
Victim of ‘Sex Trafficking’
Ransome, who had charged that Epstein and British socialite Ghislane Maxwell trafficked her between 2006 and 2007, settled a lawsuit with the two in 2018.
She said the abuse happened in New York at the same time Epstein’s team of attorneys, including Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, were negotiating with federal prosecutors investigating the billionaire hedge fund manager in Florida for a trafficking scheme purportedly involving underage girls.
Ghislaine Maxwell, center, appears in Manhattan Federal court flanked by her attorneys, Bobbi C. Sternheim, left, and Jeff Paugliuca, right, and a US Marshal, rear, during her arraignment on a superceding indictment, Friday, April 23, 2021, in New York
© AP Photo / Elizabeth Williams
According to a report in the Daily News, Ransome alleged in the court proceedings that Epstein had “directed” her to have sex with Dershowitz – something that the lawyer vehemently denied.
“I can say that we are very pleased with the settlement. It will provide (Ransome) with economic security. While it was long overdue, it provides as much vindication and justice as money can provide for a victim of sex trafficking,” stated Ransome’s attorney, David Boies, at the time.
Ghislaine Maxwell, in custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn since last July and awaiting a trial scheduled for November, has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking minors, among other things. She faces up to 35 years in prison.
FILE - In this Sept. 2, 2000 file photo, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, driven by Britain's Prince Andrew leaves the wedding of a former girlfriend of the prince, Aurelia Cecil, at the Parish Church of St Michael in Compton Chamberlayne near Salisbury, England. The FBI said Thursday July 2, 2020, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was accused by many women of helping procure underage sex partners for Jeffrey Epstein, has been arrested in New Hampshire.
© AP Photo / Chris Ison
Jeffrey Epstein was accused of setting up a criminal network for the sexual exploitation of girls, including minors. The pedophile millionaire, known to be a confidante of the powerful elite, including US Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, was arrested in New York in July, 2019.
A month later, as he awaited a sex trafficking trial, he died at a federal Manhattan prison under suspicious circumstances, with his demise officially pronounced a suicide.