‘I have no recollection of anything’ -Epstein survivor says she was drugged and raped

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Victoria DerbyshireBBC Newsnight

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‘I would love for us to be able to heal’, says Epstein survivor speaking to the BBC

Warning: This story contains graphic sexual descriptions

A woman who said she was drugged and raped by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has spoken publicly for the first time to BBC Newsnight about her ordeal.

The woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity and whom the BBC will refer to as Nicky, said she met the disgraced financier when she was 19, working as a model.

She said that after she gave him a massage at his waterfront mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, he gave her a drink of water, and she blacked out for hours, when she believes she was raped by Epstein.

Nicky said she felt encouraged to come forward by other survivors sharing their stories. She is now calling for the US Department of Justice to release all its remaining files on Epstein.

‘There’s nothing you won’t do to stop reliving all of it’

In an extensive interview with BBC Newsnight, Nicky described in detail Epstein’s abuses.

As other survivors of Epstein have recounted, Nicky’s interaction with Epstein began with a massage. He asked her to remove her top and bra.

“I honestly thought, OK, maybe it’s just an old rich guy that has a fetish and so be it,” she said. “Whatever. I mean, it paid my rent.”

But a few weeks later, when Nicky returned to see Epstein, her encounter was different.

“So I took my top off just like last time, started at his feet, worked my way up, and when I got to his upper thigh and went on to his chest, he pulled at my jeans, like almost to unbutton them,” Nicky said.

She told Epstein she was on her period, which was not true.

He encouraged her to have sex with him anyway and proceeded to masturbate in front of her, Nicky recalled.

She quickly got dressed and told herself she had to “get the hell out of here”. She went to the bathroom to wash the massage oil off her hands and when she returned, Epstein offered her a sip of water.

“I took some water and I have no recollection of anything for a minimum of 12 hours after that,” Nicky said.

She said she woke up feeling sick, sluggish and heavy. Nicky said when she went to the bathroom, there were signs she had had sex, although she could not recall any intercourse.

“I have done various psychotherapies to try to remember, to try and have a glimpse of something, and it’s black, I have no idea,” she said of the interaction. “But I can logically make a variety of assumptions that I think would be very accurate.”

She believes Epstein drugged and sexually assaulted her.

Later that day, when Nicky saw Epstein, he asked her to massage him one more time before she left.

And that is when, she said, Epstein confirmed her worst suspicions.

“He once again tried to pull up my jeans, and I was like, ‘no, no, I’m on my period’ and he says, ‘you don’t have to lie to me, [Nicky],’” she said.

Nicky said she later realised that Epstein could only have known she was not menstruating because he must have raped her while she was unconscious.

In the aftermath of the abuse, Nicky recalled thoughts of whether her kids would be better off without her.

“I don’t know how I made it,” she said of surviving the abuse.

All Epstein files should be released ‘properly, honestly, ethically’, she says

Last November, US President Donald Trump signed into law legislation passed by Congress compelling the justice department to release all material from its investigations into Epstein.

But after millions of documents were released, the agency faced bipartisan backlash, with US lawmakers accusing it of failing to obscure some identifying information about survivors while protecting the identities of those who were not victims.

Some two million files have not yet been released by the justice department.

The fact that this public transparency had to be prompted by an act of Congress has infuriated Nicky.

“That is absolutely a waste of my and everybody else’s taxpayer dollars, complete waste,” she said.

And more than that, the name of the law, the Epstein Transparency Act, frustrates her as she said it continues to glorify an abuser and his actions.

“Why don’t you name it the Survivors [Act] or the Virginia Transparency Act or something?” Nicky said. “But no, we’re gonna go ahead and continue to glorify this horrific, disgusting person who is a complete monster.”

The two million files that have yet to be made public are ones Nicky said she wants to see released “properly, honestly, ethically”.

“I don’t think that’s too much to ask,” she said. “I would love for us to be able to heal.”

But healing when your abuser feels inescapable, Nicky said, is difficult.

“Having it constantly brought up and thrown in our faces at every turn, at every channel you turn on, the front page of a magazine in the grocery store line, social media, what have you, it doesn’t allow us to heal,” she said.

“We survivors are nothing more than pawns for political discourse at this point, and it’s disgusting.”

UK users can watch the full interview on Newsnight on BBC Two at 22:30 GMT and more of the BBC’s conversations with Epstein survivors on BBC iPlayer.

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