Warning: This article contains discussion of sexual assault which some readers may find distressing.
A former model who once lived less than a mile from Ghislaine Maxwell’s property has described what it was like to learn that her abuser, Jeffrey Epstein, was dead.
Anouska De Georgiou says she first encountered Maxwell, now 60, and Epstein, who died aged 66, when she was 16. She met them in the lobby of a Paris hotel after being introduced to Maxwell through mutual friends. Years later, she became the first British woman to publicly allege she was abused.
“Her charisma was infectious,” De Georgiou recalled in an interview for LADbible’s Minutes With series. “At the time, I had no idea that anything was being leveraged.”
De Georgiou has said Maxwell was someone she saw ‘more often’ than Epstein. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2022 after being convicted of sex trafficking and conspiracy offences.
Epstein, whose previously unseen messages about Microsoft founder Bill Gates have recently been made public, was being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Centre (MCC) in New York City while awaiting trial when he was found dead in his cell on August 10 2019.
His death was later ruled a suicide by medical examiners.
De Georgiou says she endured ‘unimaginable abuse’ over a number of years. She also spoke about wanting to support Virginia Giuffre after Giuffre filed a defamation case against Maxwell in 2015.
She added that she ‘loved’ the Nobody’s Girl author in what she described as a ‘trauma bonding way’. “You feel this natural draw to somebody because you’ve experienced things that are so similar that nobody else could understand,” she explained.
However, De Georgiou claims that after she was put on a witness list connected to Giuffre’s case, she received a middle-of-the-night phone call from an unknown person warning her to ‘stay out’ of the proceedings.
She said she then contacted her lawyer and told him she could no longer be ‘involved’ at all.
After continuing to follow developments online, De Georgiou said the next major moment she remembers was the news that Epstein had died.
“I remember where I was when Epstein died, when I found out that he was dead.
“And many of the other survivors have talked about anger that he wouldn’t be held accountable in his life. I was relieved, I was so relieved because I knew he couldn’t hurt anyone,” she said. “And I knew that I would never have come forward publicly if he had still been alive, ever. I was too scared.”
She continued: “It had been made clear to me on many occasions that, you know, on one occasion in Palm Beach, Jeffrey turned to me in front of this other man and said, ‘You see, Anouska, if you know the right people and you have enough money, you can do anything you want. And there are no consequences.’
“And I believed that totally. And I believed that they would kill me,” the Brit added.
De Georgiou also said that speaking publicly about her allegations brought a hostile response from some people in elite social circles.
She said: “I had people from this peer group in England, people who had known Ghislaine, people who I thought were my friends.
Watch De Georgiou’s full Minutes With episode here:
“And they messaged me, and they said, “Oh, ha, ha, ha, you’re famous. Are you pleased?” And… No, I’m not pleased. I’m not pleased at all. I’m devastated and humiliated and embarrassed, and deeply sad and frightened. And I want to hide, and I want to take it back and put it back in and go back to never telling anyone.”
Today, she says she intends to keep speaking out.
“I’m almost 50 years old, and I know how to be afraid and to do the right thing anyway. I will not be quiet. I will not be silenced. I will not be intimidated. And I am saying that for my daughter, for other people’s daughters, for Carolyn [Andriano], for Virginia, for all the others who didn’t make it, that we don’t hear about. And for myself.”
If you’ve been affected by any of the issues in this article, you can contact The National Sexual Assault Hotline on 800.656.HOPE (4673), available 24/7. Or you can chat online via online.rainn.org