One of the women who was raped by one of the “countless” guys when she was being “trafficked” to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s pals and stated she had to undergo an abortion.
At the socialite’s sentencing hearing in New York on Tuesday, Elizabeth Stein presented a victim impact statement in which she described the horrible “trauma” she endured at the hands of the late tycoon Epstein and his former madam Maxwell, 60.
In her statement, Stein detailed how Epstein and Maxwell, who died in jail in 2019, recruited her into their sex trafficking network by “seizing upon her vulnerability,” and how she was repeatedly abused, raped, and trafficked over the course of three years.
One of the men eventually caused her to become pregnant, and she made the decision to abort the child. Stein still doesn’t know how she got pregnant.
According to Stein’s statement, which DailyMail.com has seen, “I was abused, raped, and trafficked numerous times in New York and Florida throughout a three-year period.”
I once got pregnant (by whom I’m not sure) and had the child aborted. Things happened that were so traumatic that I can’t even describe them with words; I can’t even talk about them now.
Stein remembered how she had been drawn into Maxwell and Epstein’s terrifying world when she was a senior at FIT in New York City and employed as a sales associate at Henri Bendel, and how she had spent years trying to get away from them.
She first met the socialite there, who later that day at the Pierre Hotel introduced her to Epstein.
She admitted, “That was the beginning of many times they sexually abused me that night in the hotel.”
Stein claims that after graduating from college, she made a valiant effort to start her professional life at Bloomingdales and “leave Epstein and Maxwell and the cruelty they inflicted against me behind.”
She recalls how the socialite “immediately began befriending me once again” after Maxwell eventually found her in the department store in the fall of 1995.
Stein recalled, “She quickly started befriending me again and asked me to go out socially.”
I resisted at first, but she eventually got the better of me, and I started hanging out with them once more. They gave me the impression that they were my buddies and my era.
The two then snatched her up and took her to Florida, where they “insisted that she remain longer than intended,” which led to her losing her job at Bloomingdales.
They started selling me as a slave to their pals after recognizing their new weakness. I was stuck by that point,’ she confessed, adding that Maxwell and Epstein had threatened to kill her if she ever revealed what had transpired to anyone.
She said, “Epstein and Maxwell horrified me in the most literal way.” They threatened to kill me and those closest to me if I told anyone, saying that nobody would believe me.
When I first met Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein, it was as if someone had turned off the lights in my soul.
Stein claims that eventually it became impossible for her to conceal the abuse and she made desperate attempts to leave Epstein and Maxwell, switching professions, apartments, cities, and states in the hope that she would be free of them at last.
They tracked me down everywhere I went. I relocated to Philadelphia in 1997 in the intention of beginning law school at last. I couldn’t handle it when they found me again, she added.
At this point, Stein had her first “nervous breakdown,” which required hospitalization.
“I had a nervous breakdown and had to be hospitalized.” In the decades that followed my connection with Epstein and Maxwell, it would be the first of more than two dozen hospitalizations,’ she remarked.
Speaking of the abuse’s long-term effects, Stein claimed that the years she spent being abused by the millionaire and his pals left her not only dealing with serious emotional problems but also with an incurable chronic pain disorder from which she would never fully recover.
Along with my worsening mental health issues, I also started to have physical symptoms that doctors were never quite able to identify, she said.
I was given numerous diagnoses, but none of them ever exactly fit. I was forced to relocate back to my parents’ house since I was unable to maintain a job or adequately care for myself. No one anticipated that I would ever recover emotionally once I cracked. However, I persisted.
Stein claimed that she sought advice from “all kinds” of specialists and received treatment at various medical and psychiatric facilities, but that “nothing helped” and that she ultimately decided to try to rebuild her life despite continuing to experience the effects of her unidentified physical condition.
A physician advised her to pursue Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, a form of cognitive behavioral therapy, when she returned to Philadelphia in 2007 and started getting ready for her LSATs. This allowed her to finally start “repairing her emotional damage.”
Only then did she learn the origin of her bodily maladies: Complex Regional Suffering Syndrome, a neurological disorder that is incurable and results in “severe, unremitting physical pain.”
I was given a Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) diagnosis and spent the majority of that time bedridden, she claimed.
A uncommon neuroinflammatory condition called CRPS is marked by excruciating, unrelenting physical pain. The sympathetic nervous system is activated and stays unnecessarily hyperaroused in both CRPS and PTSD, which are psychophysical conditions. No treatment exists. It is connected between the intellect and the body.
Together with fellow victim Sarah Ransome, Stein appeared at Maxwell’s sentencing. Ransome also gave a devastating impact statement to the court and disclosed that she had made two attempts at suicide when the pain of the abuse became too much for her to bear.
Before sharing photos of herself in a hospital bed after she attempted to commit suicide, Ransome said, “I was nothing more than a sex toy with a heartbeat and soul used to entertain Epstein, Maxwell and others.” One photo was from 2008, and the other was from 2018, when Epstein was being investigated.
I once tried to flee [Epstein’s] island by diving over a cliff into shark-infested waters because of the sexual demands, degradation, and humiliation I experienced there. Just before I jumped, Maxwell and the others caught me, she recounted.
At the moment, escaping in such a dangerous way sounded more enticing than being sexually assaulted again.
Outside the courthouse, Ransome also spoke, declaring, “Ghislaine must die in prison.” The last 17 years have been spent in hell and back.
Due to Maxwell’s “total lack of remorse,” the prosecution has requested Judge Alison Nathan to impose a sentence of at least 30 years. She shouldn’t serve more than four years, according to Maxwell, because she poses no threat to the public.