In 2019, Anouska De Georgiou became the first Brit to publicly disclose that she’d been abused by Epstein
Warning: This article contains discussions of sexual abuse which some readers may find distressing.
A woman who was groomed by Jeffrey Epstein has opened up about the moment she was presented with a schoolgirl outfit after being invited to the financier’s home in Florida.
When Anouska De Georgiou was just 16 years old, she had a chance encounter in a Paris hotel lobby with ‘infectious’ socialite Ghislaine Maxwel after connecting through mutual friends.
“When I got there, I didn’t really know where I was,” she recalled. “I didn’t have the ability to call anybody.”
With no phone and no way of contacting her family, an ‘exhausted’ Anouska was taken to her room, where she found a schoolgirl outfit laid out for her on the bed.
“I knew exactly why it was there and what it was for, but I thought the best thing to do was pretend I had no idea why it was there or what it was for, so that maybe it would go away,” Anouska said, explaining that she initially told Maxwell she thought someone had left their clothes in her room by mistake.
Maxwell swiftly corrected her and laid bare the gravity of the situation. Anouska was expected to wear the outfit to deliver Epstein his tea.
Recalling her panic, she continued: “[Maxwell] said, ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like to play dressing up?’ I didn’t say anything, I sort of laughed. And she said, ‘Go on, off you go. Pop it on and I’ll give you the tray.’
“I didn’t know where I was, I didn’t have anyone to call and I was so frightened.”
“The grooming process is like being slowly cooked”
Likening her experience with Epstein and Maxwell to the ‘boiling of a frog’, Anouska explained that her experience didn’t start with abuse, but instead became a gradual process.
“If you put the frog in cold water and heat it up slowly, it doesn’t know it’s being boiled,” she said.
“But if you throw a frog in hot water, it jumps out. So I think that the grooming process is like being slowly cooked.