Elle's Personal Story: A Fight for Advocacy

*TRIGGER WARNING*

Upon starting this healing journey after being sex trafficked, I wrote the following personal narrative to submit a claim for compensation, but once I found out that I would no longer have rights to sharing my story, I decided to find a different way to push for change. I'd like to use this platform to have a voice and raise awareness and find ways to get personally involved with advocacy programs globally. Please share this story with family, friends, and colleagues to help me reach my goal. All funds will go towards human trafficking organizations around the world.

I’d like to preface this story with a glimpse of what reality is like daily dealing with the unfathomable amount of pain, suffering and fear from the onset trauma of unfortunate events that came after meeting Jeffrey Epstein. I have become afraid of humankind, expecting that maybe they will be the next person that ruins my life, that they will be the next to take my freedom, that they sense I am vulnerable and are plotting their deceit against me. I have become afraid of sharing my story with the people who know me, preparing for them to leave me after they realize that my purity has been tainted. I spend my days deeply alone, replaying images in my head on repeat, completely incapable of imagining a life where I am truly happy, safe and loved. Often I find myself waking up from a bad dream and realize that I slept walked to hide in my closet or under the bed, but that doesn’t feel as awful as I do hiding my story behind myself on a day to day basis. Nothing has helped me on this journey in healing. Talking to my friends doesn’t help, therapy doesn’t help, exercise doesn’t help, because the trauma has eaten my soul alive and has developed into an onset of mental diagnosis: OCD, eating disorders, dissociative identity disorder, psychosis, call it what you want, but the source is behind the smile I wear to face the world every single day.

Before I met Epstein, I truly believed in my power to claim the life I was imagining for myself. My story started in 2013 when I moved to NYC from Mississippi to pursue modeling. I had dreams of the world; I was hopeful, curious and most importantly, very young. 17 to be exact. By the time I met Epstein in 2016, I was 19 years old, in a semi-stable place financially after being homeless multiple times, with high hopes and on an affirming path towards my goals. I wish I would have seen the world then as I do now; I would have doubted the malice in the eyes of the “agent” who essentially stole my life away from me in the blink of an eye. I must admit, I was hesitant of him. We met a few times for lunch, and looking back, his intentions seemed ill-mannered, but again, I was hopeful, and had no knowledge of the modeling industry outside of this experience at the time, so assumed everything was normal. He reached out to me one day, saying that there were agencies in Russia that were interested in signing me, but we needed to take digitals. I specifically remember thinking this was odd, considering I hadn’t signed a contract with him, but again, I was hopeful. He had me meet him at his apartment in the UES. It got really uncomfortable when he would make jokes, telling his 6 year old son to touch my butt and kiss me. He made me take my digitals without a top on, and told me that I need to learn how to be sexy, that he could teach me if I would let him, then his wife came home, he told me to hide and put my clothes on before I came back out. 

Fairly soon after this experience with him was when he introduced me to Epstein in a hotel lounge restaurant, with another very prestigious, successful man who I will not name for legal purposes. Epstein and his guest presented themselves as extremely caring, curious and empathetic in regards to my first experiences in NYC, but eerily cold and hypercritical. They would suggest ways for me to fix myself while at the same time offering all types of assistance that they could provide, from plastic surgeons to personal trainers and casting agents, and even offered to help me travel to foreign countries on their behalf. The offer that bound me to Epstein was my rent in cash so that I could take time to focus on my career. Looking back, I am aware that they were prying for weakness to feed on, to find the cracks in my false sense of self worth, in order to groom me for their own privilege and evil intentions, but out of mere blindness, I believed them, particularly Epstein, and coincidentally, once I met him, I stopped hearing from the agent entirely. 

During this time, I didn’t have many friends. I had a few acquaintances, but I was genuinely so focused on my career and holding my life together that I just didn’t have interest, until Jeffrey started introducing me to his elitist circle of models, bankers, politicians, promoters, directors, film makers and entrepreneurs. The luxury hypnotized me, I couldn’t have cared less about anybody else that came into my life during that time, I nearly had stopped talking to my family even, a wound that still hasn’t healed. These people were important, they made me feel valued, seen, cared for and protected. I gave them my worth as a human, my ideas and ideals, my dreams, my hope that I could be successful, so of course, they took it like candy from a baby, but meanwhile I was nothing but a project from the very beginning, a rat in his money making race.

We would go to dinners and exclusive parties; I can’t even begin to fathom the idea of the plan being plotted against me as I stood in these spaces like a complete fool. Very often, I would get the address and be told to not share it with anybody. I always felt incredibly insecure about the way I was dressed in comparison to everybody else at the events, which probably was a factor in why he wouldn’t dare be seen with me. It was quite normal that upon arrival, Epstein would be nowhere in sight, or I’d see him across the room and he would completely ignore me, pretending like I didn’t exist. I never thought anything of it in the moment, I thought maybe he was doing business, or that it would be disrespectful to approach him while he was in conversation with somebody else. It seemed to be an unspoken agreement that I didn’t speak unless I was spoken to considering he would only talk to me over fake phone apps and on a couple occasions even told me to call him a different name. I thought at the time I should be grateful for being allowed into such an amazing situation, and I wanted to prove that I respected his boundaries with me. Besides, I was ready to explore the room that swallowed me with opportunity like the outsider I truly was. Epstein maintained and procured this game for about 3-4 months before it went completely south for me. 

If I could have one wish in life, it would be to preemptively have never answered that last call about an exclusive party in Chelsea, and somehow to become aware of everything that was happening, which would rapidly consume what I would define as my destiny; a year of horrid mass torture. To this day, I don’t understand why I couldn’t see red flags, but I actively try to avoid self-blame as much as possible, as nothing that happened after that call was in my control or seemingly a result of my own wrong doing. Moving forward, the details in my mind are still blocked as a response to coping with what happened, and it brings me much agony to be requested to find even the slightest courage to face these memories again, and I am deeply afraid of what will be shed light upon, as this type of evil deserves to stay in the dark forever.

I got a call from Jeffrey on the secret app around 8pm on a weekday, I want to say I faintly remember it being a Thursday. It was still fairly cold outside, I was wearing my meek winter coat, not one quite sufficient for a New York winter, and  he had told me to wear something sexy, that there would be really important people attending this party, that I needed to impress, and of course, to be sure not to share my address with anybody, as it was “highly exclusive.” I was really excited about this party, he had told me he would hang out with me and introduce me to people there, and after being ignored at multiple parties, I felt some sense that I had maybe earned validity because he wanted to go with me. I had texted him after I was ready, telling him that I was about to head to Chelsea from Brooklyn, and he asked me what I was wearing, I thought he was being flirty, or that he was making sure I was dressed well enough for him to be seen with. I didn’t want to be rude to not play along, so I described what I was wearing. He didn’t respond and I remember feeling as though maybe I still wasn’t good enough as I was walking up to the location of the party. 

I stood outside waiting for him to arrive for about 15 minutes or so, he wouldn’t answer my texts or calls, and I was thinking about leaving but before I did, I was approached by 3 men, very young and attractive promoter types. They asked if I was there for Epstein, I got excited and asked if he was already inside, to which they told me that he got caught up and was unable to make it. I took it so personally that time, for some reason, or maybe it was my intuition telling me to just leave, that nothing good was about to happen, but I had gotten all dressed up and they seemed quite nice so I went in with them. We had a few drinks, we danced, and when I went to the bathroom at one point, I remember so clearly looking at myself in the mirror and laughing at how beautiful my life had become, with the overwhelming feeling of “The New York Dream” running through my veins, as if it were my last glimpse of happiness.

When I went back, I noticed that the group of people I was with dispersed and weren’t in the same place, so I started searching for a familiar face, feeling very fulfilled with my night and thinking if I couldn’t find them, that I would leave. I ended up making a couple new friends on my way out, we were talking when one of the guys found me and said to come with him. I was happy to see a familiar face, so I followed. I noticed that his grip on my shoulder got haphazardly firm as we made our way to the door, and he was sort of pushing me, I couldn’t really process what was happening until I felt a really hard object on my back, to which I realized was a gun. The other two guys quickly joined, likely to cover up the fact that I was being led out of the event entirely as a hostage.

The following two weeks or so are to this day a fragmented blur, but there are some memories that are very clear. I either was consistently drugged, or my mind was almost entirely disassociated during this part of the story, likely both. They took me to an apartment in the Financial District, it was really big, all white, very modern, with somebody guarding the door at all times, and would make me call my mom every day and talk to her as if nothing was happening, threatening to kill me if I didn’t do what they said. I would watch them every time they opened the safe as my desire to kill them before they killed me would resurface, and momentarily, I would become more afraid of my own urges than I was of them, which was the greatest freedom I could find in such confinement. I cried, I starved, I bled, I bruised, I was broken, but it wasn’t even until after these two weeks was when I was forced into rock bottom, I couldn’t have even fathomed what worse would look like. I woke up one morning to one of the men telling me to come with him, he wouldn’t tell me where we were going, but I knew it wasn’t a good sign. They put me in the back of a black SUV and drove uptown, all the way to a cheap hotel near Central Park where I was raped, beaten, and completely humiliated by 10-20 men a day, every day, for over a year. There were all types of men, a consistent observation is that they all had money; some prominent figures, some Hasidic jewish men, some bankers, including Epstein.

As awful as it sounds, eventually you give up. You pray to some God that you don’t even believe in anymore after witnessing such an exact representation of Hell. You pray that somebody will beat you death, that somebody will bless you by ending your life. Eventually all of their faces blur, turning into masks that make the Devil seem kind. The emptiness in your heart physically aches, you spend your time trying to understand why or how or what, grasping at thin air for answers that will never exist. You look at the wedding ring on the man’s finger covering your mouth as you plea for air, and hope that his wife will see the monster inside of him so that maybe one day people like you won’t have to. The most traumatizing feeling that haunts you during all of this, is the deepest desire for true love. As fists hit your face, as you are being spit on, as you are being raped, you think, there must be love in their hearts.

Once I started to cooperate and it was obvious that to some degree I had given up, the restraints started to ease; they let me go home eventually, but I was obligated to report back to them at various hotels when they would message me, being threatened that if I didn’t show up or I didn’t respond, they would find me and kill me. I can only assume they didn’t want anybody to sense that something was wrong or know that I was technically a missing person, or even worse, maybe they had found their next victim. I honestly have no clue how I ended up falling off their radar, I noticed that once I started going to castings and booking more work, it just started to subtly disappear. I often wonder if they messed up by letting me go, and realized that and maybe saw that I was booking work so became afraid of the exposure or me coming forward and destroying their entire system. I am entirely in the blind as to how I became free and remain so, it could have to do with one particular person that I met one of those days locked away, although am not certain if it were him or just mere luck. Maybe he paid them to let me go, or was really close with the leaders, I genuinely have no clue, but he did stay around for a while when the situation was transitioning. It was almost too good to be true and often, I doubt the security in the idea that I have actually escaped.

I spent the first couple months trying to regather my life, to pull my sanity together, to find a way to create even a temporary feeling of stability, on and off the streets. The amount of paranoia I experienced while even just walking on the streets was unfathomable, which obviously still haunts me to this day. In October of 2016, the one guy who I met in the hotel agreed to sign a lease for me in a studio apartment and to give me the first couple months of rent as a fresh start, and shortly after, he disappeared as well and I was unable to maintain the payment of this apartment. Eventually I was being evicted and decided to challenge it in court because of everything that was going on. There was also a series of miscommunication with the leasing company of the building, to which I ended up never actually signing a lease even though I had a cosigner and credit check. These documents from the New York City Housing Department would be the only existing documentation of anything that happened, aside from therapy bills years later. Shortly after I lost this apartment in October 2017, I ended up putting all of my belongings in storage and moving to the west coast, where I currently live.

How does one document a hostage? Once you are free, you try to do anything physically, mentally and emotionally possible to erase the memory from your brain. You don’t call the police because of a mix between irrational and rational fear. How do you know the government isn’t on their side, after seeing very public figures rape you? Will telling the police put me back on their radar somehow? Are they listening to my phone calls? Is there somebody following me? The best option is to leave and never look back, right? Not even a couple months later, Jeffrey Epstein was arrested, and everybody in the entire world is talking about him, posting his photos everywhere, you can’t seem to escape your past for even a second. You’ll be having a conversation with strangers and out of nowhere they start talking about it, your mouth and heart go numb, you don’t know if you should talk about it or not; is hiding making it better or worse? Will these people think I’m disgusting? Nothing but a victim of hate and unable to receive love? And so I would go completely quiet, and hope to myself that maybe they will just stop talking about it, but they don’t, they’ll never stop talking about it, and instead start spreading false information and you feel the need to claim power, and so you step up and say something, and find yourself even weaker and more vulnerable than when you were hiding behind yourself. It never ends, there is no break from this type of trauma, you are always doing the work, trying to put the pieces together.

Eventually you come to your own conclusion of what exactly happened. My assumption is that when I met Epstein, he was on the cusp of being busted for all of the Florida accusations, and wanted to participate in his dark sadistic pleasures in a way that wasn’t directly linked to him and left his hands clean. The truth is that he probably made a significant amount of money off trafficking me during that time, somebody had to have, and it wasn’t me. I’m sure that there are hundreds of girls that experienced the same situation as I did, or maybe I was just a one off case, but none of them will come forward, likely because all of the resources seem to specifically to support the victims from the Florida case which is completely unfair or if you do come forward, you spend weeks on end, telling your story over and over again, reliving the trauma, just for them to tell you that your story is essentially inadequate due to insufficient evidence. It is completely exhausting and demanding to do this every day, digging into your suppressed memories in the morning and going to castings in the afternoon, expected to show up with confidence and praying nobody sees your pain.

I ended up going public about my situation less than 3 months ago, I was tired of hiding in my guilt, too many people were posting about it and I didn’t know how to have control of the situation and thought that stepping towards claiming my past would somehow make me feel more powerful or illusively lead me closer to healing myself, but it inevitably left me feeling even more isolated than before. I was given an exponential amount of resources, to which I am beyond grateful for, but there was no yield in my efforts, and my story also comes with certain limitations in regards to advice that lawyers were giving me. 

This is my last attempt in sharing my story with hope that it is in the right place, and that I will be treated fairly and trusted with my word. I will not give out names and I will not file police reports, partially because some names I don’t actually know, and others because I am no longer willing to put my entire life and my career at risk fighting for something that took everything I ever had from me. There truly is no price tag that can make up for this type of life altering experience, one that takes your sanity during the day, your peace of mind at night, your ability to have healthy relationships and friendships, your hope that one day you will have a secure future where the fear of death doesn’t linger around every corner. I do not want this to be a fight for justice; it is a step towards finding love and hope in humanity again. It is a leap of faith towards redefining the narrative of my life, to recreate the system, to have the resources to take space and find peace. I truly pray that whoever reads this can feel the pulse of my heart in this story, the tears shed in writing these words, and hold empathy for my having to actualize them for the first time in years.