Some have come from overseas, some from only a couple hours away. But their journey can’t be measured in the miles they have traveled. It can be measured in the mental hurdles they have overcome. The suicide attempts they have survived. The nightmares that still awaken them. The relationships that collapsed under the weight of their struggles. The anger and the feelings of hopelessness that have now been joined by some measure of relief and renewal.
They are the victims and survivors of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell who have come to New York to see Maxwell, 60, be sentenced Tuesday in a federal courthouse for crimes for which many of these women believed she would never be punished.
“We are all in this sorority that none of us asked to join,” said Elizabeth Stein, who said she first met Maxwell in 1994 when Stein was working as a stylist at the high-end retailer Henri Bendel while a student at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology. Stein said she was sexually abused by Maxwell, Epstein and their friends over the next several years.
