Newly unsealed court documents made public on Monday night reveal that a survivor of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking testified that she was forced to have a threesome with Alan Dershowitz, the former lawyer of both Epstein and former President Donald Trump, and an unnamed woman, the Daily Beast reported. The woman, Sarah Ransome, was then compelled by lawyers for Epstein’s accomplice, convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, to answer a series of invasive questions about Dershowitz’s body and genitals.
In a 2017 deposition, Ransome testified that she had been recruited by Epstein when she moved to New York City in 2006 when she was in her early 20s and was frequently made to perform sexual acts for him. Within a few months, she said Epstein introduced her to Dershowitz to represent her as her lawyer for a matter involving a man she had met through SugarDaddie.com. Shortly after this first meeting, Ransome testified that she had sex with Dershowitz in Epstein’s New York residence.
Around that time, Ransome said she arrived at Epstein’s townhouse one day and found Epstein, Dershowitz, and an unnamed woman waiting for her. Ransome recalled that the woman took her upstairs, and they began undressing each other as Epstein watched and masturbated. The two women were later joined in the bed by Dershowitz.
“A few minutes later, [Dershowitz] walked in the room. He started undressing, he got on the bed with [the other woman] and myself, and we basically had a three-way sexual interaction,” Ransome said, detailing that “it wasn’t a pleasant experience.”
“I just tried to just get it done as soon as possible to get out of there,” she explained. Ransome characterized the encounter as “a coerced event” and “a traumatic experience.” She also recounted being “extremely upset” by the encounter and trying to pay “particular attention” to the woman “because I didn’t want Alan touching me.”
Ransome testified that the encounter had taken her “by surprise” because “I felt that I had been coerced beforehand, that it had been prior arranged to me arriving there.”
At this point in the deposition, Maxwell’s lawyer questioned Ransome on Dershowitz’s appearance and specifically whether she saw evidence of a surgical procedure on his body. Ransom said she couldn’t remember. “Did you see him bleed through his penis?” Maxwell’s lawyer asked. Ransome replied, “Not that I recall.”
Ransome said she couldn’t provide much detail because “I wasn’t ravishing Alan’s body; I was trying to close my eyes and just get it done so I could go home and watch TV, really.” But she did describe him as “quite an elderly man, wore glasses, quite pasty, pasty-skinned… wrinkly.” She also said Dershowitz looked “not well, I assumed,” and like “he wasn’t healthy.”
“I didn’t willingly go, ‘Hey, Alan, let’s have some fun,’ because no one on the planet would say that to Alan,” Ransome said.
The release of her deposition comes as part of a lawsuit by Virginia Giuffre, another victim of Epstein and Maxwell, who identified Dershowitz as one of her abusers and privately settled with him last month. In a statement, Giuffre said she “may have made a mistake in identifying” Dershowitz as an abuser. Still, in November, she told the Daily Beast that he is far from “exonerated.”
Dershowitz also denies the claims in Ransome’s 2017 deposition. “She has no idea what my genitals look like. She made it all up,” he told the Daily Beast. He also told the publication that he’s “had sex with one woman since the day I met my wife” and denied ever being in contact with Ransome.
In addition to Ransome and Giuffre’s allegations, Dershowitz has also admitted to visiting Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, at one point. He continues to face questions about records showing he also appeared to have a massage on one of Epstein’s private planes.
Dershowitz represented Trump in 2020 during Trump’s first impeachment trial. Before that, Dershowitz represented Epstein in 2008 and negotiated a controversial non-prosecution agreement for charges of procuring a minor for prostitution. In 2019, after Epstein was arrested on charges of sex trafficking and conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking, he was found dead in his jail cell that summer. In 2021, Maxwell was found guilty of child sex trafficking and other charges, and in June of this year, she was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
