A (4:28)

And what book is he. Did he give you to study?

B (4:31)

It's the book of massage. It was an old massage book and he had it. This is the part. He had a dozen of them, Aaron, in that desk. I wasn't the only person in 1991 that he was doing this to or before then.

A (4:53)

So.

B (4:55)

I go to his, the address I'm given to this penthouse that is a sunken living room. He comes out in his robe and he, he drops his robe and he says, and professional dancers are comfortable with nudity. And that, that moment stuck to me. I had someone ask me, when is the moment when your first red flag kind of came up? And it was, it was that moment. And, and what I felt like was Jeffrey from the first interview to this, this next, like trial massage in part of the interview was setting me up to be. To not know what I was doing. And that he was the authority. He was the one that was going to teach me from the get go. And I was not expecting there to be nudity. And I, I will, I will, I will tell you that at time I was very much of a, a bit of a prude too. Like they had asked me to, to wear a thong in the. Aretha Franklin video that I did. And I, I said no, because I said, I'm not gonna do any work that my grandma can't see me do.

A (6:09)

Right?

B (6:10)

So. So that was really jarring for me to have. And. But he was like, it's just professional, not a big deal. And so I played it off because I wanted the job. I'm not going to go into the details of the assault. I don't. In fact, there's one place that I tell the details. I had to write it out. I actually, there's a chapter in Lucia Osborne Crowley's book, the Lasting Harm, which is witnessing the Glenn Maxwell trial. And that's, as far as I know, the only book on the whole trial. And my story isn't there. He raped me. I heard him pull $, you know, $100 bills out of the robe and he threw them on the table. I was devastated. I, I remember laying there, Aaron, and in, as I'm fogging out, like, it's, it's happening and I can feel myself sinking in inside. And I, and, and the words that kept coming to me were, you don't want this to happen. Why can't you just stop it? Why. Why can't you just get out? Like, why can't you stop it? I didn't. So I didn't scream, I didn't run, I didn't fight him at all. I just froze. Which is also where I think a lot of self blame comes in. Because we think as an adult at 22, I should be able to do that. I should be able to protect myself. I should be able to make a different decision. And I didn't understand that when you freeze you, you no longer have access to that part of the brain to make a decision.

A (7:53)

I will say this, that story is not uncommon. I mean, young women all the time, in situations like that experience almost exactly what you experienced. So I don't want you to blame yourself ever for that because it's a natural reaction that the body has, I guess. He takes out the money. There's the money on the table. It's $200. You leave. How are you feeling walking out of the building that day?

B (8:25)

Yeah, I distinctly remember walking past that doorman that had let me up and not being able to say anything, noting that everything had just changed, that I, that I'd somehow just lost everything. And I remember walking past him and thinking, and he can't even see it. He can't even see it, and I can't tell him. And I got on the subway going the Wrong way. So there's a lot of brain confusion that's happening. And I think I stayed pretty catatonic throughout the night and into the next day.

A (9:12)

Did you ever speak to your roommate about what happened?

B (9:17)

That's a great question, and I don't remember if I answered it on Katie's interview. So. The way it works in New York when you're a performer is you're often subletting in different apartments. So that's. I was subletting in her apartment, and she had left for that dance job when I had met him. And then I left on a job. I know I didn't see her again before I left for another job. And then when I came back, I could no longer stay in New York City. Like, I. I was afraid to be in New York anymore. Something that I had worked years to get to, that I had loved. I loved in New York City. It was. It was my dream to be there. And I was within 24 hours of landing. I was. I moved out of New York.

A (9:57)

And that was your only.

B (9:58)

And I.

A (9:59)

With him.

B (10:01)

And that was my only interaction with him. And that was my only interaction with her. And I didn't. I was so embarrassed and humiliated. I. I thought she couldn't possibly have known, and so I must be the only one. So I was really embarrassed. She was happy with him. She. You know, I didn't think she'd believe me either. You know, I didn't. I didn't think she'd believe me either. And so, um, I only started to note over the years, I was like, wait, she never reached back out to me either, to see what happened.

A (10:33)

Yeah.

B (10:34)

It didn't occur to me that, you know, she hadn't reached out to me. And then I would find out. Aaron, this is the part. And this is why I called the FBI in the first place. I would find out that she stayed working for him at the very latest, till 1998.

A (10:50)

Okay.

B (10:51)

And that the room. The friend, the one mutual friend that we had that continued, that was a roommate of his after me. She would tell me later on when I shared with her what happened, she said, yeah, she tried to get me to go to.

A (11:07)

Oh, wow. What?

B (11:10)

So she was recruiting. There were recruiters before Ghislaine Maxwell.

A (11:16)

Okay.

B (11:17)

And that's. That was what I tried to tell the FBI. And I felt like nobody was listening to me at all.

A (11:24)

When did you talk to the FBI? What year, approximately?

B (11:27)

So I saw his face in the. Julie K. Brown's article in December of 2018. It was like, right After Thanksgiving, I told my therapist about it. And then I have a dear friend who happens to be a private investigator. And I told her I sent the article and I said, this man raped me when I was living in New York as a dancer. And I said, should I go to the police because all these girls have gone. Come forward. They were so brave. And she said, you do not want to go to the police right now. It's. I know exactly who he is and you don't want to go. And so it wasn't until he was arrested that I felt safe enough to say something. And then I, then he, I didn't right away, like I was still grappling with it and I, and I was working. So I was like, okay, I'll. After I finish this, this, this five week speaking tour with the nonprofit I was working with, I was like, okay, I'll call them then. And she said, that's not a big deal. This is going to be going on for years. And so then I, then he's dead. So I was devastated by the lack of any place. I didn't feel like I had any place in the story. I didn't have any place to say anything. And so it wasn't until the FBI kept asking us for, to come forward with our stories that I called in September. It was just a hotline person that answered the phone. And then a couple days later there was a detective with, I think it was New York Police Department, like sex trafficking worked with the FBI. They reached out and said, well, we have to call everyone that has called, but it was 30 years ago. What do you want us to do?

A (13:10)

Well, I guess I want to talk about the intermediary period between the early 90s and his ultimate arrest in the late in 2017, 2018 time. Because there was a time in early, in the early mid 2000s where he was arrested initially. Yeah, he got that sweetheart deal in Florida that not really anyone talks about anymore.

B (13:30)

Yep.

A (13:31)

Did you ever feel like you could speak up during that time, during 2000?

B (13:38)

I never saw the news. I didn't see his face before then, so I didn't know it was happening. So it just, it, it missed my radar. I even lived in the area. Like I lived in Palm Beach County. I owned a business in, in Palm beach county. And because my family is around Florida, I, it. At the time I looked back, I was like, why didn't I see this? I was preparing for a wedding. So I was planning a wedding. I was really focused on that. I was running a, it just, it Escaped me. We also weren't at the MeToo movement. That's not, you know, for, for people to say, why didn't you report sooner? At no time did my understanding of even what happened, like, get past what my original understanding of the law was, was I didn't resist. And so it wasn't rape. So it didn't equate to me that something had happened. It didn't equate to me that I was also a victim. Even when I called the lawyers initially to try, I just wanted to tell them about Christine. I read all these articles about survivors, you know, having lawyers after he was dead, and I was like, maybe if I just tell these lawyers about Christine, they can find her and it will help their cases. And I actually had a lawyer, as I mentioned. Like, you realize you're a victim, too, right? And I, it's like I, It's like I couldn't sit in that place right away. Like, it took a really long time for me to even say, oh, wait, that's, that was me too. You know, I, I, I saw it in the article, and it, and it released the shame. But for me to act, you know, that's, that was the only time I had to hear other girls, for me to believe that I deserve to even be considered a victim of this man.

A (15:43)

Yeah. And you are a victim. You are. And it's, and I'm just so grateful that you're sharing your story, because I know it's going to help so many people around the country. I do want to ask you about something that not really many people talk about in crime situations and really heinous murders, things like that. You rarely say the person's name. You don't say Brian Coburger. You say defendant.

B (16:12)

Yeah.

A (16:12)

In this case, everyone says his name.

B (16:15)

Yeah.

A (16:17)

How do you feel when you hear his name every day now in the news versus just this horrific monster or this defendant tied to Trump? They say his name over and over.

B (16:29)

Again, over and over again. They show his face over and over again. Everybody giving a hot take about this person that, that personally harmed me. So it feels personal every time I see his name and face, but mostly his face. Like his, his face is jarring to me. To see it, hearing his name and people saying it all the time and only focusing on him. You know, this is the other reason I put his name in my bios. Like, I'm an Epstein survivor is like, no, I'm the survivor of this man. And it's a different take. I'm trying to get people to look at this differently, but people often prefer the outlandish, the drama, the glamour of talking about the world of Jeffrey Epstein rather than the pain and the torture and the betrayal of institutions to Epstein survivors.

A (17:35)

And I think something that. When I was listening to your interview with Katie, that really struck me. You said the line, we don't believe women have pain. Right. For years, we did not believe for the victims. We did not believe that there could be victims. We just normalized the situation as it just happened with some wealthy white guy in Palm beach or in New York.

B (17:56)

Yep.

A (17:56)

Now we do believe women have pain. But it's. I don't know. I mean, for me, society seems to be shifting a little bit back into the old mentality these days.

B (18:08)

Yeah. So I even hate the term just like trauma informed. I think trauma informed is really an important aspect of what we have to shift into as far as language goes and understanding. But I also think that when we say trauma, it's this kind of ethereal word that people can't identify as. What does that exactly mean? And so that's why one of my goals as an advocate is how do I define that in a way that makes sense for people? That narrows it down to me saying, my heart rate accelerates, My. I can't breathe. My. My stomach suddenly goes into a tight knot. My whole body tightens and becomes like a rock. My shoulders clench, my head. The back of my head feels like somebody hit it with a bat. Then that. That goes on, and it turns into insomnia. It turns into me walking into every single place I go and looking for exits and windows. It's. It's. It's a. It's a clear experience within my body. And I feel like that's what people don't talk about. They just say trauma. And that doesn't bring a lot of understanding of what my experience, what every survivor's experience is. And the understanding of how sitting in that level of a lack of safety makes that part of our nervous system, the sympathetic nervous system, overcompensate and constantly stay on. So we are hyper vigilant every single moment of the day. And now that's just in normal life, Aaron. That's just a normal life. All right? Now I pick up my phone and I see his can I swear, Yes, I see his fucking face everywhere. Everywhere. And then I have people sending me. Sending me articles about him. And I have to be honest, people. People want me to dissect the. The whole conspiracy theories, and they want my opinions about it. I actually don't Go deep into it, because it's really. It's too personal. But can I say. Can I say two things that I think are really important in this moment? There's a House committee, I guess, that are deciding on meeting with Glenn Maxwell. Right. Congratulations. They have fallen for the exact same manipulation and coercion tactics that teenage girls did and young women. The fact that she has not presented demands, they are falling for the same manipulative tactics and coercion skills master for skills that teenage girls and young girls did. So that's one thing I also keep hearing. I think this is the part that just is really jarring, is that people are pointing to Ghislaine Maxwell as a victim. And you and I both know this. Why is she not a victim? Aaron? Do you know? Like. Like she's not a victim. There's no power imbalance. There was no power imbalance with her relationship with Jeffrey. There was no power imbalance. She actually probably brought in more. More powerful connections and. And status than he even had. So if we were to argue it, she had more power than.

A (21:35)

You're right. And if you listen to the testimony of Annie Farmer or any of the other victims who were directly impacted by Maxwell herself.

B (21:44)

Yeah.

A (21:45)

And the public would see that. Just read the transcripts that are publicly available. Jess, I want to ask you a question not about the past, but about the present.

B (21:57)

Yeah.

A (21:57)

Who is Jess Michaels today?

B (22:01)

Thank you for asking. I have one mission in life, and that is what my company is founded on. It's three, Joanne. It's a public benefit corporation, and it is to lift the burden of shame from survivors and educate the people surrounding a survivor to know what to do when someone says, me, too. Because where there's a huge gap right now in support is all the people around us. I heard support from people initially when I told them, and then no one knows what to do. And so I remember distinctly sitting in my therapist's office, and I said, I can sit here and I can talk to you about it in here. But as soon as I walk out that door past these four walls, I feel like I'm walking around alone and really isolated because there's no one outside of these four walls that can sit and hold space for me at all with this, because it's such an uncomfortable topic. And so I believe we need sex education in schools so kids have language so that we are actually giving them language when something happens. If we take away language for kids to understand how to get help, we're part of the problem. And I believe that we teach that through healthy relationships. I'm actually working with a couple of nonprofits that I advocate with. And that reminds me, Aaron, if you don't mind, I'd like to say this because one of the things we're seeing in the comments is disclosures from people, people feeling safe enough to say something. And I would be remiss as an advocate if I also didn't even give resources. And I. And I have to say, I've tried to go into the comments everywhere and just either like, like a comment or, or respond to what saying, I see you and I. I can't do that for everybody. But I'm reading them. But I'm reading them. I mean, I don't know if you've had a chance to read them. And so there's a couple of resources I just want to be able to tell people to go look for. So there is an organization called Valor. It's Valor Us. And they have a, a tab that says get help. And if you go to that tab and you, you click on your state, it will give you all of the resources in your state, local resources that, interestingly enough, are also getting their funding cut. It cut. But just try to find any resources there because it doesn't matter when it happened the minute you start sharing it. So that's the other thing is everybody thinks, oh, well, it was so long ago. What do you do it? PTSD is not the event. Trauma is not the event. It's the absence of an empathetic witness. And so if I share this with you right now, Erin, you are my empathetic witness. And right now, how this affects me is greatly determined on how you respond. Right. So I highly recommend talking to three people that you know, that you're, that you trust, and also going to those finding a resource in your area. The second resource, I want to tell everybody that's really, really important, especially now that the T app has, has been hacked and all that's happened with the T app. So there's an organization called Callisto. It's Project Callisto.org and under Services, they have what's called Callisto Vault. This is available to college students. Did you know that college offenders offend an average of six times in their college career? An average, average of six times. So Callisto is a, like, revolutionary technology. It's, it's encrypted. A survivor can put in their information, and it's very safe. They can put in the identifying information about the person that harmed them. And if by chance there are two people that were harmed by the same person. Those people are. Those two survivors are connected. To an advocate, it's very safe. It's not about whether something's legal or not. This is also something that's really important for me to say. Harm is not determined by what is in the law, how the. How the law breaks it down. Something can be really, really horrible. And it doesn't fall within those lines. That doesn't determine harm. It doesn't determine the level of the injury.

A (26:33)

Jess, I just want to say thank you on behalf of everyone watching this. Thank you for sharing your story, for being brave, and I really hope that your story empowers others to share their stories. And I hope that people hear your story not for the person that caused the trauma, but rather the person that you have become in fighting for others and fighting to get it out. Because that. That is the story, not the person. So thank you.

B (27:05)

Thank you so much. Thank you, Aaron.

A (27:08)

Hey, folks. Aaron Parnas here. Thank you so much for watching the Parnas perspective. Please consider subscribing to support our work as we grow this independent news media entity into something that rivals mainstream every single day. Thanks so much, and I'll see you soon.