Sarah Kellen (also known as Sarah Kellen Vickers) is the former longtime personal assistant and scheduler for convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Her role remains highly controversial, as she was designated as a potential unindicted co-conspirator in Epstein’s 2007 non-prosecution agreement, while she has separately testified that she was a victim of his abuse.
On May 21, 2026, Kellen testified before the U.S. House Oversight Committee, denying that she knowingly participated in sex trafficking. In her opening statement, Kellen describes her childhood within the Jehovah’s Witnesses of being groomed, molested, and raped by an adult member of her congregation.
Kellen is disfellowshipped and, according to her testimony, is religiously shunned by her family.
Transcript extract of Sarah Kellen’s opening statement about her life as a Jehovah’s Witness
[EXTRACT]
SARAH KELLEN
Chairman, Ranking Member, and members of the Committee, my name is Sarah Kellen. I worked for and was sexually and psychologically by[sic] abused by Jeffrey Epstein for over decade. It is important for the Committee to understand before I begin that the woman sitting in front of you today is not the woman I was supposed to become. The years that have shaped my adult life were not my own. During those years, I was trapped inside Jeffrey Epstein’s world. He groomed me, sexually and psychologically abused me, controlled me, manipulated me, dominated me, and gaslit me until I could no longer tell which thoughts were mine and which were his. It was like living with a permanent virtual reality headset on. I was reminded every day how powerful he was, how influential he was, and that to turn on him or disobey him would mean losing everything — my job, my home, everyone I knew in the world, even my life. Understanding who I was before meeting Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell will help explain why I was the perfect target for them.
I was raised in a religious cult of Jehovah’s Witnesses in a small community in North Carolina, in a faith where women did not speak unless spoken to. We were not allowed to question men; in fact, we were required to submit to and obey men. We were discouraged from thinking for ourselves. At the age of 13, an 18-year-old man began pursuing me. At the time, I was flattered. I thought I was falling in love with him. Only now do I understand what was happening. I was being groomed and molested and then raped.
I dropped out of high school at the age of 15 to prepare to marry this man, which I did at the age of 17. To me, I had no other choice. It was the only way to reconcile the fact we were having sex outside of wedlock, a grave sin in the eyes of Jehovah God. At the time, I thought it was love. Only much, much later did I come to understand what had happened to me was wrong.
My husband took me to Hawaii, thousands of miles away from my family and friends. Three years later, he served me with divorce papers at an airport. I signed them without a lawyer because I did not know I was allowed to have one. He then had me disfellowshipped from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, excommunicated, without anyone ever having questioned me. I still don’t know to this day why I was disfellowshipped.
From that day forward, everyone who is a Jehovah’s Witness is no longer allowed to speak to or associate with me, including my entire family, my parents, my siblings, and all of my friends. From one day to the next, I was completely alone in the outside world with no tools to navigate this world outside of the religious cult in which I had been raised. I was 21-years-old, far from where | grew up, stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere, no college degree, no family, no friends, no money, nowhere to live …
READ FULL TRANSCRIPT OF SARAH KELLEN’S TESTIMONY (149 pages)
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