Jeffrey Epstein files: How dozens of underage girls were recruited for ‘massages’

A new batch of previously unsealed records about Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual assault of teenage girls was made public on Thursday. These records add hundreds of pages to an array of information describing how the financier used his connections to the wealthy and influential to recruit victims and conceal his crimes. The disclosure comes one day after the first batch of records, consisting of 942 pages of documents, was released on Wednesday. These documents included deposition testimony from numerous individuals who were part of a settled lawsuit involving Epstein. 19 documents, or roughly 300 pages, of previously sealed information are included in Thursday’s files. The newly released records focus on how the late jet-setting financier paid girls to offer massages in his house and asked them to introduce friends in return. How did Epstein recruit young women? A deposition from Palm Beach detective Joseph Recarey, the lead investigator in a prior case involving Epstein in the mid-2000s, is included in the file. Recarey details how Epstein and Ghilsaine Maxwell, who is currently imprisoned for 20 years, allegedly used a scheme to find and recruit girls “to perform massages and work at Epstein’s home.” According to CNN, Recarey said when the victims were hired at Epstein’s Florida home for a massage, it was for “sexual gratification.” [caption id=“attachment_13576502” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Audrey Strauss, acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, points to a photo of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell during a news conference in July 2020 in New York. File photo/AP[/caption] In one case, a 16- or 17-year-old girl said that she never had a massage experience and had not anticipated or assumed that the visit would include sexual activity, according to NBC10 Philadelphia. “Jeffrey took my clothes off without my consent the first time I met him,” the woman said in her deposition, whose name has been redacted. Per Recarey’s file, he interviewed about 33 women, most of whom were under the age of 18, and just two of them had a massage experience. “Each of the victims that went to the home were asked to bring their friends to the home. Some compiled and some didn’t,” he said in the filings. Yesterday’s filings revealed that Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s victims, claimed that the summer she turned 17, she was lured away from a job as a spa attendant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club to work as a “masseuse” for Epstein, a position that required engaging in sexual acts, reported The Associated Press. In addition, Giuffre said that she was pressured into having sex with men in Epstein’s social circle, such as billionaire Glenn Dubin, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, former US Senator George Mitchell, and Prince Andrew of Britain. Her accounts, according to all those men, were false.

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What are the documents about? The documents that are being made public are part of a lawsuit that Giuffre filed against Maxwell in 2015. Several women, including her, filed lawsuits against him, claiming that he abused them at his residences in Florida, New York, the US Virgin Islands, and New Mexico. According to the AP, in 2022, Giuffre and Prince Andrew reached a settlement. In the same year, Giuffre withdrew a charge she had levelled against Alan Dershowitz, a law professor who had represented Epstein in the past, stating that she “may have made a mistake” in identifying him as an abuser. Giuffre and Maxwell’s lawsuit settled in 2017, but the Miami Herald filed a motion for access to court records that had been initially sealed, including transcripts of the attorneys’ interviews with possible witnesses. [caption id=“attachment_13575072” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Virginia Roberts Giuffre, a sexual assault victim, speaks in New York. AP[/caption] In 2019, a judge unsealed over 2,000 pages. There were more materials made accessible in 2020, 2021, and 2022. About 250 records from the batch that is now being disclosed had portions that were either completely or partially sealed because of worries about the privacy rights of Epstein’s victims and other people whose identities surfaced throughout the legal dispute but who weren’t involved in his crimes. As of Thursday, about 60 have been released. More will be released in the coming days. Whose names appear in the records? Many of Epstein’s accusers, staff members who went to tabloid newspapers with their stories, witnesses at Maxwell’s trial, people who were mentioned in passing during depositions but who aren’t charged with anything obscene, and those who looked into Epstein — prosecutors, a journalist, and a police detective — are among those listed in the records. There are also boldface names of public figures known to have associated with Epstein over the years, but whose relationships with him have already been well documented elsewhere, the judge said.

Among them is Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modelling agent who was connected to Epstein and committed suicide in a Paris jail in 2022 while awaiting prosecution on allegations that he had sexually assaulted minors. Among the women who had accused Brunel of sexual abuse was Giuffre. The papers that were made public on Wednesday included numerous references to him. The court filing includes information about both Trump and Bill Clinton, in part because Giuffre was questioned by Maxwell’s attorneys regarding errors in media articles regarding her time spent with Epstein. She was cited in a report as alleging that she flirted with Trump and had ridden in a helicopter with Clinton. According to Giuffre, none of those events happened in real. She hasn’t levelled any accusations of wrongdoing against the either former president. During her evaluation of the records to determine what should be opened, US District Judge Loretta A Preska stated that a few names should not be revealed because they would identify victims of sexual abuse. With inputs from agencies