A new batch of unsealed documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of teenage girls was released Thursday, adding several hundred pages to a trove of information detailing how the financier exploited his relationships with the rich, powerful and famous for recruiting his victims and covering up his crimes. .
The 19 documents, or about 300 pages, represent half the number of more than 40 released Wednesday. So far, the documents — and more to come — have been peppered with the names of celebrities and politicians who frequented or worked with Epstein in the years before his public accusation nearly two decades ago, of paying underage girls for sex.
They also contained the accounts of some of Epstein’s young victims, many of whom were high school students who accepted $200 to give him illicit massages.
The released documents were part of a lawsuit filed by one of those victims, Virginia Giuffre, against Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Epstein’s former girlfriend, head of the household and chief recruiter of vulnerable young women. That lawsuit was settled in 2017, but documents relating to the case are still being released years later.
Most of the names in these archives will be familiar to anyone who has followed the scandal closely.
It was during Maxwell’s criminal trial two years ago that Epstein’s victims, some of whom aspired to become models or artists, described how he dropped the names of his famous and influential friends to suggest he was the victims’ way to achieve their dreams. Maxwell, 62, was convicted of sex trafficking and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.
Epstein committed suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The approximately 250 documents revealed starting this week mostly repeat what has long been known about a man who circulated in elite circles until his arrest.
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But they included some new details about a pyramid of abuse that grew over three decades and harmed dozens of teenage girls and young women.
The documents released Thursday included an excerpt from the testimony of one of those victims, a young girl who was in high school when she went to his home, thinking she had been hired to give him a massage.
“I don’t remember exactly how I was suggested to get there. I was right there, and all of a sudden something horrible happened to me,” she said, adding that Epstein took off her clothes without her consent the first time she saw him. had met.
She said she had worked “very, very hard” over the years to forget the details of her sexual relationships.
The victim, whose name has been withheld, said a high school classmate suggested the job to him. She later learned that girls who referred other girls to Epstein received bribes.
She herself brought other girls from her high school to Epstein’s house. None of them were her friends, she said.
“Sometimes I would go and swim and get paid, or I would take a nap and get paid, or I would just hang out and get paid,” she said. “I didn’t think they were coming to do anything. I didn’t know, once the door closed or once they went to another part of the house. A lot of times I would just go out there and do my own thing while they did what they did. It was none of my business.
Other documents released Thursday focused largely on legal wrangling over Giuffre’s trial and her ties to a British tabloid reporter who Maxwell’s lawyers accused of forcing her to fabricate some of her allegations.
Famous people who were in Epstein’s orbit before he was exposed as a sexual predator included former presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, singer Michael Jackson and magician David Copperfield, according to his victims’ accounts and other witnesses cited in recently released documents. None of these men have been accused of wrongdoing.
There were also repetitions of well-known stories about Prince Andrew of Great Britain. He was sued by Giuffre, who said she had sex with the royal when she was 17. The prince, who denied the allegations, settled the lawsuit in 2022.
Thousands of documents in Giuffre’s lawsuit against Maxwell had already been made public, but some sections had been redacted for privacy reasons. U.S. District Judge Loretta A. Preska last month ordered those redactions to be lifted, primarily because the names in the documents had already been made public through the press or other legal proceedings.
Clinton previously said through a spokesperson that although he traveled on Epstein’s jet several times, he never visited his home, had no knowledge of his crimes and had not spoken to him since his conviction. Trump also said he once thought Epstein was a “great guy,” but then they had a falling out.
While many of the people whose names appear in court records are not accused of doing anything wrong, there are also numerous references to Jean-Luc Brunel, a French modeling agent close to Epstein who committed suicide in a Paris prison in 2022 while awaiting trial for rape of underage girls. Giuffre was among the women who accused Brunel of sexual abuse.
Separately, Brunel’s estate was sued this week by a woman who alleges that he and others sexually assaulted her while she worked as a model in New York. She says on one occasion she was taken to a house in Canada and stayed there for several days while men abused her. The lawsuit, filed in California state court, does not mention Epstein or Maxwell.
More documents are expected to be released Friday and Monday.
Associated Press writers David B. Caruso and Jim Mustian contributed to this story.
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