Jeffrey Epstein's victims reveal disturbing pattern in financier's grooming of underage girls: 'I was a pedophile’s top girl, being trained up'
Former hedge-fund honcho Jeffrey Epstein moved in the same elite circles as former President Bill Clinton and England’s Prince Andrew. He has now been accused of sex trafficking of minor girls in Florida and New York.
According to testimonies from a number of his alleged victims, Epstein would hire underlings to lure teenagers to his lavish homes for "massages" in exchange for paltry sums and for helping them out with financial problems or their respective careers.
But the women have now come out to say the visits often took ugly turns — involving oral sex, molestation, and rape.
Epstein would have his chef offer the girls cereal as soon as they arrived at his Palm Beach, Fla. residence. He would then have them sent up to his master bedroom, per dozens of interviews that accusers gave to the Miami Herald and ABC News.
The teenagers would find the billionaire wrapped in a towel on the massage table with a bottle of lotion next to him. Generally aged 13 to 16, the girls would begin by massaging his back. He would then flip over and ask them to pinch his nipples while he masturbated, police documents state.
The accusers also said he would sometimes use a vibrator on them or engage in sexual intercourse.
Here's what some of his victims had to say:
Virginia Roberts Giuffre
Virginia Roberts Giuffre was only 16 when Epstein's former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly recruited and groomed her for sexual slavery.
"I was young, I was scared, I knew these people were powerful," she told Miami Herald in 2018, when the newspaper conducted a full-blown investigation into Epstein's alleged misconduct. "I didn't know what would happen if I said ‘no.’ I didn't know what would happen if I reported them," she said. "That 16-year-old girl just let it happen."
According to Giuffre, she was working at Mar-a-Lago when Maxwell offered her to become a masseuse for Epstein. She claims she was later forced to engage in intercourse with his close associates, including attorney Alan Dershowitz and Prince Andrew, Duke of York — both of whom have denied the allegations.
Giuffre was then sent to Epstein’s private island Little Saint James — located in the U.S. Virgin Islands — where the underage female allegedly participated in orgies with several older men. "Before you know it, I'm being lent out to politicians and to academics and...royalty and people that you just, you would never think, 'How did you get into that position of power in the first place?'" she said.
According to the victim, she was even flown to London once as a "gift" to one of the billionaire financier's close friends.
“I was a pedophile’s top girl, being trained up,” said Giuffre, who claims she was abused by Epstein for four years. “I was totally under Jeffrey’s spell. I was his personal sex slave.”
Despite the abuse, Giuffre was groomed to "keep Jeffrey happy."
“He trained me to do whatever a man wanted. I would do anything to keep Jeffrey happy and keep my place as his number one girl,” she said.
Courtney Wild
Another victim, Courtney Wild, said she was only 14 years old and still had braces on her teeth when she first met Epstein in 2002.
The former middle-school cheerleading captain was perfect for his choice: pre-pubescent, cute, white, and a trifle troubled.
“I remember standing in his kitchen, and he also had a lot of girls there at the time,” Wild recalled to ABC News on Monday.
Just as his other accusers, Epstein first asked Wild to give him a massage in exchange for money. According to Wild, Epstein was into girls who were very young, white, slender, and easy to manipulate — just like herself.
The victim admitted to police she eventually helped Epstein recruit other girls in Florida.
"By the time I was 16, I had probably brought him 70 to 80 girls who were all 14 and 15 years old. He was involved in my life for years," Wild told The Herald. "He told me he wanted them as young as I could find them. If I had a girl to bring him at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, then that’s how many times I would go a day. He wanted as many girls as I could get him. It was never enough.”
She added that Epstein had a special interest in girls who were vulnerable or homeless.
"He went after girls who he thought no one would listen to and he was right," she said. "As soon as [the original plea deal] was signed, they silenced my voice and the voices of all of Jeffrey Epstein’s other victims. This case is about justice, not just for us, but for other victims who aren’t Olympic stars or Hollywood stars."
Wild — now in her 30s — developed a drug addiction after the ordeal and served prison time on unrelated drug charges.
Prior to meeting the 66-year-old pervert, Wild was a straight-As student, captain of the cheerleading squad, and first trumpet in the band at Lake Worth Middle School. However, the abuse turned her into a drug addict, a stripper, and later an inmate at Gadsden Correctional Institution in Florida's Panhandle.
Jen Lisa Jones
"You beat yourself up mentally and physically," 30-year-old Jena-Lisa Jones, told The Herald.
Upon her first introduction to Epstein, Jones was reportedly paid $200 to give him a massage, just like the others. He then instructed her to strip and proceeded to fondle her.
"You can't ever stop your thoughts," she said. "A word can trigger something. For me, it is the word 'pure' because he called me 'pure' in that room and then I remember what he did to me in that room."
"What I thought meant so little to my life has affected me so much," she told the paper.
"I've had children, and I've tried...but I can't have my breasts touched. I've tried to breastfeed my third child for the first time last year, and it was the most excruciating and heartbreaking thing to not be able to do it, because the pain was so intense," she said, breaking in tears.
"It brought back something that felt so stupid back then and thought it had no relevance," she continued. "And if I told anyone about it, they would be like 'you're a whore' or 'you wanted money'. Nobody would understand"
"None of us talked about it after it happened," she added. "I've been in therapy for over 10 years and I've never spoken to my therapist about it."
Michele Licata
Michelle Licata also joined Wild and other victims to accuse Epstein of forcing her into performing sex acts years ago.
Speaking to ABC, she revealed she was recruited by a friend from high school to give the sick financier "massages" at the tender age of 16.
She recalled her first meeting with the disgraced hedge fund manager. “He said, ‘God, you’re just so beautiful and sexy and gorgeous,’ and it was making me feel really uncomfortable," she said.
“Then he wanted me to rub his back. And then he kept asking me to go lower and lower," she told authorities. “He was kind of talking to me, like trying to get to know me, about my sex life.”
"I don't think anyone has been told the truth about what Jeffrey Epstein did," she continued. "He ruined my life and a lot of girls' lives. People need to know what he did and why he wasn't prosecuted so it never happens again."
In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and felony solicitation of prostitution, according to his plea deal on charges brought in Florida. While he was sentenced to 13 months in prison, he spent most of that time on work release or in the private wing of a jail.
Seeing how Epstein was let off the hook, Licata wondered how people "who don't have money get sent to jail, and can't even make bail," while influential people like her abuser "had no repercussions and doesn't even believe he did anything wrong."
That said, justice has been elusive for the women who say Jeffrey Epstein abused them.
Nonetheless, that might be about to change soon enough, as the disturbing case unravels.
“Oh my God,” Licata rejoiced upon hearing about the new indictment. “Finally, finally, finally! Justice!”