In March 2014, Jeffrey Epstein took his private jet to Seattle to visit Bill Gates at his office. Epstein brought along a Polish model he had met a few months earlier. Dressed in a long gray coat, she posed for a photo with the Microsoft co-founder. Epstein took the picture.
Looking at the photograph now brings back difficult memories for the Polish model, who was then in her 20s. She notes how young she looks at the time. And how strange she must have appeared to Gates and other famous people that Epstein was escorting her to meet.
“Now when I look at myself there, it couldn’t have looked normal,” she said in a recent interview. “I saw the looks of those people, like what is she doing here?”
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In the years after he registered as a sex offender, Epstein was rarely alone. He was often accompanied by attractive young women in their late teens or 20s. They opened the door at his New York townhouse when billionaires came calling.
They sat beside him at meetings with bankers and celebrities. They traveled with him on his private jet to visit scientists, political leaders and tech-company founders. Photos of some of them with Epstein appeared in tabloid newspapers.
Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal revealed that numerous prominent people had met with Epstein after he pleaded guilty in Florida in 2008 to soliciting and procuring a minor for prostitution. Many of those people said they believed the convicted sex offender had reformed.
Most, including Gates, said they now regret their association with Epstein and that they didn’t know Epstein was using those ties in his dealings with the women. A Gates spokeswoman said the software billionaire neither knew nor interacted with the woman that Epstein brought to Seattle.
The trove of documents reviewed by the Journal, which included Epstein’s daily calendars and his typo-laden private emails, also contained hundreds of entries with young women, including the Polish model. Many of those women were Russian or European models that Epstein had lured into his orbit and sexually exploited while he was hobnobbing with the powerful and wealthy people.
Interviews with several of those women, others familiar with his operations and the trove of documents reveal, for the first time, how Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges, used his powerful connections to groom a new generation of women to exploit.
The Journal’s investigation shows that Epstein’s sexual exploitation and abuse didn’t end with his 2008 conviction—as many of his famous associates later said they believed—but continued until his second arrest in 2019.
He lured dozens of women by promising to use his connections to powerful people to get them jobs or other opportunities. He then groomed most of the women for his personal sexual exploitation, and passed a select group to other men for sex.
Epstein told some of the women he could get them into Woody Allen films or secure them a job at the United Nations. He promised others he could help them get modeling gigs at Victoria’s Secret. He told the Polish model he could help her get involved at the Gates Foundation. He conjured up many such offers for women.
“Without having legitimate connections to so many high-powered people, Jeffrey Epstein would not have been able to traffic most of these women after 2008,” said lawyer Brad Edwards.
Along with his law-firm partner, Brittany Henderson, he represents the Polish model and more than 150 of Epstein’s accusers. “These are smart women who would not have believed him otherwise.”
Under federal law, sex trafficking of adults involves the use of force, fraud or coercion to compel sex acts in exchange for money or favors. The law doesn’t require movement across a border, and the coercion can be psychological. When the victims are minors, the law doesn’t require proof of fraud or coercion.
Edwards’s clients have sued Epstein’s estate and financial institutions that provided banking services to him. Edwards said that most of the women were sexually abused and exploited by Epstein himself, but that he also groomed some for certain of his friends.
He said a total of more than 20 men have been named as participants in sexual exploitation or abuse by women who were trafficked by Epstein. He declined to name the men, citing client confidentiality.
Epstein often instructed women to report back their encounters with other men, Edwards said. “He would make the women describe the details of the abuse, and if they were upset, it would get him excited,” he said.
Henderson recently interviewed more than 130 Epstein accusers who came forward in class actions against the banks. She said about 45 of the roughly 55 women who told her they had been sexually exploited by Epstein after 2008 were models from Eastern Europe or Russia, and they were all at least 18 at the time.
The Polish model spent about eight months with Epstein in 2014. She met him through one of Epstein’s middlemen, and Epstein drew her in by promising career help. Epstein took her to academic conferences and to his private island.
He photographed her with famous people who visited his New York townhouse, including Allen and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Both men have since said they weren’t aware of Epstein’s alleged crimes.
Privately, Epstein began to sexually exploit her. He told her she needed to stop being prudish, should take massage courses instead of singing classes, start birth control and watch pornography. He berated her for buying her own car and advised her to marry another woman to get a green card.
He eventually told her she could get millions of dollars to become a mistress for one of his friends. She realized it was a trap and tried to cut contact.
“At the end, he told me that I’m not going to do well,” she said. “I’m not going to even find a job, and I’m going back to Poland to my small room.”
She is one of dozens of women whose names appear in Epstein’s private calendars. Epstein’s executive assistant Lesley Groff circulated the daily schedules that between 2010 and 2018 listed hundreds of appointments and flights with women in their teens or 20s, sometimes referring to them in the schedules only by their first names and phone numbers.
On many days, Epstein would have appointments scheduled with young women between his meetings with businesspeople, politicians and celebrities.
A lawyer for Groff said that part of her job, as a member of Epstein’s professional staff, was to make appointments as directed by Epstein. “At no time during Lesley’s employment with Epstein did she ever engage in any misconduct,” said the lawyer, Jonathan Whitcomb.
On Epstein’s daily schedules for those years, which were reviewed by the Journal, roughly one of every five meetings was with a young woman. The Journal couldn’t identify or reach all of the women listed in the documents.
A Year of Epstein’s Calendar
In 2015, Jeffrey Epstein’s schedules showed dozens of meetings and flights with young women in their late teens and 20s, often identified by their first names only. Many were on the same days as the convicted sex offender’s planned meetings with business people, celebrities and others.
Epstein’s meetings scheduled for 2015:
Many of the appointments with the women at his New York townhouse were for massages that involved sexual activity, according to the women.
The schedules don’t capture all of Epstein’s activity. Several women said Epstein would personally text or invite them for visits that weren’t listed on the schedules. Some of the women said Epstein brought them to his business meetings.
Separate interviews with more than half a dozen women, most of whom don’t know each other, reveal eerily similar experiences: Intermediaries, including other female models, pitched Epstein as a wealthy philanthropist who helped struggling models with their careers.
After they met him, he gave them money and dangled career opportunities, then coerced them to perform sex acts. The women interviewed by the Journal either said they weren’t passed by Epstein to his friends or declined to address the matter.
The women described similar patterns of how the sexual exploitation began: Epstein offered massages to get them relaxed and then began masturbating and pressuring them into sex acts, sometimes involving a sex toy and participation from other women he was exploiting.
Some also said Epstein sexually assaulted them. Afterward, he often made jokes about their discomfort, shared tips on how they could improve their sexual prowess for next time and pressured them to bring their female friends.
Epstein was never charged with a crime for his activities after 2008. His arrest and indictment in 2019 focused on his alleged abuse and exploitation of underage girls between 2002 and 2005 in Palm Beach, Fla., and New York.
The indictment accused him of enticing the girls to engage in sex acts with him in exchange for money, and of paying several of those victims to recruit other underage girls to engage in similar sex acts for money.
Although his accusers after 2008 were mostly adults, lawyers representing the women said his behavior constituted criminal sex trafficking because he coerced and defrauded the women into commercial sex acts.
Some of the women, including the Polish model, said they realized that they were being exploited and distanced themselves after a few months despite fearing consequences, while others said they were sexually exploited for years and still have trouble reconciling what happened. Most of the women told the Journal that they feel intense shame and fear public exposure of their association with Epstein.
source: wsj.comj/effrey-epstein-sexual-abuse-women-vip-connections
