A new lawsuit filed by a woman only known as "Jane Doe" alleges that late financier Jeffrey Epstein and his purported madame Ghislaine Maxwell brutally raped and trafficked her to Epstein's wealthy friends starting when she was 26-year-old and working as a real estate broker in South Florida.
The lawsuit, filed March 22, states that the woman met Ghislaine and Epstein in late 2006 or early 2007 at a barbeque hosted by her employer, who knew Epstein well. The woman's employer, who is not named, told the woman that Epstein was looking for a rental property, and she ultimately found him a home for $10,000, for which he paid in cash.
After finding the property for Epstein, the woman claims that he heavily pursued her to work for him by buying her expensive gifts and telling her that he would get her then-husband "highly-placed" employment through his connections with the FBI. After six months, the woman agreed to work for Epstein after being pressured by Maxwell, although the details of the work were not made clear in the lawsuit.
The woman says she went to Epstein's home to cut his hair, as she was also a trained hairstylist, and once there, she says Epstein, who was naked when she showed up, brutally raped her while Maxwell held her down. The woman says there were guns placed out in the open, which intimidated her, and she says she threatened to call the police to report the incident. That's when the woman claims Maxwell said she called the police already, and two men claiming to be officers showed up at the home and threatened to arrest the woman for prostitution and deport her, as she was a native of Turkey.
The woman also claims that Maxwell and Epstein forced her to drive to a waterway filled with alligators, where they told her that if she went public with the rape, they would throw her to the gators, which they claimed they did with other women like her. The woman says that in the clutches of Maxwell and Epstein, she was also brutally raped multiple times by the pair at a Naples hotel in the presence of her 8-year-old son.
She added that she was scared to report the incidents for multiple reasons, including Epstein telling her about his connections with the FBI, the U.S. Office of Homeland Security’s Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Florida state and local law enforcement. The woman also said she was from a devout Muslim family, and she was afraid of the shame that would be brought on her family if she went public.
The woman says Epstein and Maxwell trafficked her to various high-profile men, including a man who told her he was a local judge. She looked younger than her age, and Maxwell and Epstein told her to tell the men that she was 17. The woman also claims that Epstein took things further by forcing her to get vaginal surgery to create the impression that she was a virgin for a high-profile client. The woman says the surgery, which was conducted "in a wealthy person’s home by a man with a Russian accent," left her mutilated and permanently damaged.
The lawsuit doesn't make it clear when the abuse ended. A video conference on the case is scheduled for 1 pm Thursday (April 1) before a federal judge in Fort Lauderdale. Jane Doe is being represented by two teams of lawyers, one from the New York law firm Phillips & Paolicelli; and the other Coffey Burlington, based in Miami, whose founding partner, Kendall Coffey, is a former U.S. attorney in Miami.
Source: Miami Herald
