In a lawsuit filed last week, a woman identified as Jane Doe claimed that the late financier Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell repeatedly raped her in 2008. Doe, who was then a 26-year-old real estate broker in Florida, said in the filing that Epstein and Maxwell issued brutal threats afterwards in an effort to prevent her from reporting the assaults to the authorities, including saying that they would feed her to alligators. Doe claimed that, for over five months, Epstein trafficked her to other men and coerced her to participate in the trafficking of other young women and girls. Epstein allegedly forced Doe to undergo genital surgery and perform sexual acts for photographs and videos.
The existence of the lawsuit was first reported by the Miami Herald on Tuesday. As the Herald noted, in recent months several civil claims have been filed against Epstein’s estate and its coexecutors, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, but Doe’s suit stands apart for the severity of its allegations. (Lawyers for Maxwell, Indyke, and Kahn didn’t immediately return requests for comment from Vanity Fair.)
According to the suit, in late 2006 or early 2007, Doe was working as a real estate broker in Palm Beach, where Epstein owned a mansion, and her employer introduced her to Epstein and Maxwell, who was referred to as “G-Max.” Doe was told by her employer that Epstein was looking to rent or buy real estate from him, but that she should work with Epstein only on a cash basis and that she shouldn’t process his ID. Epstein rented a property for more than $10,000 per month in cash that he gave to Doe, and Maxwell began a campaign, including expensive gifts and the promise of “highly placed employment,” to persuade Doe to work for Epstein. In mid-2007, according to Doe, who was born in Turkey, Maxwell took her passport for “safekeeping.”
In early 2008, Doe agreed to consider the offer and visit Epstein’s home to discuss potential employment. When she arrived, the lawsuit claimed, Epstein was naked, and “firearms were in full view and displayed to Plaintiff for the purpose of frightening and intimidating her.” With Maxwell’s assistance, he allegedly raped Doe. Epstein forced Doe to accept about $200 as “compensation,” and Doe tried to leave and said that she would call the police. Maxwell then appeared to call the police herself, and two people claiming to be police officers arrived and threatened to arrest Doe for prostitution, take her eight-year-old son away, and have her, her son, or both of them deported.
“Crediting and fearing these threats,” the lawsuit said, “and further crediting that these two individuals were in fact police officers, Plaintiff refrained thereafter from contacting law enforcement or commencing civil litigation out of fear for herself and her family.” Immediately afterwards, according to Doe, Maxwell and Epstein forced Doe to drive with them in her car to pick up her son. They drove around two hours to a hotel in Naples, Florida, while Doe cried. Epstein and Maxwell stopped the car at a body of water filled with alligators, where Epstein allegedly told Doe “in explicit detail that, as had happened to other girls in the past, she would end up in this body of water and be devoured by the alligators, should she ever reveal what Epstein had done to her.” Doe said that she feared that Epstein would follow through on the death threat until she learned of his death in 2019.
At the hotel in Naples, Doe said that Epstein and Maxwell repeatedly raped and sexually abused her in the presence of her son over the course of several days. For the next five months, the lawsuit claimed, they continued to issue threats to her: that she would be assaulted, arrested for prostitution, deported, or murdered. They allegedly threatened to keep her passport from her, and said they could have her son taken away or her family harmed. Doe said that Epstein claimed to have connections with and influence over the FBI, ICE, and local and state law enforcement in Florida.
Over the same period, Doe claimed that Epstein trafficked her to other men, including one who was identified to her as a local judge. Epstein allegedly told her to lie and claim that she was 17 years old. In about May 2008, Doe said, Epstein “forced Plaintiff to submit to unwanted and unnecessary vaginal surgery, performed, as best Plaintiff can recall, in a wealthy person’s home by a man with a Russian accent, for the ostensible purpose of tightening her vagina and creating the false impression that she was a virgin for a ’high profile’ client.” The procedure was botched and left Doe with permanent sexual dysfunction, according to the suit. Epstein also allegedly photographed and videotaped Doe while she was naked, including a film where she was playing golf while naked, and coerced her to drive young women, some of whom she thought were minors, to locations where they were allegedly trafficked.
According to the lawsuit, in April 2008, Epstein, via Maxwell, made Doe keep a locked box of his property in her home, as well as burner phones and electronic devices that Epstein wanted to keep from the authorities. Doe was allegedly told that she would be killed if she ever touched or opened the box. The following month, Maxwell retrieved the box and materials without explanation, and Doe said she understood at this point that if she ever spoke about the crimes perpetrated against her, she would be subjected to the force of the threats that had been made.
“As a consequence of Epstein’s severe and prolonged intentional and depraved misconduct, and the misconduct of others working on behalf of and/or in concert with Epstein, including his agents, servants, and employees,” the lawsuit said, “Plaintiff has suffered severe and permanent physical and emotional injury, suffered the termination of her marriage, endured permanent mutilation of her genitals, lost the physical and emotional ability to enjoy intimate physical relationships, and otherwise been damaged.”
A few months later, in a notoriously favorable plea deal, Epstein was sentenced to 13 months in prison for procuring a child for prostitution. As the Herald noted, Epstein served much of the sentence on work release at a nonprofit in West Palm Beach that Indyke helped him set up, and completed his sentence in 2009. Doe said that she didn’t learn of Epstein’s 2019 arrest for sex trafficking, or of his death in prison that authorities ruled a suicide, until Maxwell was arrested last year on charges of facilitating Epstein’s abuse as well as perjury. Maxwell has denied those charges.
Doe’s lawsuit is separate from Maxwell’s ongoing criminal case in New York, where prosecutors added to her indictment on Monday by bringing new charges of sex trafficking related to a fourth alleged victim. Maxwell’s lawyers haven’t responded to a request for comment on the new charges. She’s currently being held without bail at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, and her trial is scheduled for July.
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