Relentless Pursuit

by Bradley J. Edwards

  As soon as everyone settled back into their seats, my first few questions were along the lines of whether Epstein was aware while he was sexually molesting each little girl that this was someone’s daughter and whether he was remorseful for sexually abusing certain named fourteen-year-old girls. Epstein went from very calm to tellingly irritated. His lawyers took the position that he had no real choice but to refuse to answer the questions and that I was now taking unfair advantage of that fact by inserting these salacious questions into the record.

  They began to angrily object. They threatened to terminate the deposition if I continued to ask those types of questions. This only prompted me to ask even more inflammatory questions until Epstein removed his microphone and walked out of the room. He never came back. What had started with his version of a handshake had ended with mine. I was back on the chessboard.

  * * *

  After that deposition, Epstein’s harassment of our clients amplified. One client was working as a dancer at a club when one of Epstein’s investigators bought a dance from her and told her his affiliation just to make it clear that she was being watched. She was later fired from that job, and then fired from her next three jobs without explanation. Another client was followed into the Fort Lauderdale airport, where a private investigator boarded her airplane and kept eyes on her all the way to New York. When she got there, the investigator followed her, videotaped her, and took photographs of her all over New York City. Those photographs were later shown to her during her Florida deposition to remind her that Epstein was always watching. Epstein’s aggressive tactics were distracting, to say the least. If we were forced to play defense during the whole case, without making any offensive moves, the game was going to be over very soon.

  Our clients were scared. Their worlds were caving in on them. It seemed like every day a different friend, boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, or former employer was calling one of them to complain about being approached out of nowhere by an investigator trying to dig up dirt on her. The investigators were asking these people, many of whom had been out of our clients’ lives for years, about any questionable activity in which our clients had ever engaged, including drug use or even skipping school. Each time a client received one of these uncomfortable calls from an old acquaintance, she would call me, asking, “Why are they doing this to me? They are making everyone hate me for involving them and I haven’t involved anyone. How does Jeffrey Epstein even know who this person is? Can we stop them from doing this?”

  For a stretch, I was getting some version of this call from multiple clients, multiple times per week. And Epstein wasn’t only humiliating and intimidating my clients: he was doing this to all of the victims who were bringing civil lawsuits against him. When the criminal investigation first began, one of Epstein’s high school student victims was even told by one of Epstein’s top recruiters, “Those who help him will be compensated and those who hurt him will be dealt with.”

  Epstein employed new intimidation tactics constantly. He was able to get away with it because he used his lawyers as buffers. In reality, his lawyers would hire and pay the investigators, but all of the action was being puppeteered by Epstein himself. When Epstein’s investigators overstepped, and Epstein was confronted with the overaggressive scare tactics, he immediately acted as if he had so many lawyers doing so many things that he was totally unaware of what was going on. He would promise to not let it happen again. A week later, a new batch of investigators was unleashed, and the harassment would ramp up again.

  No matter what side you are on, there is strength in numbers. With that in mind, I created a list of victims I had discovered through my work and research who were not represented by other attorneys. We worked with our current clients and witnesses to gather and comb through high school yearbooks, circling pictures of other young girls who had been taken to Epstein. We then ran background searches on them before I instructed my investigators to track each of them down and take statements. Sometimes I went with them and knocked on the doors myself. We couldn’t waste any time. If we did not locate the witness first, Epstein’s investigators would. And when that happened, the witness or victim would be scared into hiding forever, a situation we encountered more than once.

  TWELVE THE GIRLS

  IN MAY 2009, WE LEARNED via PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) about a civil lawsuit filed against Jeffrey Epstein on behalf of someone who went by the pseudonym Jane Doe 102. The complaint stated that she was recruited as a young teenager when she was a spa employee of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach. The person she said recruited her was not another minor child, but Epstein’s top assistant and longtime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. Before that complaint was filed, we had scant information about his activities when he wasn’t in Florida. We also didn’t know whether his powerful friends were aware of his exploits. This victim and her lawsuit changed that.

  If Jeffrey Epstein was running his elaborate scheme to fuel his sexual appetite in Florida, then logic would dictate that he was doing the same thing everywhere else he went during his frequent travel around the world. The Jane Doe 102 complaint gave us confirmation and exposed the breadth of his sexual appetite. Unlike the others identified by the FBI, Jane Doe 102 flew on Epstein’s airplane and visited his other homes. She had been to his house in New York, which was one of the largest town houses in Manhattan; his ranch in New Mexico, which he’d purchased from the governor of New Mexico and which included its own airplane runway; his apartment in Paris; and his own private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Little Saint James, nicknamed Little Saint Jeff’s. She had traveled the world with Epstein and was a true insider with much more knowledge of the structure of his organization than the others.

  Perhaps most important, Jane Doe 102 named Ghislaine Maxwell as being deeply involved in the criminal activities. Logically, we knew that some adult was at the top of the pyramid having recruited a child for Jeffrey, but before now we didn’t know who that adult was. Jane Doe 102 described Maxwell approaching her at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago and inviting her over to learn massage therapy. When her father dropped her off that night, she was sexually abused by both Maxwell and Epstein, who finished by telling her that she had “lots of potential.” The complaint alleged that she was given “hundreds of dollars” for the day, which was much more than she was making at Mar-a-Lago.

  Jane Doe 102 then described essentially becoming an underage traveling sex slave trained by Maxwell to perform sexually on Jeffrey Epstein daily. She claimed not only to have met Epstein’s close friends but to have been lent out for sex with many of them. While they were not identified by name, they were described as politicians, academics, businessmen, and even royalty. As suspected, Epstein’s criminal enterprise reached far beyond Palm Beach.

  Jane Doe 102 traveled all around the world and saw Epstein engage in sexual acts with girls from many different countries. She alleged that Maxwell participated in the same activities and was the master recruiter. She even recounted one of Epstein’s friends sending him three twelve-year-old girls from France who spoke no English as a birthday “gift,” just so he could sexually exploit and abuse them before they were sent back to France the next day.

  Jane Doe 102 described the photographs of nude girls that covered the walls of Epstein’s homes in New York City, Palm Beach, Santa Fe, and the Virgin Islands, many of which were taken by Ghislaine Maxwell and at least one of which was a nude photograph of Jane Doe 102 herself. She explained that the abuse got so bad that she was finally forced to flee the country in 2002. She was sent to Thailand by Epstein and Maxwell with instructions to locate a young girl whom Epstein was considering to become one of his sex slaves. Jane Doe 102 instead left Thailand and went to Australia, where she hid out from Epstein and Maxwell for more than a decade. She thought she was safe until she received a threatening telephone call in 2007 from Epstein himself, telling her not to cooperate against him in any investigation. She was important to the clients I represented and she was th
e key to taking Jeffrey Epstein down.

  I needed to meet Jane Doe 102.

  The problem was I didn’t represent her. She was still hiding halfway across the world, and her attorneys were guarding her closely. I would have to be patient and, in the meantime, keep tracking down other local victims. We located more than twenty women. One by one, I heard the ways in which time spent with Jeffrey Epstein rather than living a regular high school life left lasting scars.

  Each went through an experience that started with teenage excitement and typically ended in humiliation. While Epstein made all of them feel special during the grooming process, most of them would eventually realize that he was a predator who had stripped them of their self-esteem and rearranged their values through manipulation. To cope, many of his victims turned to drugs. Others, depleted of all self-worth, submitted to abusive relationships or degrading professions. In story after story, these now young adults broke down crying, whether in formal depositions or just speaking with me in informal interviews when asked to discuss the time when their adolescent lives collided with Jeffrey Epstein.

  * * *

  While most, but not all, of these girls who were sexually used by Epstein as teens felt victimized, every so often a former victim had a completely different outlook.

  Allison was not the only victim who had expressed gratitude toward Epstein, but she was certainly the most extreme example. While she was twenty years old and had not seen Epstein in years, Allison was still deeply conflicted about her feelings toward him. It took me going to her house several times before she was comfortable enough to share the uncensored version of her story.

  Allison was only fourteen when she met Epstein, but by that point she had been as desensitized to sex as a young teenager could be. Not only had she serviced Epstein, but she was hard at work recruiting other girls, as young as fourteen, to bring to Jeffrey.

  Allison explained how she spent more time in taxicabs between 2002 and 2005, shuttling girls to and from the house, than she did in school. In fact, the only reason she even attended high school was because it was the perfect recruiting ground. She was beautiful, charismatic, and hungry to succeed in her new business venture with Epstein. She wanted to prove herself as loyal and committed. In return, Epstein referred to Allison as his number one girl. She didn’t know that he referred to many others the same way.

  When the police started to close in on Epstein, Allison had Jeffrey’s back. Not only did she continue to recruit for him, but she went to her prior recruits to persuade them to agree to help Jeffrey by staying quiet. The police investigation was cramping Allison’s hustle. But she was addicted to the life. When Epstein went to “jail,” Allison began escorting in seedy establishments masquerading as massage parlors in the area.

  Allison’s dysfunctional work life was matched by the craziness of her home life. She would talk about sex even as an eight-year-old kid. By ten years old, Allison was so oversexualized that she told her fifth grade math teacher, whom we will call Mr. Jeffers, that she had just sent her mom out to give a blow job. When the teacher told Allison he was going to call the Department of Children and Families, Allison cried and begged him not to. He asked her to stay after school so that they could discuss what Allison was talking about.

  Sitting behind his desk and across from a sobbing and crying ten-year-old little girl, the math teacher told Allison to come over to him. Allison hung her head and nestled in as her teacher gave her a hug to comfort her. “I won’t tell, but then you shouldn’t, either,” her teacher explained. Allison agreed, still thinking that they were talking about her mom.

  Allison confided to Mr. Jeffers that her mom was a prostitute and Allison answered the phone when her mom was working to make sure she didn’t miss the next job. It felt good to get this off her chest. As Allison picked up her head with tears dripping off of her small, freckled nose, Mr. Jeffers leaned in to wipe away the tears. He slid his hands down her back and lifted her up to place her on his left knee. “Remember, I won’t say anything,” he confirmed. “You can come back and talk to me, and only me, about your secrets.”

  For the rest of the school year, Mr. Jeffers would regularly ask Allison to stay after school. She and her teacher had “secrets.” That was comforting to Allison. No one else in her class had these types of secrets. It made her special. She began to embrace the world of secrets. She finally felt like she had an adult who cared about her.

  To prove she was more than just a telephone operator for her mom, after one of the long hugs with her teacher, Allison took charge and kissed him. She was in control, or at least that was what her fifth grade math teacher had very carefully led her to believe.

  By the time Allison graduated from fifth grade, she had experienced what she believed was a sexual relationship with an older man and had mastered the scheduling of a sex worker—her mother—as well as the art and power of keeping a secret.

  As if things weren’t bad enough, during the summer between fifth and sixth grades, Allison was maturing. Her braces had been removed. She was beginning to develop. A normal summer outfit for Allison consisted of short jean shorts, a crop top that looked more like a bathing suit, and a pair of flip-flops—advanced for someone that age, but her dominating personality gave her such an influence over the kids around her, all of her friends quickly began following suit.

  Allison turned twelve that summer. On her birthday, her dad, Manny, had a party for her and eight of her friends at the community pool in the trailer park where he lived. There wasn’t any birthday cake, nor were there drinks for the kids, chips, or fancy Happy Birthday napkins; instead, her dad invited his two best friends, Forrest and Jesse, and brought a cooler full of Miller Genuine Draft bottles. Forrest had an eleven-year-old daughter, Savanah, whom he brought to the party, even though she had never met Allison or Allison’s friends. Manny told Allison to be nice to Savanah.

  Savanah was sitting awkwardly on her father’s lap while the other girls were huddled by the pool. “Savanah, come over!” Allison screamed from the other side.

  Savanah stood up from her father’s knee and soon she was with all the other girls in the pool. “What school do you go to, Savanah?” Allison asked.

  “I live with my mom and go to school in North Carolina,” she said. “I’m just here visiting my dad for the summer.” Those were the first words she had spoken all day.

  “Now you hang out with us,” Allison told her, immediately making Savanah feel welcome.

  A few minutes later, the girls looked up to see the dads walking out of the pool area and to the trailer. Allison ran over to the cooler and grabbed three beers. She popped them all open before walking back into the pool, using the steps to make sure she didn’t spill. She passed the beers around. “Drink fast. The old guys could come back any minute.”

  Angela, the only friend who did not live in a trailer, asked, “Aren’t they going to notice that the beers are gone?”

  Allison replied, “Of course not. They’re too drunk already, and I know my dad. He’s taking them inside to do drugs.”

  The girls passed around the bottles, taking swigs each time one got to them. Allison was watching closely, noting who was drinking and who was pretending. When the bottle got to Savanah, Allison put her fingers on the bottom of the glass as soon as Savanah tipped it back so that the bottle would stay pressed to her lips. “Drink more,” Allison encouraged, “till it’s gone!”

  When Allison finally let Savanah release the bottle, it was empty. “That was awesome,” Allison told her. Savanah, who already admired Allison by this point, winked as if to say, Thank you for letting me into your world.

  Allison hopped out of the pool with all three beers and ran to the bin behind the bathroom to toss them out. A few minutes later, her dad came back with Forrest and Jesse—all three clearly hopped up on something.

  They couldn’t sit still. Each immediately popped open a new beer and began pacing around the pool, directing the girls to have chicken fights with each o
ther. Savanah’s dad, Forrest, demanded that one girl put Allison on her shoulders and fight against another girl and Savanah. Allison and Savanah were on top, face-to-face.

  Allison started out by taking it easy on Savanah, until Savanah tried to grab Allison by her hair and pull her backward into the pool. Allison reached out with her right hand, grabbed Savanah’s bathing suit top, and pulled forward to regain her own balance. But when Allison didn’t let go, Savanah’s top came off of the right side of her chest, exposing her breast completely.

  “Oh yeah!” shouted Forrest. “Now we have a fight. Go get her, Savanah!” He cheered as he splashed the girls with beer. Caught up in the excitement, Allison put Savanah in a headlock and both girls started swinging at each other’s faces ferociously. The others backed away and let them fight for a while until Allison took Savanah’s head and dunked her underwater, where she held her until Savanah’s father screamed for Allison to let her up.

  As soon as Savanah’s head resurfaced, she dove at Allison with a roundhouse punch that hit her just below the eye. Jesse jumped in the pool to break it up. The “party” was over. One by one the girls began to grab their things and walk home.

  Manny, Forrest, and their two girls walked back to the trailer. While the dads drank, Allison and Savanah made up as they hung out in Allison’s bedroom.

  “Where did you get this?” asked Savanah as she stood up from the bed and walked over to grab a locked jewelry box that was sitting on the dresser.

  “Do you want to open it and see what’s inside?” Allison asked. Savanah nodded. “I’ll show you if you take off your underwear. Don’t worry, after you do it, I will, too.” Savanah stood there unsure. To ease her in, Allison said, “You can just pull it down in the front.”