Three women sue estate, citing rape, other sex acts

NEW YORK — Three women filed lawsuits Tuesday accusing Jeffrey Epstein of raping them or subjecting them to other forced sex acts, including one case while he was serving a Florida jail sentence that allowed him out to work during the day.

The lawsuits in Manhattan federal court were filed on behalf of women who remained anonymous. They sought unspecified damages, citing continuing psychological and psychiatric trauma, mental anguish, humiliation and more.

The lawsuits say two women were 17 and the third woman was 20 when they said they were sexually assaulted by Epstein. All said they were also coerced into giving Epstein sexual massages for years.

Each woman explained in separate lawsuits how Epstein entered her life and forever changed its trajectory. They said Epstein dangled his powerful connections to political and business leaders worldwide as he promised to boost their careers in exchange for sexual servitude.

The allegation he kept on preying on women even as he had to report to jail every night added yet another disturbing twist to the story underscoring what his accusers have long been saying — that his 13-month stint behind bars, worked out in a secret agreement with federal prosecutors, was a sham.

Epstein, 66, killed himself in his New York prison cell Aug. 10, a little more than a month after he was arrested on sex trafficking charges.

He had pleaded not guilty to sexually abusing girls as young as 14 and young women in New York and Florida in the early 2000s.