A lawsuit names Epstein and Maxwell and alleges actions sinister even by his standards
In early 2008, as financier Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyers were waging what would become a successful campaign to get the Justice Department to drop its sex-trafficking case against their client, Epstein and his purported madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, were allegedly raping a 26-year-old South Florida real estate broker who claims in a lawsuit filed last week that Epstein trafficked her to other men, including a judge.
The story stands out among a number of civil claims that have been filed in recent months against the late financier’s estate and his co-executors, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn. While most of the allegations involving Epstein and his associates follow a similar pattern involving how victims were recruited and abused, the case filed March 22 involves allegations far more sinister than others.
The woman, who is identified only as “Jane Doe,” claims that Epstein and Maxwell repeatedly raped her in front of her 8-year-old son at a hotel in Naples, Florida, in early 2008; that they trafficked her to have sex with a number of other men, including an unnamed judge; and that Epstein forced her to undergo vaginal surgery so that he could market her as a virgin to one of their “high-profile” clients.
She is represented by two teams of lawyers, one from the New York law firm Phillips & Paolicelli; and the other Coffey Burlington, which is based in Miami and whose founding partner, Kendall Coffey, is a former U.S. attorney in Miami.
Indyke’s and Kahn’s lawyers did not respond to requests for comments, nor did Maxwell’s longtime attorney, Laura Menninger.
A video conference on the case is scheduled for 1 p.m. Thursday before a federal judge in Fort Lauderdale.
Doe, identified in the claim only as a real estate broker at the time who sold properties in and around Palm Beach, said she met Epstein and Maxwell in late 2006 or early 2007 at a barbecue hosted by her employer, who knew Epstein well. Doe, who was approximately 26 at the time, was a native of Turkey and lived in Broward
County, according to the complaint.
Her employer, who is not identified in the lawsuit, told her that Epstein wanted to rent or purchase a piece of real estate, and she found him a property to rent for $10,000 a month. The suit says he paid cash and she was directed not to identify the tenant or process Epstein’s identification.
Epstein expressed an interest in hiring her to work for him and as an inducement he gave her expensive gifts and promised to find her and her then-husband “highlyplaced” employment, the suit says.
The woman claims that in the middle of 2007, Maxwell, who went by the nickname “G-Max,” took her passport for “safekeeping,’’ and Doe later learned that Epstein kept it in a locked box inside his Palm Beach estate, the lawsuit says.
About six months later, Doe, “persuaded by the persistent efforts of Maxwell,” agreed to consider working for Epstein. A trained hairdresser, Doe said she was hired to go to Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion in January 2008 to cut Epstein’s hair. When she arrived, Epstein was naked and, with Maxwell’s assistance, brutally raped her, according to the lawsuit.
At the time, the woman recalls Epstein had guns that were displayed to her in order to frighten and intimidate her.
After the assault, Epstein allegedly gave Doe $200.
She attempted to leave, telling them she intended to report the rape. Maxwell, in response, claimed that she had already called the police. Two men who claimed to be police officers arrived at Epstein’s mansion and threatened to arrest Doe for prostitution, to take away her son and deport her, according to the suit.
Then Epstein and Maxwell ordered Doe to drive with them in Doe’s vehicle, picking up her son along the way. During the trip, they pulled off the side of the road to a waterway filled with alligators.
“Epstein then ushered the plaintiff to the body of water and told her in explicit detail that — as had happened to other women in the past, according to the pair — she would end up in this body of water and be devoured should she ever reveal what Epstein had done to her,’’ the suit says.
At a hotel in Naples, over a period of days, Doe was repeatedly raped by Epstein and Maxwell in the presence of her young son, she said.
Over the next five months, until May 2008, they threatened and intimidated her by emphasizing Epstein’s influence over the FBI, the U.S. Office of Homeland Security’s Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Florida state and local law enforcement, according to the lawsuit.
Doe, who appeared much younger than 26, was told to tell clients that she was 17.
It’s not clear when the alleged abuse ended. Jane Doe said she was so traumatized by the events and fearful of Epstein’s power that she was too afraid for both herself and her son to notify authorities. She was also from a devout Muslim family and worried that the facts would bring great shame on her family, the suit says.
The multimillionaire was sentenced on June 30,
2008 on prostitution charges unrelated to Doe’s case, and sent to the Palm Beach County jail, where he would serve 13 months, much of it on work release at a nonprofit company that Indyke helped him set up in West Palm Beach, records show. Epstein completed his sentence in
2009.
Ten years later, in July 2019, Epstein was indicted on sex-trafficking charges in the Southern District of New York. Authorities said he committed suicide at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan a month later while awaiting trial.
Maxwell was indicted in July 2020 and faces sextrafficking charges. Her trial is scheduled for July 2021.