‘GIGGLING’ AMID
Accuser testifies of first ordeal at 14 with Maxwell and Epstein
A woman who says she was sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein testified on Tuesday that Ghislaine Maxwell helped lure her into his orbit when she was just 14, and described how the depraved duo was “giggling” when they first molested her together.
The alleged victim, an actress identified by the pseudonym “Jane” in court, said she was at Epstein’s Palm Beach, Fla., mansion in 1994 when the pedophile and his accused madam led her upstairs to his bedroom, moved her over to the bed and “took their clothes off.”
“They started to sort of like fondle each other,” she said, adding that they were “casually giggling” as she stood there.
“[They] asked me to take my top off,” the witness continued. “Then there were hands everywhere and Jeffrey proceeded to masturbate again. [Maxwell was] rubbing on him, kissing on him.”
Other times, Jane said the sick pair would lead her to a massage table inside a room at the house and show her how Epstein liked to be rubbed down.
“During these incidents, did Maxwell ever touch your body?” Assistant US Attorney Alison Moe asked.
“Yes,” Jane answered.
She also described group sex sessions at Epstein’s lavish home in the mid-1990s,
when she and others, including Maxwell, would “abruptly” be summoned to his bedroom or a massage room.
“What would Maxwell typically do?” Moe asked.
“She, along with others, would just start taking their clothes off,” the woman, now in her 40s, replied. “Jeffrey would get on the massage table.”
“It just turned into this orgy.”
The witness — one of four alleged victims mentioned in the indictment against the British socialite — was the first accuser to take the stand at the Manhattan trial, telling jurors how Maxwell was there when she was abused by Epstein, at least through the age of 16.
“I don’t know, but more than twice,” the woman said when asked how many times Maxwell was present when Epstein abused her.
“It’s hard to remember because I was abused pretty much every time I would
go over to his house and it all started to seem the same after a while.”
Her voice broke as she described once being called to Epstein’s bedroom during a trip to New Mexico with the sick financier and Maxwell.
“My heart sank in my stomach,” she said, “Because I did not want to go see him.”
Jane said she met Maxwell and Epstein in 1994, during the summer between seventh and eighth grade, when she was at Camp Interlochen, a retreat for kids in music, in Michigan. Her composer dad had died of leukemia about nine months earlier and her family had lost their home.
She was sitting on a bench with her friends when a “tall, billowy” woman came over with a “cute little” Yorkshire Terrier dog, and a man soon followed.
“[My] classmates left and I was there by myself eating my ice cream and the man sat across from me,” Jane recalled.
“He seemed very interested to know what I thought about the camp,” adding that he was a benefactor who gave musically gifted kids scholarships.
Asked who the man and woman were, she replied, “Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.”
“They seemed very friendly. I thought they were a married couple; they seemed inquisitive,” she continued.
Back home in Palm Beach, “Jane” said she and her mom were invited over to Epstein’s “enormous house” for tea.
“It wasn’t a pool house,” she quipped on the stand when asked to describe the home, noting that at the time, she lived in a pool house with her three brothers and her mom, with whom she shared a bed.
For months afterward, the woman said she would hang out at Epstein’s home every week or two on average, spending time by the pool, in the kitchen or going to the movies.
She described once seeing Maxwell and other women lounging by the pool “all topless and some of them were naked.”
“I was just shocked because I hadn’t seen that before,” the woman said.
The witness said she thought Maxwell was “a little bit odd and quirky,” adding that she saw her as sort of an “older sister.”
“She would ask me what I was up to, if I had a boyfriend,” Jane said, adding that Maxwell once told her about dating, “Once you f--k them you can always f--k them again because they’re grandfathered in.”
She described how Epstein and Maxwell took her shopping, including one time to Victoria’s Secret, where they bought her white cotton briefs. Epstein also started giving her cash on her visits to his home, and began paying for voice lessons. He bought her clothes and “things for school” as well, she said, adding that Epstein and Maxwell would brag about their famous friends.
“Initially I felt special,” Jane said about the attention they showered on her.
“It changed when the abuse started happening.”
Epstein eventually sexually assaulted Jane in the pool house on the estate, where he “just pulled his pants down . . . and proceeded to masturbate on me,” she testified.
“I was frozen. In fear,” she said. “I’d never seen a penis before.”
Not long after the first assault, the woman alleged that both Epstein and Maxwell molested her in his bedroom.
During the alleged abuse, Maxwell “was very casual,” Jane told the jury. “Like it was no big deal.”