Third accuser says Epstein and Maxwell preyed on her as a troubled teen

NEW YORK — The 14-year-old girl was removing her clothing in the master bathroom of Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach, Florida, home, preparing to give him a massage, she said, when Ghislaine Maxwell entered the room and touched her breasts, hips and buttocks. Maxwell told the teenager she had “a great body for Mr. Epstein and his friends,” the girl — now a woman in her 30s — told a jury Tuesday in Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial.

Testifying under only her first name, Carolyn, she said she was sexually abused by Epstein more than a hundred times beginning around 2001 and in the years that followed.

In many ways, Carolyn’s testimony echoed the two accusers who testified before her: All three said they were unhappy teenagers when they were drawn into intimate conversations with Maxwell, who arranged massages with Epstein that led to sexual encounters. There were gifts, sex toys, invitations to travel.

But Carolyn was different. Jane, the first accuser to testify, was a successful soap-opera actress who told the jury last week that she met Maxwell at a summer camp for talented youth. Kate, the second accuser, was a British model, actress and singer from a wealthy family, who said her first encounter with Maxwell was in Paris. They testified under pseudonyms, they said, to protect their careers and families.

In contrast, Carolyn was a middle school dropout who said she became addicted to drugs during Epstein’s abuse. She spent her teenage years in Palm Beach with her mother, whom she described as an alcoholic and a drug user. She was sexually abused by her grandfather starting at age 4 — an experience she said she spoke with Maxwell about. She later worked for an escort service and as a stripper.

Prosecutors say Maxwell, 59, helped to recruit and groom teenage girls for sexual abuse by Epstein, the notorious sex offender and financier who was her longtime companion. Epstein died in jail in 2019 while awaiting his own sex trafficking trial; Maxwell has pleaded not guilty and denied the accusations.

The difference between Carolyn and the accusers who testified earlier was apparent even in their voices. While Jane addressed the jury with the clear projection and composure of a trained performer, and Kate spoke with a crisp British accent, Carolyn’s voice during her testimony was halting and peppered with blunt anatomical terms.

Carolyn’s testimony provided evidence of the damage done to a particularly vulnerable girl — one to whom Epstein and Maxwell did not apparently offer career support or the promise of a lavish lifestyle.

Carolyn’s testimony posed a new challenge for Maxwell’s legal team, which had portrayed earlier accusers as enamored of Epstein’s wealth and Maxwell’s charm, and who in some ways benefited from their patronage. But without the polish of the earlier witnesses, Carolyn presented an account of a hard life made more painful by Epstein and Maxwell’s involvement.

At times, Carolyn appeared to grow impatient under cross-examination by one of Maxwell’s lawyers, Jeffrey Pagliuca, who pressed her to explain apparent inconsistencies in her accounts in lawsuits and FBI interviews from more than a decade ago. She repeatedly said: “That’s not true,” or denied saying what had been written.

On her direct testimony, Carolyn admitted that she lied about her work as an escort during a 2009 deposition, and said she regularly took methadone to treat her opioid addiction and medication for her schizophrenia symptoms. Asked by a prosecutor why she had scarcely mentioned Maxwell in her decade-old accounts to law enforcement, Carolyn said: “I wasn’t asked about Maxwell.”

Maxwell is charged with the sex trafficking of Carolyn, who is identified in the indictment as “Minor Victim-4.”

Carolyn’s encounters with Epstein and Maxwell began when she was about 14 years old, she said, when a friend of her boyfriend’s asked her if she wanted to make money by giving massages to a man she knew. The friend, Virginia Roberts, got her dressed up in provocative clothing and brought her to Epstein’s Palm Beach house.

Maxwell met them at the door and told them to go upstairs to Epstein’s bathroom, Carolyn said. The first time, Roberts got fully undressed, while Carolyn kept her bra and underwear on. Epstein entered the adjacent massage room, where he lay down on his stomach.

Forty-five minutes later, Epstein turned over, and he and Roberts had sex while Carolyn watched from a nearby couch, she told the jury, her voice cracking. Afterward, Carolyn said, they were both paid in cash left at the bathroom sink, and Maxwell took her number.

Roberts, now known as Virginia Giuffre, has become one of Epstein’s most vocal accusers. She is not believed to be one of the four accusers on which the charges against Maxwell are based, and is not expected to testify at trial.