Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Maxwell depicts her life with Epstein
Time in South Florida working for financier detailed in testimony
Ghislaine Maxwell is repulsed by the word “recruiter” being used to describe the work she did for Jeffrey Epstein in Palm Beach from 1992 to about 2003.
Yes, she visited South Florida massage spas and asked masseuses if they would be interested in performing a home visit for her billionaire boss who enjoyed a daily rubdown in his lavish mansion.
But she didn’t necessarily “hire” them, she said.
She also said that, as far as she knew, those who arrived to massage Epstein were over 18 and she never saw them have sex. “It’s entirely possible I could have been
in a room or even in the vicinity of Palm Beach when somebody came and I would not know,” she said. “I’m not responsible for what Jeffrey does and I don’t always pay attention to what happens in the house.”
Maxwell’s depiction of her time working for Epstein in South Florida are among the many new details that came to light Thursday when her court deposition from 2016 was unsealed. The 465-page document represents the first time the public has ever been able to hear directly from Maxwell about her relationship with Epstein.
Nonetheless, a big chunk of the British socialite’s deposition consisted of her dodging questions.
Maxwell said “I don’t recall” or “I don’t recollect” over 100 times. At one point in the nine-hour deposition, Maxwell lost her cool and pounded the table while being grilled about Epstein’s abuse of young girls.
Often Maxwell’s evasive statements came after attorneys questioned her about specifics related to her time in South Florida, minors who accused Epstein of abuse, flight logs, phone calls, photographs and high-profile people known to mingle with Epstein such as Prince Andrew and former president Bill Clinton.
The unsealed deposition was part of a federal defamation lawsuit by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers who said she was trafficked by Epstein from Palm Beach to Manhattan.
The civil case was settled in 2017, but Maxwell’s testimony in the case was deemed by a federal judge worthy of being made public — despite an attempt by Maxwell’s lawyers to block the testimony from being released.
Massages
In her deposition, Maxwell refused to go into specifics about Epstein’s infamous “massages,” but did say he enjoyed having at least one a day and often cycled through different masseuses.
She said she was not aware of any sexual acts between Epstein and masseuses that were not “consensual.” Dozens of girls have said Epstein’s massages were part of his routine of abuse.
Maxwell said her job while working closely for Epstein between 1992 and 2003 involved hiring “many people,” including decorators, architects, cleaners and gardeners to take care of his large Palm Beach mansion and other estates.
“A very small part of my job was from time to time to find adult professional massage therapists for Jeffrey,” she said.
Maxwell said that she would often visit professional spas in South Florida and other locations where Epstein lived. She’d receive a massage and asked the masseuses if they did home visits.
She later corrected herself and said she didn’t “hire” anyone. “What I say is that I went to spas and I met people and if they did home visits, Jeffrey would then, in fact, hire them.”
When questioned whether she had told an unnamed victim to give Epstein massages to make extra money, she said she was “always happy to give career advice to people” and that masseuses can earn good money.
“So in the context of advising people for opportunities for work, it is possible that I would have said that she should explore that as an option.”
She said masseuses who attended to Epstein were paid between $100 and $200.
She denied ever having sex with Epstein and a masseuse, or ever watching Epstein have sex with a masseuse. “I have never seen anybody have sexual intercourse with Jeffrey, ever.”
Relationship to Epstein
Maxwell has often been called Epstein’s girlfriend, but she declined to describe herself that way. She said she was intimate with Epstein and that there were times when, “I would have liked to think of myself as his girlfriend.”
She said she first met Epstein in 1991 and began working for him a year later. She estimated that she was paid between $100,000 and $200,000 a year and that her salary increased over time.
She said her job entailed looking after his six homes, including his Palm Beach mansion where she frequently worked out of. She said she never hired anyone under 18 to work in the home and that the only people she can think of bringing to the home that were underage were the children of friends.
Maxwell said the accusation that she recruited anyone for the purposes of sex with Epstein was repulsive. “I don’t recruit anybody,” she said.
However, she did not go as far as to say that no one under 18 had ever given Epstein a massage in the Palm Beach mansion. She said the house was very large and she was often in her office with the door shut.
After 2003, she said she saw Epstein with far less frequency and that the two were “leading almost separate lives.”
She said she remained friends with Epstein after his 2008 conviction in Palm Beach County for procuring a person under 18 for prostitution because she is “a very loyal person.” She insisted that she helped Epstein continue to maintain his homes during this time. “It was very, very minor.”
When pressed repeatedly as to whether she believed the 30 women who had since come forward to say Epstein abused them in a police report, she repeatedly hemmed in her statements.
“I can’t testify to what the girls said. I can only testify to the fact that I read a police report that stated that.”
Virginia Giuffre
Much of the unsealed deposition focused on the allegations made by Giuffre, an Epstein accuser who said she got wrapped up in his world after meeting Maxwell in Palm Beach in 2000 and was later trafficked to numerous men while being under the age of 18.
Throughout the long conversation, Maxwell repeatedly called Guiffre a liar and said she was selling an outlandish story to the press.
“Virginia lied 100 percent about absolutely everything that took place,” Maxwell said. “She has lied repeatedly, often and is just an awful fantasist.”
In the deposition Maxwell said she was not a member of President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort where the two were alleged to have met in 2000. However Maxwell did say that she made visits to the resort in that time period.
Guiffre represented herself as a masseuse and “invited herself to come and give a massage,” Maxwell said of when they met.
She denied that she led Guiffre up to Epstein in his Palm Beach mansion that day, and said she spent the entire time outside of the house speaking to Guiffre’s mother.
She denied trafficking Guiffre to other high-profile men. She specifically pushed back on the claim that Guiffre was trafficked to Prince Andrew. During the course of the deposition, Maxwell disputed an infamous picture of Guiffre and the Prince that was alleged to have been taken in Maxwell’s London town home.
“I don’t recognize that picture,” Maxwell said. “I’m not sure if that’s a real picture or not.”
Maxwell said she believes Guiffre overstated how often naked women could be seen laying around topless in the Palm Beach home. She said she had seen people “from time to time do that,” but called it “very unusual.”
Although she was shown flight logs that indicate she had been on Epstein’s planes over 20 times with Guiffre while she was under 18, Maxwell said she “couldn’t recall” one of those flights.
A ‘small’ part of the story
On Thursday, Fort Lauderdale attorney Sigrid McCawley who grilled Maxwell in the 2016 deposition said in a statement to the South Florida Sun Sentinel that the documents were a “long time coming.”
She said the unsealing by the court was “a welcome step towards revealing the evidence of the scope and scale of the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell sex trafficking ring.”
She also vowed that Thursday’s unsealing is only “a small part of the total evidence.”
“As the evidence comes out, it will be clear why Ms. Maxwell and others who enabled Jeffrey Epstein are fighting so hard to keep it concealed,” said McCawley. “As our client Virginia Giuffre bravely asserts, they did not act alone.”
Maxwell is currently behind bars.
In July, she was arrested and faces four charges relating to the enticement of minors to travel and engage in sex acts between 1994 and 1997.
At least one of the minors, who was just 14 when she met Maxwell and Epstein, traveled back and forth between Epstein’s New York and Palm Beach residences, according to an indictment.
Spencer Kuvin, a Palm Beach lawyer who has represented more than eight of Epstein’s accusers in South Florida, said he was “shocked” to see how many questions Maxwell answered under oath.
He said he took Epstein’s deposition twice while he was alive. “Every single question I asked him, he took the Fifth.”
Kuvin also said that her statements likely will be a welcome gift to prosecutors in her upcoming trial because she admits to obtaining people for Epstein to come to his house for massages.
“We can argue about how old they were and whether it was appropriate,” he said. “But that’s one of the foundational underpinnings of the prosecution: that she was bringing in girls for massages.”
He said the prosecution would have to prove that fact had she not said it under oath. “So she just gave the prosecution, on a silver platter, one of the elements that they would have otherwise had to prove.”