Victims of Jeffrey Epstein continue to come forward in new lawsuits against his $400-million estate, including one woman who says the creepy financier lured her into his sex ring after interviewing her for a job on Skype.
Last week, three women filed separate complaints in Manhattan federal court against the co-executors of Epstein’s estate, each seeking at least $25 million in damages.
One woman, referred to as Jane Doe XX, says Epstein started abusing her in 2014, when she was 24. In a lawsuit filed Dec. 31, the woman says she met Epstein through one of his associates, who scheduled a job interview over Skype so she could become Epstein’s personal assistant. The accuser says Epstein later invited her to travel to New York for an in-person interview for the role.
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But after landing the job, she said, Epstein began to repeatedly assault her and rape her. The abuse allegedly occurred at his homes in New York, Florida, New Mexico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, until 2018.
Meanwhile, another woman identified as Jane Doe XXI claims that Epstein abused her from 2015 to 2019, after she met him in Paris when she was 25.
Doe’s lawsuit says one of Epstein’s associates introduced her to the financier and he offered her a job as his assistant. The woman rejected the offer, but sometime after she moved to New York, Epstein’s confidante contacted her again and she accepted.
In a third complaint filed Dec. 30, a woman referred to as Jane Doe XIX says she was 16 when Epstein molested her in New York in 2014. The following year, she says, the money-manager assaulted and raped her at his Manhattan mansion.
The alleged assaults occurred after Epstein served a lenient jail sentence in 2008 and 2009 for abusing scores of underage girls in Florida. The financier negotiated a controversial plea agreement with federal prosecutors that allowed him to plead guilty to a pair of state charges rather than face a federal indictment, and he became a registered sex offender in New York and Florida.
“Epstein used his apparent connections to the fashion and modeling industries to coax, coerce and/or lure [the girl] to his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan under the guise of discussing how he could help her career,” the complaint states.
“Then, once Epstein had successfully coaxed, coerced and/or lured [her] to his home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, he isolated, and then sexually abused, assaulted, battered and raped her…”
An attorney for the three accusers didn’t return messages left by The Daily Beast.
The new cases arrive as dozens of accusers continue to resolve their claims through a victim compensation fund, which has thus far paid out more than $30 million from Epstein’s estate, according to a New York Times report.
But in two cases, Epstein’s accused accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, has apparently delayed survivors’ compensation claims. Annie Farmer and an anonymous accuser known as Jane Doe sued both Epstein’s estate and Maxwell. They received offers from the victim compensation program, but in order to receive their payouts, their civil cases must be dismissed.
Doe’s lawyer, Robert Glassman, recently said that Maxwell has “has found one excuse after another” to avoid agreeing to a dismissal.
Maxwell is battling the women in civil litigation while she’s incarcerated at a federal lockup in Brooklyn pending her upcoming criminal trial.
The feds arrested Maxwell last July and charged her with four counts related to child sex trafficking and two counts of perjury over her alleged role in Epstein’s sex crimes. For years, Maxwell has denied any involvement in Epstein’s trafficking scheme.
“There is no good faith basis in fact or law for defendant Ghislaine Maxwell to prevent this case from being dismissed following the settlement reached among the parties,” Glassman wrote in a Dec. 21 letter to the court. “The only conceivable reason is that she is being difficult for the sake of being difficult.”
One day later, Maxwell’s lawyer Laura Menninger returned fire, saying Glassman “has not explained why he could not wait a day or two for counsel to confer with her client and to then continue the negotiations regarding a stipulated dismissal.”
Menninger’s letter said Doe should foot Maxwell’s attorney’s fees and costs because Doe “improperly brought this baseless civil suit against Ms. Maxwell, making claims that are decades old without a shred of documentary or corroborative support. Ms. Maxwell absolutely denies plaintiff’s claims against her; they are false.”
As ABC News reported, Maxwell is similarly causing delays for Annie Farmer, who sued both Epstein’s estate and Maxwell, and who has come forward as one of the anonymous victims named in Maxwell’s indictment. Maxwell argued Farmer must disclose the amount of her confidential settlement offer before Maxwell agrees to the dismissal.
In a Dec. 31 letter to the court, Farmer’s attorney Sigrid McCawley wrote, “Maxwell is not the one compensating Ms. Farmer, and she should have no opinion on why Ms. Farmer is being compensated by the Estate. In fact, Maxwell should be quite pleased that she is escaping civil liability in this case without having to pay a dime.”
