Public sex on a plane. A stable of young women “on rotation.” And allegations of a coerced menage a trois with a famed attorney—along with lurid questions about his genitalia.
These are just a few of the new revelations included in a tranche of court filings unsealed by a federal judge on Monday night as part of an ongoing release of documents related to a defamation suit filed by Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, the former girlfriend and accomplice to the late multimillionaire sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Here are some of the most interesting bits:
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An Epstein victim claimed she was forced into a threesome with Alan Dershowitz
In a 2017 deposition, Sarah Ransome, a young South African expat victimized by Epstein, claimed that Epstein coerced her into a threesome with Harvard law professor and future Donald Trump surrogate Alan Dershowitz at Epstein’s mansion in New York. The name of the other alleged female participant was redacted in court records. Ransome, who was 22 when she met Epstein, testified that the woman “started undressing me in the room.”
Ransome added that they got on a bed and that “I kind of knew what was going on from that.” She further detailed the abuse in disturbing detail. “Jeffrey then walked in the room,” she testified. “He started masturbating under his clothes. He put his hand in his trousers. A few minutes later Alan walked in the room. He started undressing, he got on the bed with [Redacted] and myself, and we basically had a three-way sexual interaction.”
“I just tried to just get it done as soon as possible to get out of there,” added Ransome, who called the encounter a “traumatic experience” and described Dershowitz as “pasty-skinned” and “wrinkly.”
Reached by phone on Tuesday, Dershowitz told The Daily Beast that he never met Ransome in his life. He insisted that since his second wedding in 1986, he has not had sex with anyone other than his wife.
She also was grilled about whether Dershowitz had a ‘bleeding’ penis
Under questioning by lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell, Ransome said being with Dershowitz “wasn’t a pleasant experience.” In the newly unsealed deposition transcript, Ransome was asked if she had seen any evidence of surgery on Dershowitz’s body, including “bandages.” Ransome answered that she couldn’t remember. “Did you see him bleed through his penis?” Maxwell’s lawyer asked, to which Ransome replied, “Not that I recall.”
For his part, Dershowitz steadfastly denied Ransome’s allegations.
“She has no idea what my genitals look like,” he told The Daily Beast from Israel, where he said he was about to eat dinner. “She made it all up.”
“Any lawyer who asks her a question about a bleeding penis is engaged in unethical conduct, because there would be no basis for that,” Dershowitz added, insisting to The Daily Beast, “I want to see a criminal investigation done of any lawyer and any person who made up stories [about my penis] and was part of the conspiracy to make up stories.”
Epstein flew his victims economy class to his private island
When Epstein invited Ransome to Little St. James, his private 72-acre getaway in the Caribbean, he had an assistant book her an economy class ticket to St. Thomas from Newark, according to an email included in the filings. “You will be going with a girl named [Redacted] and a guy named [Redacted],” reads the 2006 message from the sender, whose name is hidden in the court records. “They will both be staying at 301 E. 66 as well. I have a car picking you all up at 6:45 a.m. if you want to meet in the lobby.” Ransome’s flight info is pasted beneath, showing her seat assignment as 20F.
He also had sex in view of others on his private plane
Epstein had no qualms about having sex with the women in his circle in front of others, according to Ransome. In one of the deposition transcripts unsealed Monday, she describes watching Epstein have intercourse with a woman on a bed in the back of his plane. That woman’s name is redacted in the court filings. Epstein “was in his bed on the plane, having open sex with [Redacted] for everyone to see, on display… [Redacted] was straddling Jeffrey for quite some time. I watched them both ejaculate with each other. They were having quite a good time together.” Ransome said the plane had no door to conceal the bed, “so you can quite easily have sex and show the whole plane,” and added, “Which is how it’s designed, I’m guessing.”
While on the island, young women had to dress in Victoria’s Secret clothing
Epstein and fellow billionaire Les Wexner, owner of The Limited, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Victoria’s Secret, have been closely linked for decades. In one deposition transcript, Ransome describes a photo of another girl, clad in flannel “Victoria’s Secret pajamas that were supplied to us.”
“All of the outfits—there were clothes that were provided on the island by Jeffrey Epstein, which were all Victoria’s Secret clothing: bikinis, nightwear.” Wexner, who previously—and inexplicably—granted Epstein power of attorney over his affairs, has denied any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. Still, victims of Epstein have said he often bragged about his ties to Wexner and dangled the prospect of Victoria’s Secret modeling jobs to them.
Epstein and Ghislaine pressured a victim to lose weight—and go on the Atkins diet—in order to get funding for higher education
In one email to a recipient whose name is redacted in court filings, Ransome is eager for Epstein to know she has gotten down to “57 kg… [but am] not prepared to go under 56kg.” Epstein, according to Ransome, had conditioned his offer to pay her tuition at FIT on Ransome weighing less than 52 kilograms, or about 114 pounds.
“Jeffrey Epstein and I had a fight about my weight,” she testified. “... [H]e said that he refused to pay for my flight back [from a visit to South Africa] if I didn't get down to 52 kilograms…I carried on losing weight to try and get to the goal that Jeffrey and Ghislaine had set for me, which is 52 kilograms…I was told to be 52 kilograms, which is not—it can’t be achieved with my body frame, and they [my family] saw me getting very ill. And I didn’t have the funds to buy a flight back [to New York], so I had to do what Ghislaine and Jeffrey told me… I didn’t want to lose this weight because I would be dead if I weighed 52 kilograms.”
In her deposition, Ransome testified that “weight was a massive issue for Ghislaine and Jeffrey” and that Maxwell “bullied me massively about my weight.” Ransome recalled that on one occasion on the island, Maxwell broached her weight in front of other women and they got into “a heated argument” where she was given an ultimatum: lose weight or else. This led to Ransome running off and contemplating swimming away from the island to escape Epstein and Maxwell. Ransome testified that Maxwell sent a search party after her, and they brought her back on Epstein’s fleet of quad bikes.
After the fracas, Epstein ordered her to go on the Atkins diet. “Jeffrey said, you either go on the Atkins Diet, or I can go,” Ransome said, adding, “As in, don’t call me back, Sarah.” Ransome said she remained on the diet for more than a month until it made her sick.
Epstein also pressured her to visit modeling agencies in South Africa to recruit a new personal assistant
When Ransome returned to South Africa to visit her family in 2007, she visited modeling agencies for potential jobs in Cape Town. But she was also sent on a mission while there: Deliver Epstein a new personal assistant in exchange for a finder’s fee of $5,000. Ransome says she told Epstein she went to various modeling agencies but really only visited a couple firms. “It wasn’t right,” she testified. “My gut instinct was—yeah.” Ransome says she was “humiliated” when she went to those modeling agencies looking for an assistant. “I was completely embarrassed,” she testified. “I couldn't even ask them what Jeffrey was wanting. I mean, it was so absolutely ridiculous, his request of me finding him a PA.” Ransome says she asked agency staff if they had any girls that would want to travel; she informed them the young women would be given accommodation and work.
“And when I actually spoke to the modeling agencies, they actually laughed at me, because it was quite ridiculous that a young 22-year-old was asking a modeling agencies for a 18-year-old PA for a multi-billionaire who had several already,” Ransome said.
Asked how Ransome described the prospective PAs, she answered, “The same specifications that Jeffrey told me: She had to be 18, thin, very young looking, pretty.”
Maxwell “ran the house like a brothel”
Maxwell, who was convicted for her role in Epstein's sex trafficking ring in late 2021, kept a stable of girls and young women “on rotation for the purpose of giving Epstein sexual massages each day,” Ransome alleged in a 2017 motion filed by her lawyers. “Maxwell and Epstein used promises to assist Ms. Ransome in getting into FIT and paying for her in return for being Epstein’s sex slave,” the filing states. “There was a constant influx of girls,” Ransome said in a deposition. “There were so many girls. There were girls in Miami. There were guests coming. There were—It’s like, I’m sure if you go into a hooker’s brothel and see how they run their business, I mean, it's just general conversation about who’s going to have sex with who and you know—what do you talk about when all [you do] is have sex every day on rotation? I mean, what is there to talk about?”
The young women and girls trafficked by Epstein were terrified of Maxwell
In her deposition, Ransome testified that she met the British socialite for the first time on Epstein’s island and that other women warned her about Maxwell. “I remember being told by everyone before she arrived who she was,” Ransome said. “And I was pretty much told the type of person she was and that I had to do everything she told me to do.” She added, “Every single girl that I came in communication with told me that.”
Asked how the women described Maxwell, Ransome answered, “She's incredibly intimidating. She's not someone you want to be stuck in an alley at night, put it that way. She's a very dangerous character and has connections.”
“I met a lot of girls who we all had the same opinion of Ghislaine; we were all frightened of her,” Ransome continued. “She had a very odd relationship with Jeffrey and—yeah, she’s not a nice —I’m sorry, I know she’s your client, but she’s not—she’s not a friendly, warm person. I liked her dog, though, her Yorkshire Terrier. Her dog was nice.”
Epstein ‘loaned’ the girls out to his friends
Ransome said in one piece of testimony that she and others had been “lent out by [Epstein] to his friends and associates to have sex.” Dershowitz—who remained steadfast on Tuesday in his denials to The Daily Beast that he has never once in his life met Ransome—was one of the men she was loaned to, Ransome testified, according to the unsealed filings.
“It’s almost like Jeffrey’s quite possessive of his girls,” she said. “You know, he lends them out.
“He samples the girls, he has friends come over to New York or the island and they get to see who all the girls are around Jeffrey, and they get to pick one which they want to be with… But, yeah. I mean, he didn’t—he didn’t line them up and go, ‘Hey, boys, pick which vagina you want.’ He didn’t do it that blatantly.”
But, Ransome added, Epstein and his friends “would spend time with us” including during lunches on his private island.
Ransome testified that one man, whose name was redacted but who apparently owned a company, visited the island with his fiancée.
Ransome also described the places where Epstein’s cohorts were taken to abuse girls. “There were various buildings around the island where he used to have all—him and his other guests, like beds and beds, like little shelter things where him and his guests used to have sex with the girls, like beds set up for instant sexual entertainment.”
Epstein and his pals allegedly liked to hurt the girls during sex
According to an unsealed letter which cites emails sent by Ransome, Epstein and his crew often left marks behind. One unnamed female friend allegedly told Ransome that a buddy of Epstein’s “liked flicking and sucking her nipples until they were raw.” The alleged encounters, according to emails attached as evidence, occurred at Epstein’s Manhattan lair. In the message, Ransome said the woman showed Ransome her breasts. “I remember wincing when I looked at them,” Ransome said in the message. “I also know she had sexual relations with [Redacted] at Jeffrey’s New York mansion on regular occasions as I once met [Redacted] for coffee, just before she was going to meet [Redacted] and Epstein together at his mansion.”
There are many mystery men whose names are redacted in the docs
Epstein’s so-called black book contained the names and contacts of the rich and powerful. Some of the people in Epstein’s orbit have been revealed over the years, including Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump. But there are numerous names in the filings unsealed today which have been redacted, making it impossible to know the names of certain men being accused by Ransome and others. Still, some of the names have been left untouched, such as one instance in which Ransome was asked if she was ever “lent out” to billionaire businessman Tom Pritzker, the executive chairman of the Hyatt Hotels Corporation. (Ransome said no.)
Meanwhile, Ransome testified that Epstein was trying to find a way to get her a visa to stay in the country through a job with a friend who ran a cosmetic agency. Epstein wanted the male owner of the facility—which is described in testimony as “a cosmetic agency, doctor’s medical facility”—to provide Ransome with a kind of internship or apprenticeship, she said. Asked for the man’s name, Ransome said she couldn’t recall but that she met him in person. She didn’t end up working for him, she added, because she wanted to return home.
Names of Ghislaine’s assistants and fellow recruiters are also redacted, but Sarah Ransome says they reported directly to Maxwell
Epstein maintained a network of “recruiters” to constantly replenish his stable of young sex partners, details of which are included in the newly public documents. Although the individual names have been redacted in the filings, they say everyone “providing sexual massages to Epstein reported to Maxwell,” who “called the shots.”
“Girls were paid to recruit other girls” and “Maxwell was the main lady,” who Ransome described as the “mamma bear” in the arrangement.
Ransome claimed her emails had been hacked, and threatened to go to the ‘Russians’ and ‘WikiLeaks’ in order to get her story of abuse out
When a reporter at the New York Post didn’t move fast enough on publishing Ransome’s allegations, she became enraged, according to a series of emails sent in 2016 and included in today’s document dump. “You have really annoyed the wrong person and I am done being nice to anyone anymore,” Ransome wrote in one. “So there you have your God damn headline, I’m… taking down all the evil people with or without your help!”
Among the email exchanges is a conversation between Ransome and the reporter, Maureen Callahan, in which Ransome claims, “my emails have been hacked. I have reached out to the Russians for help and they are coming to my aid. Thank goodness for Anonymous! … the CIA hacking my emails etc were too late. I also have numerous devices, with systems that are unhackable and I have film footage all over Europe itching to be released.”
She continued, “I will also make sure that everyone on the God damn planet see’s that footage and photo’s and will release them to Wiki leaks by Sunday. I will take down Epstein and his bunch of fuck wit cronies myself!!!!!!!!! I have also gone to a Russian newspaper.”
In her deposition, Ransome said that after her initial conversation with Callahan for a story, she noticed people were following her while she lived in Barcelona. She believed that Callahan had told someone about their conversation and her whereabouts.
“There were two people following me after I came forward to Maureen Callahan,” Ransome testified, adding that during her usual walking routine in the Spanish city, she saw the individuals. The same afternoon, she ran into those people again. “I was frightened. I’m frightened for my life, absolutely frightened,” she said.
Her communications with Callahan, she said, abruptly stopped soon after. “I got really angry with Maureen because she had obviously told someone,” she added.
