Ghislaine Maxwell, pictured in New York in June 2013, has been charged with helping Jeffrey Epstein recruit and sexually abuse girls as young as 14 years old. She has denied the allegations.
Photo: untv/ReutersDozens of court documents unsealed Thursday night offered new revelations about Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged sexual abuse of teenage girls.
A woman who accused Mr. Epstein of sexually abusing her as a teenager alleged in a 2015 court filing that his longtime confidante, Ghislaine Maxwell, converted her into a “sex slave.” Mr. Epstein’s accusers sought records they alleged showed efforts by Prince Andrew and others to help Mr. Epstein secure a 2008 nonprosecution deal that allowed the accused sex offender to avoid federal charges, the newly unsealed court filings show. In a 2015 email to Ms. Maxwell, as she faced scrutiny over her ties to him, Mr. Epstein urged her to “go outside, head high, not as an escaping convict,” according to the filings. “You have done nothing wrong,” he wrote.
The trove of documents—primarily pieces of civil depositions, affidavits and motions from years past—were unsealed Thursday by a Manhattan federal judge in a yearslong civil dispute between Mr. Epstein’s accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre and Ms. Maxwell.
For years, Mr. Epstein was trailed by allegations that he groomed and abused underage girls and forced them to have sex with his powerful friends. The financier’s death last year abruptly ended his federal sex-trafficking prosecution and brought renewed scrutiny to Ms. Maxwell’s possible involvement in his alleged activities.
Earlier this month, federal prosecutors charged Ms. Maxwell with facilitating Mr. Epstein’s alleged sexual exploitation of young girls and lying under oath to hide the truth. She pleaded not guilty and is being held in federal custody while she awaits trial.
The documents released Thursday are part of a 2015 lawsuit filed by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, pictured last August in Manhattan, against Ghislaine Maxwell, claiming she recruited and facilitated her abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein.
Photo: Bebeto Matthews/Associated PressIn her 2015 lawsuit against Ms. Maxwell, Ms. Giuffre claimed the 58-year-old socialite recruited her and facilitated her abuse, directing her to engage in sexual encounters with men on several occasions, including Prince Andrew, according to court documents. She sued Ms. Maxwell for defamation after Ms. Maxwell denied her allegations, and the case was settled in 2017 for an undisclosed amount.
A court filing unsealed Thursday added detail to already-made allegations that Mr. Epstein forced a woman referred to as Jane Doe #3 to have sex with Prince Andrew when she was a minor at Ms. Maxwell’s London apartment, as well as in New York and in an orgy with other underage girls on Mr. Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The court filing has been made public previously in the course of civil litigation related to Mr. Epstein.
Prince Andrew hasn’t been accused of any crime by law enforcement, though federal prosecutors in Manhattan have said he hasn’t cooperated with their investigation. The prince has denied any misconduct and, through advisers, has disputed U.S. prosecutors’ claims that he won’t cooperate.
Related
- Ghislaine Maxwell Pleads Not Guilty, Is Denied Bail in Case Tied to Jeffrey Epstein (July 14, 2020)
- Jeffrey Epstein Associate Ghislaine Maxwell Arrested on Federal Charges (July 2, 2020)
- Prince Andrew Provided ‘Zero Cooperation’ in Epstein Probe, U.S. Prosecutor Says (Jan. 27, 2020)
- Epstein’s Death Sparks Probe, Shifts Spotlight to Associates (Aug. 11, 2019)
After months of litigation about what should be made public from that civil case, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska last week ordered a trove of documents be unsealed. Another set of documents was unsealed last August, shortly before Mr. Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail, where he was being held on sex-trafficking charges.
Jane Does #3 and #4 were seeking to join a Florida lawsuit related to Mr. Epstein’s nonprosecution deal there and wanted information including what they alleged were “efforts to persuade the Government to give him a more favorable plea arrangement and/or nonprosecution agreement, including efforts on his behalf by Prince Andrew” and, they claim, Harvard Professor Alan Dershowitz.
Mr. Dershowitz represented Mr. Epstein in the initial Florida prosecution, negotiating an 18-month sentence for him in 2008. He has said he couldn’t have remained on the case if he were ever the subject of any investigation.
Ms. Giuffre, along with lawyers representing several unnamed parties, the Miami Herald and Mr. Dershowitz, had asked for all related documents to be unsealed. In September, Judge Preska held a conference to discuss the records request, where attorneys said the sealed material included an address book, investigative reports and hundreds of documents that held thousands of names not yet known to the public. The court set a multipart briefing schedule; Thursday’s document release mostly concludes the first round.
Write to Deanna Paul at deanna.paul@wsj.com and Rebecca Davis O’Brien at Rebecca.OBrien@wsj.com
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