Jeffrey Epstein sent girl to governor and senator for sex, she testified

world

Updated: Aug 10, 2019 15:42 IST

Jeffrey Epstein and a friend sent an underage girl to have sex with former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, former U.S. Senator George Mitchell and asset manager Glenn Dubin, she testified in court documents that were made public for the first time Friday -- allegations the three deny.

Virginia Giuffre, now an adult, says she was also sent to modeling executive Jean Luc Brunel and the late MIT scientist Marvin Minsky, according to parts of a 2016 deposition she gave. The testimony by Giuffre, who claims she was a “sex slave” for Epstein from 2000 to 2002, expands on her previous allegations, in court filings and tabloids, that she was forced to have sex with the U.K.’s Prince Andrew and Harvard University law professor Alan Dershowitz. Both men have strenuously denied those allegations.

Epstein, a convicted sex offender, faces new federal criminal charges of sexually trafficking minors. None of the other men were defendants in the settled lawsuit, and they haven’t been accused by authorities. But their appearance in the newly public papers adds to the list of those who could be tarnished by their apparent association with him.

Richardson, in a statement, said he’d never met Giuffre, called the allegations “completely false” and said that during his limited interactions with Epstein he’d never seen him in the presence of underage girls.

Mitchell said the allegation in the released documents is false. In a statement, he said he never met, spoke with or had contact with Giuffre, or knew of or suspected that Epstein had inappropriate conduct with underage girls.

Dubin and his wife, Eva, called the allegations “demonstrably false and defamatory.” In an emailed statement, a spokeswoman added: “The Dubins have flight records and other evidence that definitively disprove that any such events occurred.”

Brunel couldn’t be reached for comment. A person answering the phones at his modeling agency declined to connect a Bloomberg reporter with him.

Giuffre’s lawyer Sigrid McCawley said the denials are predictable, calling them “bumper-sticker like statements.”

“The truth will have the final word,” McCawley said in an emailed statement. “Virginia Roberts Giuffre is a survivor and a woman to be believed. She believes a reckoning of inevitable accountability has begun.”

She said she hoped more documents will be unsealed.

In her 2015 civil lawsuit, Giuffre, a Floridian, claimed Epstein sexually abused her for two years starting in 2000, when she was 16. She said she was recruited by Epstein’s friend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who she says participated in the abuse. Giuffre claimed that Maxwell, daughter of the late British publisher Robert Maxwell, defamed her by publicly calling her a liar.

That case settled, with a judge sealing about 2,000 pages of documents. The appeals court on Friday upheld its previous order to unseal those documents. Some that were made public immediately included emails, photographs and flight logs. Others will undergo further court review to determine what else can be released.

The Giuffre deposition, parts of which were attached as exhibits to court filings, includes her testimony responding to newspaper articles about her experience -- outlining how she said she had been hired by Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort before Maxwell wooed her to work as a masseuse for Epstein. After that, Giuffre testified, Maxwell and Epstein began farming her out to powerful men.

In one part of Giuffre’s testimony, Maxwell’s attorney asked her to “name the other politically connected and financially powerful people that Ghislaine Maxwell told you to go have sex with.”

“They instructed me to go to George Mitchell, Jean Luc Brunel, Bill Richardson, another prince that I don’t know his name,” she said. “A guy that owns a hotel, a really large hotel chain, I can’t remember which hotel it was.”

She continued: “There was, you know, another foreign president, I can’t remember his name,” she said. “There’s a whole bunch of them that I just -- it’s hard for me to remember all of them.”

Later in the deposition, Giuffre was asked about details of her alleged sexual encounter with Dubin.

“What words did Ghislaine Maxwell tell you to go have sex with Glenn Dubin?” Maxwell’s lawyer said.

“It was the same all the time, all right?” Giuffre responded. “They want me to go provide these men with a massage.”

For Richardson, Giuffre claimed, she was sent to New Mexico, according to the filing.

Epstein served 13 months in jail a decade ago, much of it on work release, after pleading guilty to soliciting a minor. Giuffre has said she took legal action because she was upset by that deal and a federal non-prosecution agreement he secured around the same time.

Epstein was arrested in early July and charged with trafficking teenage girls from 2002 to 2005. He has pleaded not guilty.

Maxwell has long denied she was involved with Epstein’s alleged sexual abuse of underage girls. She had argued the documents from the civil case should be kept under seal because of the shocking nature of the allegations. Last month, her lawyers told the appeals court that the media’s “furious feeding frenzy” justified keeping the documents sealed and she asked for a rehearing by a full panel of the appeals court.

(The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text)