The Jane Doe plaintiff says that Epstein leveraged her family’s dire financial situation into sexual favors.
A woman who claims to be “Victim-1” in a New York indictment against Jeffrey Epstein is suing the late billionaire’s estate.
According to The Washington Post, the complaint accuses Epstein of abusing Victim-1 for three years. The assaults allegedly began when the woman was fourteen years old, desperately trying to help her family pay rent.
The suit, says the Post¸ was filed Wednesday in a Manhattan federal court. It contains details on how Epstein interacted with Victim-1—and how the billionaire manipulated her family’s financial struggles to his advantage. The complaint was filed by the plaintiff’s attorney, Roberta A. Kaplan.
In it, Kaplan describes how Victim-1—also called ‘Jane Doe’ in the lawsuit—found herself “in serious financial straits” in 2002. Doe’s sister was sick and the family had so little money that Victim-1 was forced to move out.
Left alone, Doe was forced to stay with “a rotating cast of friends and took odd jobs after school to try to help her family pay rent.”
Around that time, recounts the Post, an ‘older girl’ took Doe to Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion. There, the billionaire offered to pay her hundreds of dollars for massages. Physical favors gradually became sexual demands, with Victim-1 assaulted by Epstein and unnamed others.
The abuse allegedly continued until Doe turned 17. By then, she’d been sexually assaulted by Epstein “countless times.”
Doe also claims to have been sexually assaulted by one of Epstein’s employees. The lawsuit describes how Victim-1 was taken into a bedroom “with an adult woman she did not know,” where both of them had sex with Epstein.
Victim-1 was frequently paid by two of Epstein’s assistants.
Due to the possible involvement of others, prosecutors are investigating whether anyone connected to Epstein could or should receive co-conspirator charges. Several of the women who say they were assaulted by Epstein have assigned some culpability to Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime associate of the billionaire.
In her suit, Victim-1 says she still suffers “severe mental anguish because of Epstein’s abuse.” Even after ridding herself of Epstein, she wasn’t able to finish high school and has claimed that her “physical and emotional injuries impact her daily functioning, making it difficult to go to work and take care of her young daughter and her ailing mother.”
Epstein committed suicide in a Manhattan jail midway through last month. Before killing himself, Epstein put his holdings into a trust—his will lists assets valued around $577 million.
Sources
New lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein estate details sexual abuse and names alleged co-conspirators
Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged abuse of teenage girl detailed in lawsuit against his estate executors
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