World / Crime

Woman accuses Epstein associate of ordering sex with prominent men

18:31 pm on 10 August 2019

A woman who accused Jeffrey Epstein of keeping her as a sex slave said one of the financier's associates had instructed her to have sex with at least six prominent men, according to a court filing unsealed on Friday in a civil lawsuit.

Lawyers for Jeffrey Epstein did not respond to requests for comment Photo: AFP

The claim by Virginia Giuffre came in a deposition that was included among roughly 2000 pages of documents related to her defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, the associate whom Ms Giuffre has said helped Epstein procure girls for sex.

Lawyers for Ms Maxwell did not respond to several phone and email requests for comment.

Mr Epstein has pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking involving dozens of underage girls as young as 14, from at least 2002 to 2005. He is being held in a Manhattan jail.

Lawyers for Mr Epstein did not respond to requests for comment outside business hours. Ms Maxwell has not been criminally charged.

The Ms Giuffre deposition and the other documents were released after a federal appeals court in Manhattan rejected Ms Maxwell's bid to keep them under seal.

Ms Giuffre claimed in a 3 May 2016, deposition that Ms Maxwell directed her to have sex with people including former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, former US Senator George Mitchell, modeling agent Jean Luc Brunel and financier Glenn Dubin.

It was not clear from the deposition transcript included in the court documents how old Ms Giuffre was at the time of the alleged direction. The transcript does not indicate whether Ms Giuffre actually engaged in sex with the four men.

None of the four men has been criminally charged in connection with Mr Epstein. Mr Richardson, Mr Mitchell and Mr Dubin, or their respective representatives, all said the various allegations against them were false. A lawyer for Mr Brunel did not respond to a phone call and email seeking comment.

A spokeswoman for Mr Richardson said the former governor had never met Ms Giuffre. "These allegations and inferences are completely false," she said. "To be clear, in Governor Richardson's limited interactions with Mr Epstein, he never saw him in the presence of young or underage girls."

Mr Mitchell said in a statement: "The allegation contained in the released documents is false. I have never met, spoken with or had any contact with Ms Giuffre."

A spokeswoman for Mr Dubin said he was "outraged" by the unsealed allegations, which he considered "demonstrably false and defamatory," and said that he had flight records and other evidence that "definitively" disproved them.

The name of US President Donald Trump, who was once a friend of Mr Epstein, appears in a 14 November 2016, deposition of Ms Giuffre, in which she said Mr Trump and Mr Epstein had been good friends.

In response to a question about how she knew whom Mr Trump had sex with, Ms Giuffre said she "didn't physically see him have sex with any of the girls."

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

-Reuters