A woman central to Manhattan federal prosecutors’ sex-trafficking charges against Jeffrey Epstein sued the executors of his estate Wednesday, alleging that Epstein “routinely abused and exploited” her for three years starting when she was around 14 years old.
The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court, says the plaintiff is the same woman identified as “Minor Victim 1” in the July 2019 criminal indictment against Epstein, which accused him of the sexual abuse of dozens of underage girls.
The plaintiff, who filed the suit under the pseudonym Jane Doe, said in court papers that beginning around 2002 she was pressured by Epstein into giving him massages that transitioned into sexual abuse.
Those claims are similar to dozens of other women who have said they fell prey to the multimillionaire, who died by suicide in August while awaiting trial.
Darren K. Indyke and Richard D. Kahn, the two executors of Epstein’s estate who are named in the lawsuit, could not be reached Wednesday. The estate has been estimated in court filings to be worth at least $577 million.
The counts included in the lawsuit are sexual assault, sexual battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress.
According to the lawsuit, authorities investigating Epstein contacted Doe in March 2019, and she “confidentially cooperated” with them, “recounting Epstein’s abuse in painstaking detail over the course of many meetings.”
Like other alleged Epstein victims, Doe was in a financially precarious position when she was recruited to give Epstein massages, according to the lawsuit, which says her family rented bedrooms in their home to strangers to pay rent, leaving no room for Doe, who moved out.
It was then, according to the lawsuit, that an older teenage girl in the neighborhood told Doe about an opportunity to earn money from a wealthy man, who she later learned was Epstein.
In the lawsuit, Doe alleges abuse beyond Epstein’s massage-room assaults. On one occasion, she says, Epstein brought her into a bedroom in his Manhattan mansion where a naked adult woman was lying on a bed and another girl “close in age” to the plaintiff was in the room. Epstein instructed Doe and the other girl to take off their clothing and get in bed with the woman, according to the lawsuit, and then told them to touch his genitals and one another’s. “All told, Doe was sexually assaulted by Epstein countless times over the course of three years,” the lawsuit says.
Doe’s lawsuit also alleges two assistants “facilitated his abuse” and “scheduled most of Doe’s visits to Epstein’s home and maintained regular contact with Doe.
As a result of Epstein’s abuse, the lawsuit alleges, Doe was never able to graduate from high school and has been “forced to take dangerous and often degrading jobs.”
The lawsuit also says Doe has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder in connection with Epstein’s sexual abuse and that she “struggles to be physically and emotionally intimate with her husband because of the negative associations she now has with intimacy based on her traumatic experiences with Epstein.”
CNN’s Brian Vitagliano and Darran Simon contributed to this report.
