Strange new details emerge in Epstein sex scandal

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Among the 1,400 pages of records that have become public are testimony from Jeffrey Epstein himself and his accomplice, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell. This latest publication shows that Epstein refused to answer questions from lawyers hundreds of times, including about alleged blackmail of famous men.

In December it emerged that the names of more than 170 associates of convicted sex offender Epstein could be made public next month following a ruling by a US judge. The 51-page ruling, issued by New York Judge Loretta Preska, called for Epstein’s connections to be “fully disclosed.”

The documents were published as part of a lawsuit filed by sex trafficking victim Virginia Giuffre (formerly Virginia Roberts), the BBC recalls.

The lawsuit, filed in 2015, was settled in 2017. Ghislaine Maxwell has since been jailed for 20 years for helping Epstein abuse young girls. She is trying to appeal her conviction.

Convicted back in 2008 of forcing a minor into prostitution, Jeffrey Epstein moved in high places that included key figures in the worlds of business and politics. And many famous names surfaced after previously closed court materials were made public.

In particular, the name of the British Prince Andrew appears there. And according to the Daily Mail, the release of several portions of the “Epstein papers” last week has raised even more questions about the royal family’s friendship with the sex offender, as King Charles III is said to be considering evicting Andrew from the Royal Lodge mansion. However, a friend of the prince told The Times that this was unlikely, since “there is good blood in this family.”

So, the latest tranche of court records declassified contains a transcript of Epstein’s 2016 affidavit, in which the financier repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment constitutional right against self-incrimination (which states, in part, that “no one should be forced to testify against oneself in a criminal case”).

During questioning, Virginia Giuffre’s lawyer asked Epstein whether she had been ordered to provide a “detailed account” of her alleged sexual encounters with powerful men such as Prince Andrew.

The lawyer asked whether it was intended to be used as “blackmail material.” But Epstein refused to answer any questions, repeatedly repeating only the word “fifth” (amendment) more than 500 times. He refused even to say whether he knew Ghislaine Maxwell.

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The British king’s brother Prince Andrew (aka the Duke of York) previously told the BBC that he did not remember ever dating Virginia Giuffre, who claimed that she was asked to have sex with him several times. She said Andrew sexually abused her when she was 17 years old.

However, despite his categorical denial of guilt, in 2022 the prince paid his accuser a considerable sum (according to the Daily Mail, we are talking about 12 million pounds sterling) to settle her sexual assault claim filed against him, but did so without admitting guilt or responsibility.

In a 2016 deposition released Tuesday, Virginia Giuffre said she was paid between $10,000 and $15,000 for one sexual encounter with the then-underage prince. “I don’t know how much it is in pounds,” Giuffre said, before the lawyer asked her if she had paid tax on the amount, to which the woman replied “no.”

She claimed that a media organization paid her $160,000 for two articles and a photo of her with Prince Andrew.

Virginia Giuffre also denied ever being sex trafficked by any “presidents” but claimed she was forced to have sex with a “well-known prime minister.” She declined to name the man, adding: “If I can just say, I personally know that this is not a person worth talking about and I’m not going to, let’s face it, I’m not going to say his name.”

Giuffre also claimed that there was another person who was introduced to her as a prince – in addition to Prince Andrew – to whom she was sold in the south of France. This unknown prince spoke a foreign language, but he also spoke good English – or so Virginia said under oath. “I’m not really sure where he was from,” she said.

Her statement, according to the Daily Mail, came during an interview with lawyers about her sordid life as a teenage sex slave for Epstein, in which she claims she was “hired” by his powerful friends.

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At times during the interview, Virginia Giuffre said she could not remember details, including the time and place of specific alleged sexual encounters. She admitted using the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, as well as ecstasy, cannabis and alcohol.

Giuffre described how Epstein’s New York mansion contained a “dungeon” decorated with “a huge photograph of me and another girl and a painting of both of us performing lewd acts together.”

Also, she said, in the billionaire’s Florida home, dubbed the “House of Sin,” there were at least 50 photographs placed on a table in the hallway, some nude, some of girls in obscene form – I mean in the bottom. lingerie – mixed with Jeffrey and some privileged people he dated, like old girlfriends or models or Naomi Campbell or whatever.”

And, of course, the main location of the Epstein scandal was the private island of Little St. James in the US Virgin Islands. It belonged to Epstein. This jewel of the Caribbean has acquired the dubious reputation of being known as “Pedo Island” (the island of pedophiles).

“No sane parent would let their teenage daughter within a hundred miles of a 74-acre island if they knew it was the worldwide center of a sex education scheme run by a wealthy financier with powerful friends,” writes the Daily Mail. “With sheltered coves and wooded groves rising to dramatic, windswept ridges and rocky cliffs, the beautiful island hid a terrible reality: it was a prison camp where young women were forced into sexual slavery for Epstein and his perverted associates.”

The Attorney General of the U.S. Virgin Islands later described it as “an ideal haven for the trafficking of young women and minor girls for the purposes of sexual slavery, child abuse and sexual assault.”

This island also attracted visitors from the upper classes. The list was truly top-notch, including Prince Andrew, Naomi Campbell, Kevin Spacey, Peter Mandelson and the late Professor Stephen Hawking, while former US President Bill Clinton denies claims he was a visitor. All deny any wrongdoing, writes the Daily Mail.

Trump’s name appears four times in Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s testimony on January 16, 2016. But she says that while she has heard that the former US president visited Epstein’s house, she never saw him there herself, and “I don’t think Donald Trump was involved in anything.”

Typically, VIP guests would fly on a private jet to the larger island of St. Thomas, then cross the glittering sea the last few miles in one of Epstein’s black helicopters. A staff of about 70 people, from gardeners to laundresses and on-call boat captains, attended to their every whim. It was like a five-star hotel where no one paid, one former employee recalled. The recreational playground offered beaches, palm trees, swimming pools, a tennis court, a mansion and—scarily—a mysterious “soundproof temple” on a remote rocky outcrop. But above all, privacy from prying eyes.

While the island may have seemed like heaven on earth, for many of its more reluctant visitors it was nothing less than hell. Court documents describe Little St. James as just one step in a worldwide network of private flights that transported sex trafficking victims to London, Paris, Tangier, Granada, St. Louis, Palm Beach, Atlantic City and beyond. . Some victims were as young as 12 years old.

Trapped on an island where Epstein controlled all communications with the outside world, one 15-year-old Swedish girl described how she was “distraught and shaking…literally shaking” in 2005 when Maxwell and Epstein’s assistant Sarah Kellen confiscated her passport. and a phone before being forced to have sex. She tried to escape by swimming, but Epstein organized a search party and she was caught at sea.

And Virginia Giuffre claimed that she also saw supermodel Heidi Klum partying with Epstein. Having previously talked about seeing former US President Bill Clinton on the financier’s “pedophile island,” Epstein’s former sex slave claimed that she met with the American Democratic politician for the second time. In her affidavit, she said: “There was dinner, a lot of laughing, a lot of jokes, it was just dinner, and then I didn’t have to do anything with Bill Clinton, he never had a sexual relationship with me.”

According to Giuffre, there were two girls with Epstein and Clinton, and she might have been able to identify them, but they were beautiful, young, approximately 17 to 21 years old.

The list of other men with whom Virginia was forced to have sex includes Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, Victoria’s Secret boss Les Wexner, billionaire hedge fund investor Glenn Dubin and former US peace envoy George Mitchell – all of whom have previously denied her claims, recalls BBC.

In 2022, Virginia Giuffre dropped her lawsuit against Alan Dershowitz and admitted in a statement that she may have made a mistake in identifying him.

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Giuffre also said that she was sold to American computer specialist Marvin Minsky and French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel. Both are no longer alive: Marvin Minsky died in 2016, and Jean-Luc Brunel committed suicide in a Paris prison in 2022 while awaiting charges of rape and sex trafficking. By the way, the other day, lawyers demanded that the Parisian authorities resume the investigation into suicide in the Brunel prison. They alleged serious miscarriages of justice in the investigation into Brunel, who was 74 when he was found dead in La Sante prison in February 2022 while awaiting trial for his role in Epstein’s global sex ring involving minors.

Let’s remember that the main character of the criminal sex scandal with a pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, pleaded guilty to forcing a minor into prostitution in 2008. In August 2019, he was found dead in his cell at the Manhattan Correctional Center, where he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The official version is suicide. According to persistent conspiracy theories, the financier was helped to leave for another world out of fear of possible revelations. Moreover, the circumstances look extremely suspicious: in particular, on the night of Epstein’s death, the cells in the guarded residential block where he was kept were not working, and the prison guards were sleeping.

“It appears that once it was determined to be a suicide, there was no investigation; they saw no reason to dig deeper. This looks like a cover-up,” says, for example, the younger brother of the deceased, Mark Epstein.

Meanwhile, in declassified documents published recently, hints appeared that Jeffrey Epstein secretly filmed a representative of the royal family and other “powers that be” having sex. And this circumstance strengthens the doubts of those who are not satisfied with the version of the suicide of the criminal financier.