‘Surviving Jeffrey Epstein’: The 9 Most Shocking Takeaways

This has been stated by at least two survivors, Courtney Wild and Virginia Giuffre. In Episode 1 Wild says that, “There were times when I brought two or three girls in a day.” Epstein would pay his victims $200 after he raped them. He also offered $200 as a finder’s fee for these girls to bring other victims. Many of these underage children took this deal, wanting to make money without enduring Epstein’s abuse alone. This arrangement led to Wild personally bringing an estimated 30 underage girls to Jeffrey Epstein.

“He groomed me to be exactly what he wanted me to be — a personal sex slave that brought him underage girls,” Wild says.

Virginia Giuffre, who was taken to Epstein’s private island Little Saint James, echoed Wild’s point. “The recruitment process was never-ending,” Giuffre says. It wasn’t uncommon for Epstein to request a different victim three times a day. That’s how these horrifying numbers added up.

The duo intentionally focused on young women who were either impoverished or who were employed in professions that required intimate contact. In West Palm Beach Epstein and Maxwell targeted victims from poorer families, knowing that girls who came from more affluent areas would likely turn down their $200 offer and, more importantly, tell authorities what was happening. But as the operation expanded it included aspiring models and masseuses. These girls and young women were told that they could make $200 by giving Maxwell and later Epstein a massage. Shortly after entering one of Epstein’s lavish houses, that massage would transform into something far more horrifying.

The predator didn’t have a blameless professional record. Though Epstein claimed that he left his teaching position at Dalton to find greener pastures there have been rumors that he was actually fired from the position. His time at Bear Stearns, a global investment bank, was equally suspicious. Epstein left the company shortly before it was revealed the bank was at the center of an illegal trading scheme. Similarly, Epstien was at the center of Steven Hoffenburg’s Ponzi scheme, though he was never convicted for it.

Ghislaine Maxwell is the youngest daughter of the newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell. Shortly after her father’s death in the early 1990s it was revealed that Robert Maxwell had been stealing from the retirement pensions of his workers. Their family was among the most hated in the UK during this time. It was under these circumstances that Maxwell came to the United States and later met Jeffrey Epstein. Many of the interviewed subjects believe that she saw the older man as a father figure.

This story comes from Maxwell’s longtime friend, journalist Christopher Rolan. According to him, he was asked to write a song for Epstein’s 40th birthday that included some very specific phrases from Maxwell. The song included the verses:

He sure looks older but it’s clear from his smile
The older he gets the more juvenile
Ghislaine is lavishing him with her affections
She claims he has 24 hour erections

It also included this passage:

Taught math at Dalton,
The naughty boy blushes
To think of schoolgirls
And all of their crushes

According to Rolan there were about six other people at the birthday celebration. He recalls that everyone was laughing at his song as if they were part of an inside joke Rolan didn’t understand.

The first case against Epstein happened in 2005. That’s when a woman in West Palm Beach called the police, alleging that many young girls were being molested by an older man in the area. During the time of the investigation Epstein would routinely send prosecutors to hound his victims. They would in turn interview these young woman and question them about their social media profiles in an attempt to prove that they weren’t child victims, but prostitutes.

After Epstein would meet with a new girl or young woman and abuse her, he would have his assistant call her and invite her back to Epstein’s house. That call served two purposes. For the women who were desperate for money it allowed them to return, thereby continuing Epstein’s never-ending stream of victims. And for the women who refused it clued Epstein in on which of his victims may go to the authorities about their abuse, allowing him to attack their credibility before they made a move.

Epstein’s relationship with L Brands founder and chairman Les Wexner is commonly seen as what made his professional career. After taking on the multi-billionaire as a client Epstein dropped all his other clients and became a staple of New York’s upper class society. But their relationship seemed far more than merely professional. Epstien was given power of attorney for Wexner, an arrangement that was highly unusual. Also at one point Wexner bought and remodeled a house in New York which he then gave to Epstein. It’s by working with Wexner that Epstein came to have more access to young models.

It was Palm Beach’s comparatively lenient criminal charges that first hinted at this truth. Epstein didn’t just abuse victims in Florida. He did so in New York, New Mexico, and on his personal island in the Virgin Islands. He would also routinely hire victims that he liked as his personal masseuse before bringing them to Little Saint James, also nicknamed as “Pedophile Island.” Once these young women were there they couldn’t easily escape.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article misidentified former Palm Beach Police Chief, Michael Reiter, as an official that did not believe Epstein’s survivors’ accounts.  We apologize for this error.

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