Jeffrey Epstein relationship details revealed in Ghislaine Maxwell unsealed court documents
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Court documents detailing Ghislaine Maxwell’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein have been unsealed and are now public.
They date from a 2016 deposition in a defamation lawsuit brough by Virginia Giuffre, who alleges Epstein sexually abused her as a teenager with help from Ms Maxwell.
The documents form part of US prosecutors’ case against the 58-year-old socialite, who is accused of - and denies - helping Epstein recruit and groom underage girls as young as 14 to engage in illegal sexual acts in the mid-1990s, as well as perjury.
The documents show that Ms Maxwell was questioned persistently about whether she recruited underage girls to massage Epstein, or whether she saw them around his Palm Beach home.
She denied this was the case and the exchanges grew quite heated. Her lawyer, Jeffrey Pagliuci, batted away questions about whether she herself ever gave Epstein massages, telling her interrogator that consensual acts between adults were “frankly, none of your business”.
Maxwell began working for Epstein in the early 90s
At the beginning of her deposition, Ms Maxwell was asked when she first recruited a “female” to work for Jeffrey Epstein.
After clarifying the basis, and substance, of the question, she says she hired a woman in her 40s or 50s “sometime in 1992”.
At this early stage she was hired by Epstein to help design, build and decorate houses and recruit staff to work in those properties.
Later, she says, “the nature of my relationship with him changed over time” and her work “lessened considerably” from 2002 or 2003.
The last time she did any work for Epstein, perhaps “an hour or two a year”, was in 2008 or 2009.
Maxwell is asked age of ‘youngest female’ she hired for Epstein
Her lawyer, Jeffrey Pagliuca, objected to the “form and foundation” of the question.
She says she is not sure how old the youngest adult was.
Ms Maxwell goes on to say she “never” hired anyone under the age of 18 to work for Jeffrey Epstein.
Did Maxwell ever invite under-18s to Epstein’s properties?
Ms Maxwell says she may have invited some of her friends and their children to some of Epstein’s homes.
She says she is “not aware” of having invited anyone other than friends and their children to those properties, in terms of people under 18.
Maxwell says Virginia Giuffre ‘invited herself’ to Epstein’s property
Asked whether she invited Victoria Roberts (Giuffre) to an Epstein home, Ms Maxwell says: “Virginia Roberts held herself out as a masseuse and invited herself to come and give a massage.”
Under persistent questioning, she adds: “As my job, I was to have people who he wanted for various things including massage. She came as a masseuse.”
Ms Maxwell says Ms Giuffre presented herself as a masseuse and attended on that basis. There would be no reason to communicate with her for non-massage reasons, Ms Maxwell says.
Ms Giuffre was brought to the Epstein property by her mother, Ms Maxwell says.
Maxwell ‘was outside with Giuffre’s mother’ for entire visit
The first time Ms Giuffre went to Epstein’s property, Ms Maxwell was outside the house with her mother, the 58-year-old says in her deposition.
She did not take her upstairs and did not participate in a massage, she says. She calls Ms Giuffre “an awful fantasist”.
Maxwell’s lawyer objects to questioning about her own relationship with Epstein
Mr Pagliuca instructs his client not to answer questions about whether she gave Jeffrey Epstein a massage alongside another woman.
He tells Ms Maxwell’s interrogator: “To the extent these questions involve consensual acts between adults, frankly, they’re none of your business.”
Ms Giuffre’s lawyer should stick to questions about alleged illegal acts, he says.
Maxwell says she never saw Epstein massaged by underage girls
Ms Maxwell answers “no” to the questions of whether she had ever massaged Mr Epstein alongside a girl under 18, or had seen a girl under 18 give him a massage.
To the question of whether she ever saw a girl under 18 in Epstein’s presence, she reminds Ms Giuffre’s lawyer that she invited friends and their children to his properties.
Ghislaine Maxwell said offering extra money for Jeffrey Epstein massages was ‘career advice,’ court documents reveal
Ghislaine Maxwell claimed in a 2016 deposition that offering a woman extra money to massage Jeffrey Epstein was “career advice,” court documents have revealed, writes James Crump.
Court documents detailing “intimate” details of Maxwell's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein were unsealed and made public on Thursday.
The 2016 deposition relates to a now-settled civil defamation lawsuit Virginia Giuffre brought against Maxwell, in which she alleged that Epstein, with help from Maxwell, kept her as a “sex slave”.
Ghislaine Maxwell said offering extra money for Epstein massages was ‘career advice,’ documents reveal
‘It is possible that I would have said that she should explore that as an option’
Maxwell questioned on Epstein asking for girls, ‘the younger the better’
Ms Maxwell is presented with a police report relating to the sex crime investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.
It contains the testimony of a girl under 18, whose name is redacted, she is told.
The girl says she was paid $200 to massage Epstein while naked, and that he asked her to recruit others, “the younger the better”.
Ms Maxwell says she never heard Epstein use that phrase and doesn’t recall using it herself.
She also says she never asked Ms Giuffre to recruit other girls.
Ms Maxwell says that whenever she was present, the people giving Jeffrey Epstein massages were over 18.
She adds that while working in the Palm Beach, Florida home, “I work, I don’t sit there and watch people coming in and out of the house”. She continues: “I cannot possibly tell you if I’m in the home that somebody was there that I did not see, I cannot comment on it, I have no idea.”
‘Unusual’ to see people without clothes on at Epstein home
Ms Maxwell describes the idea of topless women habitually lounging around at Epstein’s Palm Beach home as “another of Virginia’s lies”. It was unusual to see people without clothes, she says.
People at the house when she was there were 18 or older, she reiterates, unless they were children of friends she had invited/
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