Original subtitles

It's still something that I'm getting used to...

the term "survivor."

This is a way to face my fears.

I felt like

I could keep it a secret, and it was.

It was my dirty little secret.

I didn't want to share this with anybody.

I would have taken this to my grave.

Being abused by Jeffrey Epstein

had a toll on the rest of my life.

The trauma that I endured from him is a life sentence.

Mark.

- Tape two. - Marker.

Every day is unpredictable.

One day it can be okay, and the next day,

it's just brutal.

Today, we announced the unsealing

of sex trafficking charges against Jeffrey Epstein.

Epstein allegedly abused dozens of minors

at his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida.

He was completely obsessed with young girls

and sex with them.

Prosecutors are now looking to properties

in New Mexico and the Caribbean.

- The charges detail - Epstein's scheme

to systematically create the vast network

of underage girls to abuse.

Jeffrey had a particularly elaborate seduction system.

He had women around him

that he trained to understand what he was looking for.

He always had you introduce friends

and the friends introduce more friends.

There was times where I brought

two and three girls in a day.

The recruiters put themselves in places

where they would find young,

innocent potential victims

who were malleable.

I call it a pyramid scheme,

and the pyramid scheme started with

Jeffrey and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Ghislaine was fantastically charming.

Her British accent and her connections

served her well in recruiting young girls.

I genuinely thought that she really did care about me,

and so it was a giant blow to learn

that she was in on all of it.

They knew exactly how to pull you in to trust them.

I went from one person to the next

just like a human baton being passed along.

He groomed me to be a personal sex slave

that brought him underage girls.

What is it that you were told you would have to do?

By the time of the sexual assault,

they were tricked.

I really didn't want to.

I don't know.

The more I kept trying to resist,

the more fun he was having.

As soon as he reached for me, I was already frozen.

I was 14.

I was never the same after that.

Some breaking news right now.

Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein

has taken his own life while he was behind bars.

I was just really angry at how this could have happened.

This guy has never been held accountable

for anything he's done.

He wins every time.

Any co-conspirators should not rest easy.

The victims deserve justice,

and they will get it.

You kinda want to ask Ghislaine,

"What the hell were you thinking?"

These young women need to be believed.

When they told their story to the police,

nobody did anything about it.

Their voices didn't have value.

That has to change.

I just gotta dig deep and take back my power

'cause that's the only way I'm gonna heal.

I'm not a young girl anymore.

I'm gonna fight back.

I'm just gonna keep on speaking the truth.

We need to get to the bottom

of everybody who was involved with that.

The truth has a funny way of showing its head

and I'm not stopping till it does.

- The FBI arrested - Ghislaine Maxwell

around 8:30 this morning in Bedford, New Hampshire.

They say she helped the now-dead millionaire

sex traffic young girls, abuse them,

some as young as 14 years old.

- I mean, it's so dark. - He's dead.

He's mysterious.

People like myths. People don't like truth.

But the survivors have a story to tell.

It was, like, the summer of going

from eighth to ninth grade.

I had braces on half of my teeth.

I was, uh, young, 14,

awkward little girl.

My friend told us about

this really cool guy on Palm Beach Island

who we could make $200 from.

He just wanted a massage.

$200 was huge to me,

and she kind of played it off like,

"Oh, you know, it's really no big deal.

This guy's super nice. He has a super nice house,"

and then she ended up taking me.

When you drive over the bridge to go on Palm Beach Island,

you could just feel, like, the money and power.

I was brought to his house.

It's, like, the end of the street,

the last house.

Everything's, like, super secluded

and super private.

And it's a beautiful mansion,

and we walk in, and there's the chef,

and, you know, his secretary,

and these gorgeous women, barefoot models,

and here I am 14, and I remember thinking,

"Why do they want me?"

Please raise your right hand.

Do you swear from the testimony you're about to give

will be the truth, the whole truth,

- and nothing but the truth? - Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.

- Can you give us your name? - Jeffrey Epstein.

Mr. Epstein,

how long have you been sexually attracted

to underage minor females?

Are you kidding?

On the multiple times that I saw him,

he always appeared as though he felt

he was the smartest one in the room.

I assert my fifth, sixth,

and 14th amendment rights

to the United States constitution.

He had this smirk on him and carried himself like,

"I am powerful. I am wealthy.

Who are you to be questioning me?"

That was the air about him.

To really understand the psychology

of what happened here, you have to understand

Jeffrey Epstein was a master manipulator.

He used whatever it was that that young person needed

in order to force them to do the things

he wanted them to do.

Palm Beach is a very interesting place.

You have a very wealthy segment of the population,

one of the wealthiest in the United States,

and by Palm Beach,

what I'm talking about is the island,

and the island is very different than the mainland.

So you go from millionaire and billionaire row

on the island to then a little further west,

which is more middle class, to then even further west,

which is a much lower socioeconomic group

living out in the western communities.

This was the pool of young girls

that he preyed upon the most.

If you approach a 14,

15-year-old private school girl

that has a Gucci handbag,

and she hears about some old guy

that wants a massage for a couple hundred dollars,

they're not gonna respond to that.

Take that same proposition

to a young girl that's barely getting by.

That's a different proposition.

The easiest prey is the weakest in the group,

and that was his method.

That was his modus operandi.

- I grew up in - West Palm Beach, Florida.

My mom was a single parent. She was also my hero.

You know, she was my mom, my father.

She was everything.

She was a superhero in my eyes,

but pretty much every time she got a new boyfriend

or a new job, we would move,

and every time we moved,

it meant that I was moving a different school,

so I was constantly having to try to make friends.

It was really, really hard a lot of the time.

My mom had been doing drugs and drinking for a while,

and she kind of fell off the deep end.

I started rebelling more.

I started acting out against her,

and I knew she wasn't paying attention.

Our whole lives changed then.

When I was in middle school,

in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade,

I was a straight A student.

I was captain of the cheerleading squad.

I played first chair trumpet.

Once I hit teenager years

is when my life kinda got rocky.

My mother dealt with addiction,

and we went from having a house, an apartment,

to basically living in hotels and stuff like that.

This is when

I went to Jeffrey's for the first time.

Me and my friend walk in,

and you just feel elite walking into the room.

My friend brings me upstairs,

and she's setting up the massage table

and putting the towels,

and then we sit and wait for him to come in.

When Jeffrey comes in,

he just kinda acted like, "Oh," you know,

"Hey, hi. How are you?"

And laid on the table

like he just knew what we were gonna do, you know?

We gave him a massage for, like, 30 minutes,

and then he asked my friend to go downstairs.

It's like going over the railroad tracks.

Like, your stomach... you know, that feeling,

and you just know it's not right.

He called me over, asked me to, um,

take my bra and panties off,

to get completely naked.

All I could think of is I was just looking at the clock,

like, "Okay, when is this gonna end?

How long is this gonna take, and what is happening?"

It quickly transitions to him molesting me.

I just went along with it because it's like,

I'm just, uh, you know, a child.

I remember walking down the staircase after.

I'm given the $200, and I'm like,

so upset and disgusted and just feeling like,

"I'll never come back here ever again."

And then, you know, after a week went by,

I just, like, downplayed the situation myself.

It was like, you know, "Maybe it wasn't so bad,

and I could go back because I do need more money,"

and it was just, uh... it was just this sick cycle,

and that's what happened, you know?

I was working in the North Palm Beach area.

The case came to my firm originally

from the first young girl that actually went to police.

The reason why I wanted to talk to you

is I am conducting an ongoing investigation.

You're a witness, possibly a victim.

She had been enticed over there

because it was quick, easy money

to give this older man a massage.

We start hearing these unbelievable stories

of numbers and numbers of young girls

from her high school that had gone over there.

You solemnly swear to tell the truth,

the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,

so help you God?

And initially we said,

"This is too gruesome and too awful

to be even true... or close to the truth."

Tell me from the beginning how you met this gentleman.

What is it that you were told you would have to do?

At any point did he ask you to remove your clothes?

Did he touch your breasts?

Did he touch your vaginal area?

And did you have intercourse with him?

Almost every single one of the young girls

were in high school, and most of them

were under the age of 18, some as young as 14.

All of these young girls were children,

and a lot of them were afraid.

Just take a deep breath.

You're not the only person that he's done this to.

Okay?

- I've talked to a lot of girls. - Uh-huh.

Almost 40 girls.

As we learn more and more about the case

and the breadth of it,

it goes from, "I can't believe this,"

as an attorney, to, "Oh, my God.

I can't believe this is actually happening."

People ask why victims of Jeffrey Epstein

went back to his house after the first assault.

Jeffrey Epstein knew exactly what he was doing.

He took the time to groom them and to figure out

what about that particular individual

he could exploit to fill a void

maybe that wasn't being filled elsewhere.

I think I had a job at, like, Miami Subs,

but, you know, I definitely didn't have any money.

I thought Jeffrey was my saving grace.

He's just, you know, trying to help me out, really,

and he's gonna pay me $200 for this massage, like,

so when he, you know, came in,

I acted like I was comfortable

and that I was okay with everything,

and I'm not really sure why... how or why that happened.

A perpetrator who has a propensity for children

tends to understand that they won't get what they want

from fear,

so they tend to use seduction.

The hook was money in exchange for a simple task...

to do a massage.

Preying on Courtney's financial vulnerability,

Jeffrey Epstein made another offer, which was,

"Any person that you bring to me

"that's of the same age as you,

I'll pay you a $200 finder's fee."

And Courtney then began, when she was at school,

when she was at social gatherings

with other 14, 15, 16 year olds,

when she was at the mall,

making the same offer that had been offered to her,

which led to Courtney probably bringing

30 other minors to Jeffrey Epstein's house.

His type was basically very young,

white teenagers.

Once I got comfortable with, like, approaching girls

and kind of finessing them in a way to, like, say,

"Oh, it's just a massage and you just have to do this,"

and making it sound oh-so-good for them to go,

there was times where I brought two and three girls

in a day.

He groomed me to be exactly

a personal sex slave that

brought him underage girls.

You know, these are my friends that I brought.

It wasn't just the way that the girl looked.

It was the whole set up. It was the whole manipulation.

It was the whole trickery,

and he was manipulating

vulnerable and alone individuals,

girls that he knew wouldn't have any adult in their life

who would stand up for them, either,

and I think that is part of the deviance

for Jeffrey Epstein.

When this was all happening

and I went to Jeffrey Epstein's house,

my mom was in jail or had just gotten out of jail.

One of my friends had asked me if I wanted to come stay

the weekend with her, and she's like,

"I have this one girlfriend

and we can go over there and hang out."

It was in a trailer park in Palm Beach County.

There was about four or five other girls

just talking about stuff like teenage girls do,

and then someone started making jokes about Jeffrey.

"He just likes young girls to give him a massage."

They're, like, giggling,

and making fun pretty much of him

and just how easy it was to make $200.

The main girl dressed me and did my makeup

and did my hair.

I felt kind of pretty because I was getting to wear her clothes

and she was pretty, and she was...

what seemed to be popular.

She was giving me attention,

which I really needed at that time.

She seemed so comfortable with going like it's no big deal.

I just thought, you know,

it couldn't be too bad

if these other people have done it.

It was the first time that I had been on the island.

I'd never really been in that type of money.

We shopped at Walmart or Target.

Just the boats alone as you're going over the bridge,

it's straight out of the movies.

You're like,

"Who the heck can ever afford something like this?"

Mr. Epstein, is it true you were born January 20th, 1953?

- Yes. - Where?

- New York. - Where in New York?

Brooklyn.

Jeffrey Epstein was a kid from a working class family.

He grew up in Coney Island.

His dad worked for the New York City Parks Department,

and his parents instilled in him and his brother

that education was the key to get on.

Epstein is very gifted.

Skips two grades,

graduates at the age of 16, and he gets accepted

into a very difficult to get into college

called Cooper Union.

What'd you study?

Physics.

And, uh, why did you leave college early?

I intend to respond to all relevant questions

regarding this lawsuit.

He didn't actually finish his degree.

He dropped out, and then in 1974,

he somehow gets a job teaching at Dalton,

which is an exclusive school

on the upper east side of Manhattan,

where very wealthy, very powerful people

send their children.

Jeffrey was part of the math department.

He was young.

About 20 years old.

This is not your typical Dalton teacher.

Usually, they did not sport wide lapels,

gold chains, and open shirts,

exposing a certain amount of chest.

Straight out of "Saturday Night Fever."

He came from a different social class

to a school that attracted

a number of very, very affluent families.

For Epstein,

this was a really important first step

on his ascendancy to the world in which he wanted to live.

If he didn't have the money

to be those kind of people just yet,

he was gonna rub shoulders with them.

He was gonna make connections,

and that's exactly what happened.

It's very possible that he encountered a student

who was related to the management

at Bear Stearns that provided him with a stepping stone

to his Wall Street career.

- After two years on the job, - Epstein left.

He claims that he wanted to go on to Wall Street,

but there was also the suggestion that

he was fired because his performance wasn't improving.

You're seeing the first of many myth-making moments

where there's some dispute about how he exits somewhere.

Jeffrey went to work for Ace Greenberg

at Bear Stearns after Dalton.

Greenberg had this term

for people he was looking for to work at Bear Stearns.

PSDs...

poor, smart, and desperate to succeed.

Epstein very much fit that mold.

Epstein skyrockets there.

He starts at 23.

In four years, he's a limited partner.

1980, he's actually

a "Cosmopolitan" Bachelor of the Month.

He says that he only talks to people

if they make a million or more per year.

1981, there's a suspicious trade,

which later became an insider trading case,

and Epstein resigns not long after the trade.

Again, there's some dispute over what actually happened.

Epstein says he wanted to leave

and start his own company.

As with Dalton,

there's sort of two pictures that emerge...

Epstein's story and then the official story,

which perhaps paints a different picture.

When Jeffrey Epstein met me,

it was 1987.

I was the CEO of a company that did

a billion and a half dollars a year on collections.

It was Epstein that had the vision

to make it a major Ponzi company.

He was open and transparent in telling me

that he had no moral compass.

Steven Hoffenberg ran a company

called Towers Financial.

Legitimate business,

but you can get rich a lot quicker doing a Ponzi scheme,

assuming you don't get caught.

But it got caught.

Only one person takes the fall for the Towers scheme.

I spent 18 years in federal prison.

Even though according to Hoffenberg,

Epstein was at the absolute center of this operation,

he wasn't prosecuted.

Jeffrey Epstein created an entire method

of how he would seduce people.

A true seductive person

has the ability to understand what you're thinking,

and Jeffrey Epstein was a king...

a master of seduction.

He felt he had protection from the rule of law.

He was not concerned.

His behavior really was sociopathic...

manipulativeness, superficial charm,

uh, lack of anxiety,

and predominantly, lack of empathy.

He made a choice to act on these sexual impulses

in the way he did,

and he made a choice

to exploit vulnerable individuals.

I definitely looked the youngest

out of a lot of my friends.

They would joke around and say that I was Virgin Mary.

I was scared to do any of that stuff, like,

to have sex or anything, so, um...

and embarrassed of my body, too.

The fact that he viewed them as untouched,

unsullied virginal was a big part of it for him.

That's why he's going to a middle school

or a high school.

I was nervous.

Once I entered the house,

the nerves were there.

The girl that had brought us there

took me right upstairs.

She said that he was gonna come in in a few minutes,

uh, and kinda left me.

The biggest thing that I remember

is his, like, smirk smile.

The way that his mouth cuts into the sides

reminded me very much so of, like, a clown smile.

He laid belly down on the table.

He asked me to get undressed and just stand in my underwear.

He was just very adamant, almost like a parent.

Like, "Pick up your shoes."

Like, you know they mean business.

They're not gonna get loud.

They're not gonna tell you again.

You're just gonna do it.

It made me feel very uncomfortable,

but I did as I was told.

He was... he was the adult, and I was a child.

As soon as he reached for me, I was already frozen.

Almost numb to what was going on.

Like, a frozen state of shock.

And he kept touching around my underwear

and under my underwear

and I finally told him to stop.

He told me, "I'll stop if you just take your underwear off

so I can look."

He started with asking for a massage

and then he asked for a massage

with a girl in her bra and panties,

and then he progressed from there.

Inoculating a victim

is part of the process of grooming them.

Once somebody has participated,

they almost universally feel like used goods.

They feel damaged. They feel dirty.

They feel worthless.

He had told me that I looked so pure

while he was touching me.

It felt weird for him to call me that

as he was touching me.

I was afraid.

I was very afraid of what was gonna happen.

He definitely had the control.

I was in his house.

He took his towel,

wiped himself off, got up off the table,

and walked out of the room.

Once we walked out of the door to go get into the cab,

I was instantly in tears.

My friends didn't say anything to me,

and the other girl told me to shut the up

and threw $200 at me.

He took girls who already had problems with self-esteem.

They go along with it.

They feel even worse about themselves,

and that perpetuates it.

"I am worthless. I am dirty.

"Why should I bother to treat myself

"any better than he's treating me?

Because, yeah, this confirms what I feel about myself."

One sexual assault can completely change

the quality of life for the victim for years.

They push that reality as far away

from their conscious mind as they can.

They use drugs. They use alcohol.

They may use sex so that they don't think about it,

so that they don't feel it.

When high school started,

I was going to school and skipping

and getting picked up by truancy.

I'm probably about 16 years old about this time.

This is when I start, like, dabbling with drugs.

Any time before I go to Jeffrey's house,

I take Xanax to, you know, calm down

and not have to feel anything.

I end up dropping out of school

and it just, like... my life just spirals downhill.

Before I got to him,

I was starting to go through a rebellious stage.

Typical teen stuff,

but after the whole situation with him,

with how the girl that brought us there treated me,

I was different.

I was angry at myself about this...

putting myself in that position.

How stupid could I have been?

I started spiraling a little bit more

and definitely being more promiscuous.

It felt like, you know,

someone had already tooken something from me

that maybe I could have more control over

if I was making the calls,

and when you think that way, you really don't have control.

You're making hasty decisions because you're hurting so bad.

I was never the same after that.

The '90s and the 2000s

are the glory days for Jeffrey Epstein.

It's when he becomes what he really wanted to be,

which is a member of the billionaire class.

He was still rough around the edges.

You know, he was still this kid from Brooklyn.

He still had his Brooklyn accent.

He was ascending,

but there was still society in New York.

You had to know how to behave,

and you had to know how to know people,

and, you know, there was a club,

and Jeffrey was interested in being in that club.

It's sort of like "The Talented Mr. Ripley."

He was appropriating an identity,

trying it out.

I was surprised to find myself

in Jeffrey Epstein's little black book,

but nearly everyone in that book it seems

was a great friend of Ghislaine.

Ghislaine Maxwell is a British socialite,

and she was basically born

with a silver spoon in her mouth.

- The first time - I met Ghislaine was in 1999.

We met through a bunch of mutual friends

who'd been at Oxford with her.

I wrote afterwards,

"She's full of wicked good fun."

I'd like to know how many of you

would like to fly on a plane

if only 15% of planes were talking to air traffic control.

Anyone?

She was highly intelligent, and spending time with her,

you're so completely aware of how well-connected she is.

She is the youngest daughter of Robert Maxwell,

who was a British newspaper tycoon.

Ghislaine was doted on by her father

and he named his yacht Lady Ghislaine after her,

but in 1991,

Robert Maxwell, sailing around the Canary Islands,

died in mysterious circumstances.

When he died,

we learned that he'd been stealing

from the pension funds of his workers.

Hundreds of working class people

lose their retirement income

because of Maxwell's financial fraud.

Suddenly, all the money had vanished.

Her family were plagued by scandal.

They were hated in the UK,

so under this huge cloud, Ghislaine moves to America.

Lots of people are still trying to figure out

how Ghislaine and Jeffrey met.

I wish I knew, but it just seemed like

Jeffrey had very quickly taken the place of her father.

- At the time, - Epstein was on the rise.

Ghislaine's kind of on the way down

and they meet in the middle.

Both of them had something

that the other one desperately needed.

He was her boyfriend,

but she was also his gal Friday.

She leapt to the occasion when there was anything

that he needed that she could provide,

and she hugely expanded Jeffrey's social universe.

She opened doors for him to people like the Clintons,

to Prince Andrew.

You know, she introduced him to high society.

He was starting to get the money,

but he didn't have the finesse,

the class,

and that's what Ghislaine gave him.

You would agree, would you not,

that Ghislaine Maxwell shares your sexual obsession

for underage minor females?

- Argumentative. - Speculation.

Ghislaine Maxwell was intricately

involved with Jeffrey Epstein.

The two of them created this world that allowed

Jeffrey Epstein to abuse so many young women.

Mar-a-Lago spa is Donald Trump's place

in Palm Beach.

It's just gorgeous.

I'd only been at my job with Mar-a-Lago

for a couple weeks, but it didn't take me that long

to realize, like, this is where I wanna be.

This is what I wanna do.

My duties there were in the spa area,

so I would hand out fresh towels.

I loved working, just, with these, you know,

beautiful massage therapists and they'd come

and talk to me all the time and I was really interested.

So I went to a library.

I rented a book on massage therapy.

Ghislaine Maxwell approached me at the spa area.

She was, like, this really bright,

Mary Poppins kind of a... a figure and she said,

"Oh, you're reading a book on massage therapy,"

and, you know, we started talking.

And she goes, "Oh, you know what?

"I know this guy.

"There's an opportunity, actually.

"If you wanna become a real massage therapist,

"we can get you trained.

"You can come for the interview tonight,

"and if he likes you, then you'll be a real masseuse.

"And you'll get to see the world.

And you'll get paid $200 per massage,"

and it... like, no alarm bells went off

because it was this proper English lady

who just looked so nice.

And when I asked her why, and she said,

"Oh, we're like philanthropists.

"We like to go out and help people

and make people's lives better."

Epstein's victims have talked about

how they weren't sure who this guy was,

but because Ghislaine seemed so proper,

surely it's gotta be legit.

Her posh upbringing and her accent

gave this veneer of respectability.

Coming from a woman,

I think that was incredibly manipulative,

and I think it was absolutely critical

in Epstein's operation.

Jeffrey wasn't my first abuser.

At seven, when I started getting abused

by a family member,

my childhood was quickly stolen from me.

I just started kind of imploding.

I would, you know, run away.

I would be on the streets for days at a time.

So I was pretty vulnerable by the time I get to Mar-a-Lago.

When you are sexually assaulted as a child,

you are not learning about yourself

and your own agency

and what you do when you find yourself

in uncomfortable circumstances.

And you don't know the appropriate roles

between different individuals because everything is twisted.

Jeffrey Epstein knew how to manipulate those

who were especially vulnerable.

It was probably a five-minute drive

from Mar-a-Lago to El Brillo Way.

My dad brought me over.

When he shakes hands with Ghislaine,

she promises that she'll take good care of me

and she will have someone drive me home.

She led me up the staircase

and we made a right into Jeffrey's room.

And then you go curve around, see his bathroom...

And Jeffrey laying naked on the massage table.

Jeffrey lifts his head up, looks at Ghislaine,

Ghislaine looks at him,

and I call it the Cheshire Cat grin

because his face just went like this,

and it was like a nod of approval.

Ghislaine got me quickly into, like,

"Here's the lotions. Here's the oils.

"We're gonna each take half of his body

so you can follow my instructions."

It just looked like a legitimate massage.

Then they also started asking me questions about my life.

I really, really wanted this job,

so I opened up to them.

I said, "Look,

"this is an opportunity of a lifetime for me.

I've been on the streets. I've been abused."

And, um,

that's the worst thing that I could've done

'cause I just let them know that I'm vulnerable,

and, um, I'm their perfect type.

Whenever Ghislaine spoke about Jeffrey,

there was a kind of flash of excitement in her eyes.

She seemed utterly fascinated and thrilled

with the life that he offered her,

and it seemed like she would go to any kind of length

to satisfy his whims.

She'd been dating him for a little while

when she asked me to write a song for his birthday.

I barely knew him,

but Ghislaine was very specific

about certain phrases and information

that had to be in the song.

Jeffrey was turning 40,

so I figured it would be a big party.

Turned out there were only six guys wearing black tie.

Les Wexner was the dean of the Harvard Business School

and Itzhak Perlman the violinist was there,

smoking cigars and drinking brandy after dinner.

It felt like kind of a convention

of masters of the universe.

She asked me to knock on the door

at the appointed hour, walk in,

sit on the floor, and perform the song.

"Poor Jeffrey Epstein is 40. Oy vey.

"Life must be tough. His hair is already so gray.

"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.

"Sounds like he's busy. Now, ain't that berserk?

How does he find the time to get off to work?"

God, I feel so...

it seems so creepy reading it now, I'm afraid.

Um...

"He wakes when the cock crows while everyone slumbers.

"He rivals Einstein when crunching those numbers.

"Taught math at Dalton.

"The naughty boy blushes to think of school girls

and all of their crushes."

You know, kind of snickers in the room,

and it seemed like that was something

that was known about him at the time,

that he liked younger girls.

It's that odd thing of something that seems

tongue in cheek, but that you have no real sense

of how utterly depraved his intentions were.

I was told by Jeffrey and Ghislaine

during my very first so-called interview with them

that they had homes all over the world.

New Mexico, New York,

they were getting one in France,

and the Virgin Islands.

So you're instantly aware that these were

rich and powerfully persuasive people,

and so, the fear of that's like,

"What happens if I do say no?"

The massage seemed legitimate at first.

Ghislaine grabbed one foot, I grabbed the other,

and she says, "You always wanna keep one hand

on the body when you're massaging somebody,"

and then he turns over and the entire thing changed.

They said, "Take off your clothes."

I had these little girl undies on,

like, little hearts on them, I remember,

and they were laughing at that because they liked that.

The younger you look, the better it is.

So I... I stripped down. Ghislaine stripped down.

It turned in... it turned very sexual.

Um, it was abuse right away from both of them.

Stuff that I knew had... that I had already known, um,

because I'd been abused before, and it felt just like that.

My new happy brain just shut off,

and this old survival brain came back in.

It's a completely different person,

the person that takes over.

You know, very scared of saying the wrong thing,

doing the wrong thing,

and you do disassociate yourself

from who you know you are,

but who you have to be.

Afterwards, Ghislaine left the room

and Jeffrey was telling me I did a good job,

and I'm gonna go really far, and he's gonna get me educated,

and he was, like, really, really happy.

I mean, the cat that got the milk.

I got paid $200, and the butler drove me home.

They acted very normal about the situation.

They tried to validate what had happened.

From the outside perspective,

you understand the grooming involved

and what transpired in that room...

paying her heftily

for the work that had been done,

making it seem like it was appropriate,

what had transpired,

and then inviting her back again.

The shame was immediate.

I remember sitting at the bottom of my shower

and crying my eyes out.

I'd been on the streets and I thought, you know,

"Well, maybe this is the lesser of two evils."

I had the promise of an education,

and maybe this is just how the world works.

If abuse is so prevalent in my life,

maybe that's just what it is.

That's just life.

For individuals who've been sexually abused as a child,

this confirms that they don't have any meaning

beyond giving pleasure to somebody else.

Of course, you'd expect them to go back,

especially if there is even a glimmer of hope that

maybe something good will come out of this,

because it's a really devastating feeling

to be nothing.

Within the next few weeks,

Jeffrey and Ghislaine told me that I need to quit my job

with Mar-a-Lago because I'll be traveling with them

as their traveling masseuse.

You know, you ask yourself, like,

if I could talk to that 16-year-old girl again,

what would you tell her?

Bloody hell, I'd tell her, "Run for your life,"

but at 16, you just... I don't know, yeah, I was...

I was very intimidated by these people.

What I call it is invisible chains.

I mean, no, these girls were not tied up,

and people will say, "Well, they kept coming back.

Why did they keep coming back?"

These were not people to be crossed.

These were very significant people

with the ability, the power, the wealth

to destroy a life if they wanted to.

The first official complaint was in 2005.

Once the police started uncovering the number

of young girls that were involved in this network,

the investigation snowballed.

They put him under surveillance,

watching his house, seeing girls going in and out.

They execute a search warrant on the home,

even did a trash pull to investigate

what was being thrown out.

The shocking thing was the amount of evidence...

things like Amazon receipts for books about sex slavery,

flight logs,

message pads that had message after message.

A little girl calling in.

"I can bring this friend tonight for a massage."

"I can't go because my grandpa has a birthday."

Things that shock the conscience.

What you had in this investigation

was a rock solid prosecutable case

against a serial sexual predator.

I come home, it's super late at night,

and I turn on the TV, and I hear,

"Local Palm Beach billionaire arrested."

I don't, you know, think anything of it.

Well, then, that's Jeffrey Epstein's face on the TV.

So I instantly just call Jeffrey Epstein's assistant,

and she tells me,

"Everything's okay. Don't worry.

"Jeffrey only spent, like,

"a couple hours in jail and he's out.

"We have you an attorney, and basically,

if you don't say anything, you'll be taken care of."

There are numerous victims,

they've got compelling evidence,

but Epstein lawyers up.

He gets a dream team of lawyers.

His first call was to Alan Dershowitz,

tenacious attorney who fights cases

in the media all the time.

The job of a criminal defense lawyer

is always to get the best result

you can get ethically and legally.

And what they do according to lawsuits

filed by the victims and court papers

is essentially begin a campaign of harassment

and intimidation of the victims.

I mean, you don't put this attorney

at a local sports bar.

The things he's saying are, like, belittling towards me,

making it sound like I'm this prostitute.

I'm just 18 years old at this point.

I remember telling him, "Oh, I have to use the bathroom,"

and I just left.

They certainly had private investigators

following the young girls and pulling information.

There's a letter from Alan Dershowitz

to the prosecutors about

the little girls' Myspace pages,

saying he should pay attention

'cause this person's on drugs and alcohol.

It was really a takedown of the victims.

How do we make them seem not credible?

It's completely appropriate

to investigate complaining witnesses.

The complaining witnesses are fair game.

When I found out that they were calling

the young girls prostitutes,

I was worried that other people were gonna think that.

Were they gonna consider me a victim,

or were they gonna consider me a prostitute?

Well, it's kind of a hard thing to swallow.

What went wrong with this case

is that Barry Krischer,

the state attorney for Palm Beach County,

essentially just didn't believe the victims.

Barry Krischer seems to have said to himself,

"I believe the rich guy who lives in Palm Beach instead."

The Palm Beach police chief protested vigorously

when the State Attorney's office...

citing racy, suggestive web sites

created by some of the girls...

charged Epstein with a misdemeanor,

a solicitation of prostitution.

The case, however, did not go away.

It was referred to the FBI.

So it, then, at that point,

becomes a federal investigation.

I was so confused on what was happening.

The feds are coming to my house.

They're knocking on my door. They're showing up at my job.

They're, like, being super aggressive.

I don't really know what to think

'cause by this time, I'm 18.

I'm like, "Am I gonna go to prison for this?"

I was just trying to duck and dodge them.

I don't even wanna talk to them.

So they end up dropping, like,

papers off on my front doorstep,

and it turns out it's all the victims' reports

of the first time they went to Jeffrey's house,

and what happened and how they felt.

It immediately brings me back to the first time

I went to Jeffrey's, and it was like...

A flashback.

If I could describe how I felt and everything that happened

the first time I went,

it was this paper that I didn't write,

somebody else did.

And then I start looking through the box

and I see all these names of, like,

girls that I personally brought to him,

and it was just devastating.

For two days, I think I just stayed in my house

and cried about it.

For anybody that I recruited, like, I'm so sorry.

The guilt and shame in how I feel about

basically I lied to them and lured them in

to go see this guy...

I don't know if it's something that I'll ever,

really fully get over.

And at this point in summer 2007,

Epstein's lawyers realize this is bad news

because once you start getting the FBI involved,

the potential penalties for that client

are much more serious.

They start negotiating a plea deal in secret.

So I comply with the feds,

but when I called and I asked,

"What's happening with this case?"

Nobody can give me an answer.

They're transferring me, transferring me,

hanging up on me.

Nobody ever calls me back.

Shortly after, I find Brad Edwards.

Courtney walked in and she was very direct

and said, you know, "I'm Courtney Wild.

"I've been cooperating

"in a major federal investigation

"against Jeffrey Epstein, but I'm calling now

"and nobody's answering my questions.

So can you help?"

So I really thought I'm gonna call the US Attorney's office,

they're gonna tell me, "Look, it's a massive investigation.

He's probably going to plead to a life sentence,"

and instead, the lead prosecutor

gave me the impression something weird was happening.

There was a very significant cover-up going on,

unbeknownst to the victims.

And that would turn out to be one of the most

outrageous aspects of the case.

It made absolutely no sense.

When things like that don't make sense,

the first thing you look at is money,

power, and influence.

The reality was this was a well-oiled

sex trafficking operation,

which had been going on across much of America,

across different countries for years,

and he'd basically gotten away with it.