Epstein faces new accuser

The jailed American financier Jeffrey Epstein is alleged to have groomed and raped a 15-year-old girl.

Jeffrey Epstein appears in court in West Palm Beach on Monday. Picture: AP

A new accuser of Jeffrey Epstein says the wealthy financier raped her in his New York mansion when she was 15.

The claim emerged yesterday as US Labour Secretary Alex Acosta was forced to defend his handling of the sex-trafficking case involving the now jailed ­Epstein, insisting he got the toughest deal he could at the time.

Jennifer Araoz filed court ­papers seeking information from ­Epstein in preparation for suing him and she aired her allegations on NBC’s Today show, though she says she has yet to discuss them with authorities.

An image provided by the New York State Sex Offender Registry shows Jeffrey Epstein. Picture: AP

The 32-year-old make-up artist says she never went to police ­because she feared retribution from the well-connected Epstein, who is now facing federal charges of abusing dozens of underage girls in New York and Florida in the early 2000s. He has pleaded not guilty.

“What hurts me even more so is that if I wasn’t afraid to come forward sooner, then maybe he wouldn’t have done it to other girls,” Araoz said yesterday. “I feel really guilty to this day.”

Messages were left with Epstein’s lawyers and New York police seeking comment on Araoz’s claims. The US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan declined to comment on them.

The accusation came two days after Epstein, 66, a Wall Street master of high finance with friends in very high places, pleaded not guilty to sex-trafficking and conspiracy charges. The indictment could land him behind bars for up to 45 years if he is convicted.

‘Preyed upon’

Epstein has not been charged with assaulting Araoz. But her account contradicts his lawyer’s contention that Epstein never used violence or coerced anyone who gave him massages.

“She was a child — a child on welfare, with no father, who was groomed, recruited and preyed upon,” says Kimberly Lerner, who represents Araoz. Araoz’s father died when she was 12.

US Attorney Geoffrey Berman said this week that many of ­Epstein’s alleged victims “were particularly vulnerable to exploitation”, for reasons he declined to detail. He and other law enforcement officials repeatedly urged other potential victims and people with information about Epstein to come forward.

Araoz, in her court filing and TV interview, says her first contact with Epstein came in 2001, when she was a 14-year-old student at a performing arts high school, aspiring to become an actress.

Jennifer Araoz shares her story yesterday.

She says she was approached outside her school by a woman who told her Epstein was a caring person who would help her with her career. Araoz found Epstein welcoming, showing her his mansion filled with exotic taxidermy and elaborately painted ceilings, while his staff offered her wine and cheese, she said.

After a few weeks of visits, each ending with a $US300 payment, she says she was escorted to a “massage room”, with a ceiling painted to resemble angels in a blue sky. There, she says, she gave him massages that often led to sex acts.

“I take care of you, you take care of me,” Epstein told her, according to her court papers.

She says Epstein had a painting of a naked woman that he said ­resembled her. She also recalled prosthetic breasts he would play with while bathing.

“It was very odd,” she said yesterday.

‘I was terrified’

The visits continued once or twice a week until she turned 15, when she says Epstein told her to remove her underwear and climb on top of him. She said she told him she didn’t want to but that he forcibly had sex with her anyway.

“I don’t want to say I was screaming, or anything of that ­nature. But I was terrified. And I was telling him to stop,” she says.

A 15-year-old Jennifer Araoz.

“He had no intentions of stopping. He knew exactly what he was doing.”

Araoz says she was “terrified” after the assault and never returned to Epstein’s home. She even left her high school because it was so close to his mansion. Epstein’s staff continued trying to contact her for about a year, Araoz says, but she refused to respond.

A once-secret agreement allowed Epstein to avoid a potentially lengthy prison sentence nearly a decade ago in a case ­involving nearly identical allegations of sexually abusing underage girls.

Epstein pleaded guilty to lesser state charges and spent 13 months in jail. That plea deal was supposed to protect him from federal prosecution, his lawyers say. They argue the new federal charges should be dismissed.

They were brought by federal prosecutors in New York, who say the Florida deal does not apply to them. They say the new charges overlap with the earlier case but include new allegations and victims from New York.

Acosta defends role

In a nearly hour-long news conference yesterday, Acosta retraced the steps that federal prosecutors took in the case when he was US attorney for the Southern District of Florida a decade ago, insisting that “in our heart we were trying to do the right thing for these ­victims”.

He said prosecutors were working to avoid a more lenient arrangement that would have allowed Epstein to “walk free”.

“We believe that we proceeded appropriately,” he said, a contention challenged by critics who say Epstein’s penalty was egregiously light.

While the handling of the case arose during Acosta’s confirmation hearings, it has come under fresh and intense scrutiny after the prosecutors in New York brought their charges on Monday, alleging Epstein abused dozens of underage girls in the early 2000s, paying them hundreds of dollars in cash for massages, then molesting them at his homes in Florida and New York.

Acosta’s lawyerly presentation was an effort to push back against growing criticism of his work in a secret 2008 plea deal that let Epstein avoid federal prosecution on charges that he molested teenage girls.

U.S. Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta. Picture: AFP

A West Palm Beach judge found this year that the deal had violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act because the victims were not informed or consulted.

Acosta also was out to persuade US President Donald Trump to keep him on the job as Labour Secretary, as Democratic presidential candidates and party leaders called for his ouster.

Acosta insisted his office did the best it could under the circumstances a decade ago.

He said state authorities had planned to go after Epstein with charges that would have resulted in no jail time, until his office intervened and pressed for tougher consequences, a contention that is supported by the record. The alternative, he said, would have been for federal prosecutors to “roll the dice” and hope to win a conviction.

“We did what we did because we wanted to see Epstein go to jail,” Acosta said.

“He needed to go to jail.”

Different world

But Epstein was given only 13 months in a work-release program that let him work out of the jail six days a week.

Acosta said it was “entirely appropriate” to be outraged about that leniency, but he blamed that on Florida authorities.

“Everything the victims have gone through in these cases is horrific,” he said, while repeatedly refusing to apologise to them.

“I think it’s important to stand up for the prosecutors (in his old office).”

Pressed on whether he had any regrets, Acosta repeatedly suggested that circumstances had changed since the case arose.

“We now have 12 years of knowledge and hindsight and we live in a very different world,” he said. “Today’s world treats victims very, very differently.”

Backed by Trump

Trump, meanwhile, has defended Acosta, praising his work as Labour Secretary and saying he felt “very badly” for him “because I’ve known him as being somebody that works so hard and has done such a good job”.

Though Trump may have made the tagline “You’re fired!” ­famous on his reality show The Apprentice, he has demonstrated a pattern of reluctance to fire even his most embattled aides.

For instance, it took the President months to dismiss Scott Pruitt as Environmental Protection Agency administrator despite a dizzying array of scandals, and he let Jeff Sessions remain attorney-general for more than a year, even as he railed at and belittled him.

Trump typically gives his cabinet secretaries the opportunity to defend themselves publicly in interviews and press conferences before deciding whether to pull the plug. Indeed, he encouraged Acosta to hold yesterday’s press conference laying out his thinking and involvement in the plea deal, according to a senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Early reaction in the White House appeared to be positive, with one official saying the performance was likely enough to buy Acosta more time unless questions about his part in the 2008 case linger in the news.

Vice-President Mike Pence said he was “pleased to see Secretary Acosta step forward”.

Trump has his own long personal history with Epstein, but has dissociated himself from the wealthy hedge fund manager, saying this week the two had a falling out 15 or so years ago and hadn’t spoken since.

Acosta said his relationship with the President remained “outstanding”.

AP