Ghislaine Maxwell ‘ordered girls to dance and kiss’ for Epstein

‘Room full of under-age girls’ told to dance, kiss and touch each other in front of Jeffrey Epstein: court documents.

Ghislaine Maxwell ordered a “room full of under-age girls” to dance, kiss and touch one other in front of Jeffrey Epstein and stole the passport of an alleged victim after she refused to have sex with him, it is alleged in court documents.

Papers released on Wednesday night in New York cite an unnamed witness who claims that he watched Ms Maxwell “direct” the girls to engage in the sexual activity at Epstein’s mansion in Manhattan.

The documents say that the same witness, reported in 2019 to be Rinaldo Rizzo, a butler who worked for the hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin and his wife, Eva Andersson-Dubin, was “in tears” as he recalled how a 15-year-old Swedish girl had told him that Ms Maxwell had stolen her passport and tried to “make her have sex with Epstein”.

Mr Rizzo said that he had found the girl crying in the kitchen in Epstein’s New York property and heard her describe her alleged treatment at the hands of Ms Maxwell while she was at Epstein’s US Virgin Islands property.

The allegations were among 112 court documents relating to a lawsuit between Ms Maxwell, 59, and Virginia Roberts Giuffre, 37, who sued her for defamation.

A residence belonging to Jeffrey Epstein at East 71st street is seen on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. Picture: Kevin Hagen/Getty Images

She claims that she was lent out by Ms Maxwell and Epstein to have sex with other men, including the Duke of York. Prince Andrew has denied the allegations.

‘Recruited to have sex with Epstein’

Some of the allegations appear in a motion filed by Ms Giuffre’s lawyers, who claimed that as the case went on, “more and more witnesses come forward testifying about [Maxwell’s] involvement in the sexual abuse of young girls.” One witness, whose name is redacted, “testified that [Ms Maxwell] recruited her from her school campus to have sex with Epstein with lies about being her personal assistant”, the lawyers say.

Ms Maxwell is being held in a Brooklyn prison on child grooming charges in a separate case. She has pleaded not guilty to helping Epstein to recruit and groom three girls for sex in Manhattan in the mid-1990s, and perjury. She has been refused bail twice since being arrested in July at her home in New Hampshire.

Meanwhile, Ms Maxwell said that she had learnt of the accusations against Epstein “like everybody else, like the rest of the world, when it was announced in the papers” in a 2016 deposition also made public overnight.

Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell together in 2005 in New York. Picture: Getty Images

Asked if she tried to learn whether the assertions were accurate, Ms Maxwell was prevented by her lawyer from answering. She indicated that she left employment with Epstein because she “ceased to be happy in the job and I ceased to be happy spending time with Mr Epstein”.

Lawyers for the Miami Herald, which sought the documents’ release, and for Ms Giuffre said that her real concern “is concealing potential evidence of perjury”.

Redactions to the deposition were made after Judge Loretta Preska ruled that any testimony addressing Ms Maxwell’s sexual relations with adults could remain sealed. Lawyers for Ms Maxwell had argued it could affect potential jurors for her trial in July.

The Times