‘Massage’ was code for ‘sex’ for Jeffrey Epstein, accuser says in court documents

A rotating cast of girls would sit around Jeffrey Epstein’s waterfront mansion, drinking milk.

To Alfredo Rodriguez, Epstein’s butler in the mid-2000s, that was one reason he suspected that his boss was engaged in sexual activities with underage girls. At times, Rodriguez later told a Florida police detective in a sworn statement, he was instructed to dispense hundreds of dollars to the girls after they performed massages for Epstein; at other times, Rodriguez gave them “tips” in the form of iPods and jewelry.

Manhattan federal prosecutors last month charged Epstein, 66, with sex trafficking of girls as young as 14, and details of his behavior have been emerging for years.

But a cache of previously sealed legal documents, released today by a federal appeals court, provides new, disturbing details about what was going on inside Epstein’s homes and how his associates recruited young women and girls, including from a Florida high school.

The documents — among the most expansive sets of materials publicly disclosed in the 13 years since Epstein was first charged with sex crimes — include depositions, police incident reports, photographs, receipts, flight logs and even a memoir written by a woman who says she was a sex-trafficking victim of Epstein and his acquaintances.

The documents were filed as part of a defamation lawsuit in federal court that Virginia Giuffre brought in 2015 against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime companion and confidante. Giuffre and Maxwell settled the lawsuit shortly before the trial was to begin in 2017.

The Miami Herald and other media outlets petitioned the court to have the lawsuit documents unsealed. The request was initially denied, but an appeals court ordered them released last month, just days before Epstein was arrested on sex-trafficking charges. He has pleaded not guilty.

Epstein, a financier with opulent homes, a private jet and access to elite circles, had been dogged for decades by accusations that he had paid dozens of girls for sexual acts in Florida. He previously avoided federal criminal charges in 2008 after prosecutors brokered a widely criticized deal that allowed him to plea to solicitation of prostitution from a minor and serve 13 months in jail.

About 2,000 pages of the materials were posted online by the appeals court today, providing a high-definition glimpse inside what federal prosecutors have said was Epstein’s long-running sex-trafficking operation.

The fullest account is provided by Giuffre, who claims that Epstein forced her into being a “sex slave.”

In a sworn deposition, she said she first met Maxwell, the daughter of British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell, and Epstein in the summer of 2000, when she was 16. At the time, Giuffre was working as a masseuse at the spa at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where her father was a maintenance worker.

She said she was sitting outside the locker room, reading a book on massage therapy, when Maxwell approached her. She said she knew someone who was looking for a traveling masseuse. “If the guy likes you, then, you know, it will work out for you. You’ll travel. You’ll make good money. You’ll be educated,” Giuffre recalled Maxwell telling her.

Giuffre took the job. Maxwell trained her on how to give erotic massages, and Giuffre soon began providing them to Epstein at his mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. Before long, she said, she was being flown on Epstein’s private Gulfstream jet to perform sexual services on Epstein’s acquaintances, including politicians and high-powered businessmen.

The word “massage” became code for “sex,” she said in the 2016 deposition.

“My whole life revolved around just pleasing these men and keeping Ghislaine and Jeffrey happy,” she said. “Their whole entire lives revolved around sex. They call massages sex. They call modeling sex.”

Maxwell’s depositions provide, for the first time, a glimpse at her perspective. She denounced Giuffre, saying that “everything Virginia has said is an absolute lie.” Lawyers for Maxwell were out of the country and unavailable for comment today, their office said.

In court papers, the lawyers painted Giuffre as a troubled woman with a history of substance abuse and a turbulent personal life. They said her allegations shifted and became more lurid as she sought to sell her story to the media and publishers.

Giuffre had said she wrote her recollections of her experiences in a journal but burned it in a bonfire that she and her husband built in their Titusville, Florida, backyard in 2013, according to court papers.

Back at Epstein’s opulent Palm Beach home, partially shielded from view by a large hedge, it was hard for workers to miss what was happening.

John Alessi, a maintenance worker there from 1990 until about 2001, said he saw about 100 female masseuses at various times in the house.

After massages, Alessi said in a deposition, he occasionally found sex toys in Maxwell’s bathroom in the mansion. He said he put gloves on, rinsed the instruments and placed them in a closet.

Rodriguez, Epstein’s butler, had a similar recollection. In July 2006, he told a Palm Beach police detective in a sworn statement that after girls gave massages to Epstein, Rodriguez would go into his bedroom to wipe down vibrators and sex toys and then stash them in a wooden armoire near Epstein’s bed.

On occasion, Alessi said, he drove Maxwell from one Palm Beach spa to another, where she left her business cards to recruit massage therapists for Epstein.

Maxwell recruited Johanna Sjoberg in 2001 on the campus of Palm Beach Atlantic College, where she was a student. Sjoberg said in a deposition that Maxwell dangled a job as a personal assistant. She figured she could make some quick money answering phones for Epstein.

But that was not what the job entailed. Once at Epstein’s mansion, Sjoberg said, she was told to perform sexual massages on Epstein — and was punished when he did not have an orgasm.

Around the mansion, massage tables were ubiquitous, even in outdoor spaces and in guest rooms, where Epstein would send women to service houseguests. “A massage was like a treat for all the guests at Mr. Epstein’s home,” Alessi said in an affidavit.

Rodriguez, the butler, told a Palm Beach police detective, Joseph Recarey, that he suspected the girls were underage in part because their eating habits reminded him of his daughter, who was in high school.

“Rodriguez stated they would eat tons of cereal and drink milk all the time,” according to a report Recarey filed. Rodriguez died in 2015.

Also among the unsealed materials was an Amazon shipping document that shows a book on “erotic servitude” and a “Workbook for Erotic Slaves and Their Owners,” both of which were delivered to Epstein at his Palm Beach home.

Lawyers for Epstein did not respond to requests for comment.

The documents traced the investigation conducted by the Palm Beach Police Department, led by Recarey. With the help of the local sanitation department, investigators sifted through Epstein’s trash, which yielded written phone messages, sometimes leading police to potential victims.

Recarey, who retired in 2013 after more than two decades on the force, said in a 2016 deposition that he interviewed about 30 girls who were sought to give massages. Some of the girls were terrified and tearful as he interviewed them.

A number of the girls, including one who was 15 at the time, said they were brought to Epstein’s Palm Beach house and told they could make money by modeling lingerie for him, according to reports that Recarey filed and that were unsealed.

Once at the mansion, a chef would prepare the girls a meal. Then they would be escorted upstairs to the master bedroom. Epstein, clad in a towel, often would request that she massage his feet and calves. He would touch the girls while masturbating under his towel. They were generally paid $200 per visit.

Rodriguez told Recarey, who died last year, that he was a “human ATM,” required to always have at least $2,000 on hand to pay the women and girls. Once, Epstein instructed him to deliver a dozen roses to one of the girls at her high school after a drama performance.