MANHATTAN (CN) — The first of several teenage victims of Jeffrey Epstein to take the witness stand in Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal trial recounted in sordid detail on Tuesday afternoon how she was recruited by Epstein and Maxwell for years of traumatic sexual abuse after first meeting the pair at a Michigan arts summer camp when she was 14.
Maxwell, 59, is accused of being Epstein’s “best friend and right hand,” who groomed girls as young as 14 years old to be sexually abused by Epstein — sometimes with her own participation — over the span of a decade, from 1994 to 2004.
When federal prosecutors finally made their opening argument of Maxwell’s long-awaited trial in Manhattan federal court on Monday afternoon, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz began the government’s case to jurors, “I want to tell you about a young girl named Jane.”
On day two of Maxwell's trial, the government called a minor victim of Epstein's abuse to testify under the pseudonym Jane, the first of four victim witnesses expected to testify to having been groomed underage sex abuse allegedly facilitated by Maxwell during the decade of the charged crimes. Two others are expected to also testify under pseudonyms.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Alison Moe led the prosecution’s direct questioning of Jane, who testified on Tuesday that she first met Maxwell and Epstein in the summer of 1994 at the Interlochen summer camp for the arts, where Epstein counted himself as an alumnus.
Just 14 years old at the time, Jane was attending the renowned arts camp in northwest Michigan less than a year after he father died of leukemia.
“I was on a park bench or picnic bench with my friends, we were eating ice cream,” she testified on Tuesday afternoon. “We see this tall, thin woman approach us; she was walking with a cute little Yorkie,” she described.
As Jane began petting the dog, she said she found herself talking with the woman and male companion, who turned out to be Jeffrey Epstein and Ghisaline Maxwell.
Jane found herself alone with the pair and provided her mother’s phone number after divulging that she was from Florida, where Epstein kept one of his multiple lavish homes. Upon to her return to South Florida, where she was attending a public middle school for the performing arts that fall, Epstein called Jane’s home to invite her and her mother over to his opulent Palm Beach home for tea.
Jane recalled on Tuesday that Epstein told mother during tea, “I like to mentor young students who are artists. I love music, and I love dance, and I give all kinds of scholarships.”
In the months shortly after that meeting in 1994, Jane testified that as a 14 year old, she began seeing Epstein “once every week or two,” mostly hanging out by the pool and kitchen at his Palm Beach home or going to the movies. The visits soon became of an increasingly sexual nature.
Jane described once seeing Maxwell and other women lounging by the pool “all topless, and some of them were naked.”
“I was just shocked because I hadn’t seen that before,” she said on the witness stand.
Jane testified that she found Maxwell at the time to be “a little bit odd and quirky,” but that she saw her as a sort of “older sister.”
“She would ask me what I was up to, if I had a boyfriend,” Jane testified, recalling how Maxwell passed along a puzzling adage about boyfriends and dating, “Once you fuck them, you can always fuck them again because they’re grandfathered in.”
Jane testified to that Epstein preceded his first sexual encounter with her by asking her what professional or artistic field she wanted to go into. “I can make things happen, you just have to be ready for it,” Jane testified Epstein said to her before abruptly ending the conversation and taking her by her hand into a poolhouse, where he pulled her on top of himself and masturbated.
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