Jeffrey Epstein is being sued by another alleged victim, according to a new court document.
The jet-setting financier and accused child sex trafficker, who is in jail awaiting trial after a judge denied him bail, was served the day before he was found injured in his cell following a mysterious incident still being investigated by authorities.
Epstein was served July 22 with the proposed lawsuit, which is being brought by alleged Epstein victim Jennifer Araoz. Araoz claims that in 2002 and 2003 Epstein “committed repeated sexual assault and battery” against her while she was a 14- and 15-year-old high school student and that Epstein’s alleged crimes included “forcibly raping” her during one of her visits to his Upper East Side mansion.
The lawsuit is expected to be formally filed after Aug. 14.
A day later, on July 23, Epstein was reportedly found nearly unconscious on his cell floor with marks on his neck, which seemed to indicate he’d been choked. Investigators have questioned Nicholas Tartaglione, a former police officer jailed on murder charges connected to drug-related killings in upstate New York, but the ex-cop has denied any involvement through his attorney. Investigators are still also considering whether the incident was an attempted suicide or a staged ploy as part of an effort to get transferred to a new prison.
The lawsuit will also be filed against three yet-unnamed Epstein employees, referred to only as the “recruiter,” “secretary,” and “maid” in the court documents. It claims the recruiter tried to befriend her by repeatedly approaching her outside Talent Unlimited High School during her freshman year, talking about her family, offering to buy her lunches, and calling Epstein a “nice guy” who would “be there for her” and that “you have to see his house.”
The lawsuit alleges that Epstein’s secretary began “scheduling arrangements for her to visit Epstein’s home alone,” and Epstein’s maid would facilitate massages and would “leave $300 in a drawer in the massage room” at the end of these incidents.
These encounters allegedly involved Epstein asking her to remove articles of clothing and masturbating in front of her, and at least one such improper encounter allegedly ended in rape.
Along with the proposed lawsuit, Epstein was also served with a subpoena to compel him to preserve and turn over records identifying all of his employees as well as logs of all the visitors to his home from the start of 2000 through the end of 2003. Epstein’s attorneys can challenge this proposed order in court in August.
The 14-page indictment against Epstein unsealed in the Southern District of New York earlier in July alleges that Epstein “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls at his homes in Manhattan, New York and Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations” between 2002 and 2005 and perhaps beyond.
Prosecutors claim that Epstein “enticed and recruited, and caused to be enticed and recruited, minor girls … to engage in sex acts with him” and that he would then “give the victims hundreds of dollars in cash.” Some of the victims were as young as 14 at the time the alleged crimes occurred.
An unnamed New York-based employee and two unnamed assistants in Palm Beach would help with scheduling some of these encounters, prosecutors allege, and Epstein would also contact some of the victims directly.
Prosecutors also say that Epstein paid some of his victims to recruit other underage girls to be abused, alleging that Epstein “created a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit in locations including New York and Palm Beach” and that he “maintained a steady supply of new victims to exploit.”
The wealthy financier, already a convicted sex offender following a sweetheart plea deal in 2008, was arrested at the airport in Teterboro, New Jersey, after returning from an overseas trip to Paris. Epstein’s home in New York City was raided by law enforcement as well, and investigators found nude photographs of underage girls, thousands of dollars in cash, dozens of loose diamonds, and a foreign passport from the 1980s with Epstein’s picture and a false name.
The federal judge in the case said that Epstein poses a “significant” danger to the community and agreed with prosecutors that he is “a serious risk of flight.”
