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3 hours ago
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I can still remember walking on to the manicured grounds of Mar-a-Lago for the first time. It was early morning – my dad’s shift began at 7am, and I’d caught a ride to work with him. Already the air was heavy and moist, and the club’s 20 acres of carefully landscaped greens and lawns seemed to shimmer.
My dad was responsible for maintaining the resort’s in-room air-conditioning units, not to mention its five championship tennis courts, so he knew his way around. I remember he gave me a brief tour before presenting me to the hiring manager, who agreed to take me on. That first day, I was given a uniform – a white polo shirt, emblazoned with the Mar-a-Lago crest, and a short white skirt – and a name tag that said JENNA in all capital letters. (Although I was called Virginia, everyone at home called me Jenna.)
After a few days, my dad said he wanted to introduce me to Mr Trump himself. They weren’t friends, exactly. But Dad worked hard, and Trump liked that – I’d seen photos of them posing together, shaking hands. So one day my father took me to Trump’s office. “This is my daughter,” Dad said, and his voice sounded proud. Trump couldn’t have been friendlier, telling me it was fantastic that I was there. “Do you like kids?” he asked. “Do you babysit at all?” He explained that he owned several houses next to the resort that he lent to friends. Soon I was making extra money a few nights a week, minding the children of the elite.
But it was my day job that gave me my first real vision of a better future. The spa, like the resort itself, was gilded, with luxe finishes and an immaculate, sparkling decor. There were giant gold bathtubs, like something a god would soak in. I marvelled at how peaceful everyone seemed to feel within its walls. My duties – making tea, tidying the bathrooms, restocking towels – kept me just outside the inner sanctum of the massage rooms, but I could see how relaxed clients looked when they emerged. I seized on the idea that, with the right training, I could eventually make a living by helping others reduce stress. Maybe, I thought, their healing would fuel my own.
Then one steaming hot day some weeks before my 17th birthday, I was walking toward the Mar-a-Lago spa, on my way to work, when a car slowed behind me. Inside was a British socialite named Ghislaine Maxwell and her driver, Juan Alessi, whom she insisted on calling “John”. Alessi would later testify under oath that on this day, when Maxwell spotted me – my long blond hair, my slim build, and what he called my notably “young” appearance – she commanded him from the back seat, “Stop, John, stop!”
Alessi did as he was told, and I found out later that Maxwell got out and followed me. I didn’t know it yet, but an apex predator was closing in.
Picture a girl in a crisp white uniform sitting behind a marble reception desk. The girl is slender, with the freckled face of a child, and her long blond hair is held back with a tie. On this blisteringly hot afternoon, the spa is mostly empty, so the girl is at the front desk, reading a book about anatomy that she’s borrowed from the library. The girl hopes that studying this book will give her something she’s lacked for too long: purpose. What would it be like, she wonders, to excel at something?
I look up from my book to see a striking woman with short dark hair striding toward me.
“Hello,” the woman says warmly. She looks to be in her late 30s, and her British accent reminds me of Mary Poppins. I couldn’t tell you which designers she’s wearing, but I bet her purse cost more than my dad’s truck. The woman extends her manicured hand for me to shake. “Ghislaine Maxwell,” she says, pronouncing her first name “Giilen”. I point to my name tag. “I’m Jenna,” I say, smiling like I’ve been told to smile. The woman’s eyes alight on my book, which I’ve jammed with sticky notes. “Are you interested in massage?” she asks. “How wonderful!”
Remembering my duties, I offer this mesmerising woman a beverage, and she chooses hot tea. I go and fetch it, returning with a steaming cup. I expect that to be the end of it, but the woman keeps on talking. Maxwell says she knows a wealthy man – a longtime Mar-a-Lago member, she says – who is looking for a massage therapist to travel with him. “Come meet him,” she says. “Come tonight after work.”
Even today, more than 20 years later, I remember how excited I felt. As instructed, I wrote down her phone number and her rich friend’s address: 358 El Brillo Way. “See you later, I hope,” Maxwell said, waving her right hand by twisting it slightly at the wrist. Then she was gone.
A few hours later, Dad gave me a lift to El Brillo Way. The drive took five minutes, and we didn’t talk much. No one ever had to explain to my father the importance of making a buck.
When we arrived we found ourselves in front of a sprawling two-storey, six-bedroom mansion. In countless TV documentaries, this house has been shown painted a tasteful white, as it was years later. But in the summer of 2000, the home we pulled up to was a garish pink, the colour of Pepto-Bismol.
I jumped out of the car before my dad could turn off the engine, walked to the big wooden front door, and rang the bell. Maxwell answered and came outside. “Thank you so very much for dropping her off,” she told Dad, all smiles, but, in retrospect, she seemed impatient for him to leave.
“Jeffrey has been waiting to meet you,” she said, starting up the stairs. “Come.”
Walking behind her, I tried not to stare at the walls, which were crowded with photos and paintings of nude women. Maybe this was how wealthy people with sophisticated taste decorated their homes?
When we reached the second-floor landing, Maxwell turned right and led me into a bedroom. We made a U-turn around a king-size bed, then entered an adjoining room with a massage table. A naked man lay face down on top of it, his head resting on his folded arms, but when he heard us enter, he lifted up slightly to look around at me. I remember his bushy eyebrows and the deep lines in his face as he grinned.
“Say hello to Mr Jeffrey Epstein,” Maxwell instructed. But before I could do so, the man spoke to me: “You can just call me Jeffrey.” He was 47 years old – nearly three times older than me.
Faced with Epstein’s bare backside, I looked to Maxwell for guidance. I had never had a massage before, let alone given one. But still I thought, “Isn’t he supposed to be under a sheet?” Maxwell’s blase expression indicated that nudity was normal. “Calm down,” I told myself. “Don’t blow this chance.”
Palm Beach was just 16 miles from my home town, Loxahatchee, but the economic divide made it seem way farther. I needed to learn how rich people did things. Besides, while the man on the table was nude, it’s not like I was alone with him. The fact that a woman was with me made me breathe easier.
She began the lesson. When giving a massage, she said, I should keep one palm on the client’s skin at all times, so as never to startle him. “Continuity and flow are key,” she explained. We started in on his heels and arches, then moved up his body. When we got to his buttocks, I tried to glide past them, landing on his lower back. But Maxwell put her hands on top of mine and guided them to his rear. “It’s important that you don’t ignore any part of the body,” she said. “If you skip around, the blood won’t flow right.”
Only later would I see how, step by practised step, the two of them were breaking down my defences. Every time I felt a twinge of discomfort, one glance at Maxwell told me I was overreacting. And so it went for about half an hour: a seemingly legitimate massage lesson.
Epstein asked me questions. “Do you have siblings?” Two brothers, I said. “Where do you go to high school?” I told him I’d quit after ninth grade, but I was only 16. “Do you take birth control?” Epstein asked. Was that a weird question in a job interview? Epstein indicated this was just his way of getting to know me. After all, I might soon be travelling with him. I told him I was on the pill.
“You’re doing great,” Maxwell said, as I kept my hands in sync with hers.
“Tell me about your first time,” Epstein said then. I hesitated. Who’d ever heard of an employer asking an applicant about losing her virginity? But I wanted this job, so I took a deep breath and described my rough childhood. I’d been abused by a family friend, I said vaguely, and spent time on the street as a runaway. Epstein didn’t recoil. Instead, he made light of it, teasing me for being “a naughty girl”.
“Not at all,” I said defensively. “I’m a good girl. I’ve just always found myself in the wrong places.”
Epstein lifted his head and smirked at me. “It’s OK,” he said. “I like naughty girls.”
Then he rolled over on to his back, and I was startled to see he had an erection. Without thinking, I raised both my hands, holding them up in the air as if to say, “Stop.” But when I looked at Maxwell, she remained unfazed. Ignoring his aroused penis, she put both hands on his right pectoral muscles and began kneading. “Like this,” she said, continuing as if nothing were amiss. “You want to push the blood away from the heart.”
Epstein winked at her then and moved his right hand down to his crotch. “You don’t mind, do you?” he asked as he began stroking himself.
This is the moment that something cracked inside me. How else to explain why my memories of what came next are splintered into jagged shards? Maxwell peeling off her clothes, a mischievous look on her face; Maxwell behind me, unzipping my skirt and pulling my Mar-a-Lago polo shirt over my head; Epstein and Maxwell laughing at my underwear, which were dotted with tiny hearts. “How cute – she still wears little girl’s panties,” Epstein said. He reached for a vibrator, which he forced between my thighs, as Maxwell commanded me to pinch Epstein’s nipples as she rubbed her own breasts, and mine.
A familiar emptiness flooded me. How many times had I put my faith in someone, only to be hurt and humiliated? I could feel my brain begin to shut down. My body couldn’t escape from this room, but my mind couldn’t bear to stay, so it put me on a kind of autopilot: submissive and determined to survive.
So many young women, myself included, have been criticised for returning to Epstein’s lair even after we knew what he wanted from us. How can you complain about being abused, some have asked, when you could so easily have stayed away? But that stance discounts what many of us had been through before we encountered Epstein, as well as how good he was at spotting girls whose wounds made them vulnerable. Several of us had been molested or raped as children; many of us were poor or even homeless. We were girls who no one cared about, and Epstein pretended to care. A master manipulator, he threw what looked like a lifeline to girls who were drowning. If they wanted to be dancers, he offered dance lessons. If they aspired to be actors, he said he’d help them get roles. And then, he did his worst to them.
One day, probably two weeks after I’d met them, Epstein upped the ante. I was upstairs, cleaning up after another “massage”, when Epstein told me to come to his office. “How about you quit your job at Mar-a-Lago,” he said, “and work for me full-time?” He wanted to make things easier on me, he said. But he had a few conditions. As his employee, I would be at his beck and call, day and night. And another thing: I could no longer live in my parents’ trailer. Seeing me come and go at all hours might make them suspicious, he said. He held out a wad of cash – probably $2,500. “Use this,” he said, “to rent yourself an apartment.”
I’d never held that much money in my hand before. I thanked him, even as a twinge of worry crept into my head. By this point, I had seen dozens of girls coming and going from his house. Many came once and never returned. If he got rid of them so quickly, would Epstein eventually throw me away, too? Epstein must’ve sensed my qualms, because he walked around his desk, picked up a grainy photograph, and handed it to me. The image had been taken from some distance, but it was unmistakably my little brother. I felt a stab of fear.
“We know where your brother goes to school,” Epstein said. He let that sink in for a moment, then got to the point: “You must never tell a soul what goes on in this house.” He was smiling, but his threat was clear. “And I own the Palm Beach police department,” he said, “so they won’t do anything about it.”
From the start, Epstein and Maxwell held me to my promise to be available at all times. Some days, the call would come in the morning. I’d show up, perform whatever sex acts Epstein wanted, then hang out beside his vast swimming pool while he got some work done. If Maxwell was there, I was often told to attend to her sexually as well. She kept a bin of vibrators and sex toys handy for these sessions. But she never demanded sex from me one-on-one – only when we were with Epstein. Sometimes there were other girls there, too, and I’d end up staying at El Brillo Way all day.
In October 2000, Maxwell jetted off to New York to meet up with her old friend Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth II’s second-born son. On Halloween, along with other guests that included Donald Trump and his future wife Melania Knauss, Maxwell and Prince Andrew attended a party hosted by German supermodel Heidi Klum at The Hudson, a swank hotel. Maxwell was proud of her friendships with famous people, especially men. She loved to talk about how easily she could get former president Bill Clinton on the phone; she and Epstein had visited the White House together when Clinton was in office.
While they usually slept in separate bedrooms, and rarely kissed or held hands, it seemed to me that Maxwell and Epstein lived in complete symbiosis. Epstein, who described Maxwell as his best friend, valued her knack for connecting him to powerful people. Maxwell, in turn, appreciated that Epstein had the resources to fund the lavish life she thought she deserved yet had trouble affording after the death of her father, the media mogul Robert Maxwell. In social settings, Maxwell often appeared vivacious, the life of the party. But in Epstein’s household, she functioned more as a party planner: scheduling and organising the endless parade of girls who she recruited to have sex with him. Over time, I would come to see Epstein and Maxwell less as boyfriend and girlfriend, and more as two halves of a wicked whole.
When I think back on this period, I’m not proud of myself. Even though the adult me knows that the child me was battling just to survive, I wince at how passive I had become. I was turning more and more to Xanax and other drugs, which were prescribed by doctors Maxwell sent me to. Sometimes, when I was really struggling, I took as many as eight Xanax a day.
Epstein and Maxwell began lending me out to their friends. The first time, he made it sound as if he were launching me on an exciting new phase of my “massage training”. My new “clients”, as Epstein described them, were a man and his pregnant wife. Both needed massages, Epstein said. They were staying at The Breakers, an exclusive Palm Beach hotel not far from El Brillo Way, and Epstein had specific instructions for how I was to treat them. “Make her comfortable. But save most of your energy for him.” When Epstein said this, I looked up. Did he mean what I thought he meant? “Give him whatever he wants,” Epstein confirmed. “Just like you do for me.”
That night I took a taxi to The Breakers. The man – I’ll call him Billionaire Number One – and his wife were staying in an apartment in the residential section of the vast property. When I arrived, they showed me to the master bedroom, where I would work on the woman first. As a joke, Maxwell had warned me that I could induce premature labor if I massaged the woman’s ankles “in the wrong way”. I knew nothing about prenatal massage, but I did my best, avoiding her ankles altogether. After about 45 minutes, the woman said she was going to go to sleep.
The apartment was dark, and I had to tiptoe around a bit before I found Billionaire Number One in a sitting-room area, taking off his clothes. I hoped against hope that a massage was all this stranger was expecting. I was kneading his muscles when he looked up, groaned, and asked me, “Wouldn’t you be more comfortable working in the nude?” I was disappointed, but not surprised. We had sex on the floor, and afterward, he tipped me $100. As I left that night, I felt that familiar scooped-out, empty feeling.
The second person I was lent out to was a psychology professor whose research Epstein was helping to fund. He was a quirky little man with a balding pate of white hair, and, from his nervous affect, it seemed he wasn’t used to being with women. The man never asked directly for sex, but Epstein had made clear that was what he expected. “Keep him happy, like you did with your first client,” Epstein had said. So when the professor asked at one point for “one of your famous massages that Jeffrey has told me so much about”, I complied. We only had sex once, though. The next night, the man told me he wanted to watch movies instead. I was glad, but I remember feeling worried that I’d somehow disappointed the professor in a way that he’d share with Epstein.
The psychologist was only the first of many academics from prestigious universities who I was forced to service sexually. I didn’t know it then, but Epstein had spent years campaigning to keep company with the world’s biggest thinkers. Epstein had convinced himself that he – a college dropout – was on the same level as degree-holding innovators and theoreticians, and because he funded many of their research projects and flew them around on his jets, he was largely welcomed into their fold.
Scientists weren’t the only people Epstein used his vast resources to win access to – which is how I came to be trafficked to a multitude of powerful men. Among them were a gubernatorial candidate who was soon to win election in a western state and a former US senator. Since Epstein usually neglected to introduce me to these men by name, I would only learn who some of them were years later, when I studied photographs of Epstein’s associates and recognised their faces.
On 10 March 2001 we were in London, staying at Maxwell’s pied-à-terre – a white mews house a short walk from Hyde Park. Maxwell woke me up that morning by announcing in a singsongy voice: “Get out of bed, sleepyhead!” It was going to be a special day, she said. Just like Cinderella, I was going to meet a handsome prince! Her old friend Prince Andrew would be dining with us that night, she said, and we had lots to do to get me ready.
Maxwell and I spent most of that day shopping. She bought me an expensive purse from Burberry and three different outfits. When we got back to her house, I laid them out on the bed. There were two sexy, sophisticated dresses she’d picked out and a third option that I’d lobbied for: a pink V-necked, sleeveless mini-T-shirt and a sparkly, multicolored pair of jeans embroidered with a pattern of interlocking horses. After I showered and dried my hair, I put on the jeans and top, which left a strip of my stomach exposed. Maxwell wasn’t thrilled, but like most teenage girls then, I idolised Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, and the third outfit was something I imagined the two of them might wear.
When Prince Andrew arrived at the house that evening, Maxwell was more coquettish than usual. “Guess Jenna’s age,” she urged the prince, after she introduced me. The Duke of York, who was then 41, guessed correctly: 17. “My daughters are just a little younger than you,” he told me, explaining his accuracy. As usual, Maxwell was quick with a joke: “I guess we will have to trade her in soon.”
In contrast to his appearance today – stout, white-haired and jowly – Prince Andrew then was still relatively fit, with short-cropped brown hair and youthful eyes. He’d long been known as the playboy of the royal family. When I noticed that Epstein called the prince “Andy”, I began to call him that, too.
As we chatted in Maxwell’s entryway, I suddenly thought of something: my mom would never forgive me if I met someone as famous as Prince Andrew and didn’t pose for a picture. I ran to get a Kodak FunSaver from my room, then returned and handed it to Epstein. I remember the prince putting his arm around my waist as Maxwell grinned beside me. Epstein snapped the photo.
After a bit more small talk, the four of us headed out into the cold spring air. We went to a restaurant for dinner and afterward to an exclusive nightclub called Tramp. The prince went to the bar and came back with a cocktail for me. Then he invited me to dance. He was sort of a bumbling dancer, and I remember he sweated profusely. On the way back, Maxwell told me, “When we get home, you are to do for him what you do for Jeffrey.”
Back at the house, Maxwell and Epstein said goodnight and headed upstairs, signalling it was time that I take care of the prince. In the years since, I’ve thought a lot about how he behaved. He was friendly enough, but still entitled – as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright. I drew him a hot bath. We disrobed and got in the tub, but didn’t stay there long because the prince was eager to get to the bed. He was particularly attentive to my feet, caressing my toes and licking my arches. That was a first for me, and it tickled. I was nervous he would want me to do the same to him. But I needn’t have worried. He seemed in a rush to have intercourse. Afterward, he said thank you in his clipped British accent. In my memory, the whole thing lasted less than half an hour.
The next morning, Maxwell told me: “You did well. The prince had fun.” Epstein would give me $15,000 for servicing the man the tabloids called “Randy Andy”.
My second encounter with Prince Andrew took place about a month later, at Epstein’s townhouse in New York. Epstein greeted Andrew and brought him to the living room, where Maxwell and I were sitting. Another one of their victims, Johanna Sjoberg, arrived soon afterward. Maxwell then announced to the prince that she’d purchased him a joke gift, a puppet that looked just like him. She suggested we pose for a photo with it. The prince and I sat down next to each other on the couch, and Maxwell put the puppet in my lap, positioning one of its hands on one of my breasts. Then she put Sjoberg on the prince’s lap, and the prince put his hand on Sjoberg’s breast. The symbolism was impossible to ignore. Johanna and I were Maxwell and Epstein’s puppets, and they were pulling the strings.
I don’t know exactly when I had sex with Prince Andrew for the third time, but I do know the location: a 72-acre island Epstein owned in the US Virgin Islands. The private sanctuary, right next to Saint Thomas island, was called Little Saint James, but Epstein liked to call it “Little Saint Jeff’s”. I also know that it was not just the two of us this time; it was an orgy. “I was around 18,” I said in a sworn declaration in 2015. “Epstein, Andy, and approximately eight other young girls and I had sex together. The other girls all appeared to be under the age of 18 and didn’t really speak English. Epstein laughed about how they couldn’t really communicate, saying they are the easiest girls to get along with.”
Since I gave that account, Epstein’s pilot has said in a deposition that a coded notation (“AP”) that he made on his flight log for 4 July 2001, referred to Prince Andrew. He said that Epstein, the prince, another woman and I flew from Saint Thomas that day back to Palm Beach. I guess it’s possible that the orgy I remember occurred in the days leading up to that flight, which would mean I was still 17. I’ll probably never know the date for certain. What I do know, because Epstein told me, is that Jean-Luc Brunel, the French modelling agent who was also in attendance, supplied the other girls who took part.
For all that’s happened to expose Epstein and Maxwell’s crimes, more action is needed. Because some people still think Epstein was an anomaly, an outlier. And those people are wrong. While the sheer number of victims Epstein preyed upon may put him in a class by himself, he was no outlier. The way he viewed women and girls – as playthings to be used and discarded – is not uncommon among certain powerful men who believe they are above the law. And many of those men are still going about their daily lives, enjoying the benefits of their power.
Don’t be fooled by those in Epstein’s circle who say they didn’t know what he was doing. Epstein not only didn’t hide what was happening, he took a certain glee in making people watch. And people did watch – scientists, fundraisers from the Ivy League and other heralded institutions, titans of industry. They watched and they didn’t care.
Virginia Giuffre died by suicide on 25 April 2025. In February 2022 her lawyers obtained a settlement from Prince Andrew. It was made without any admission of liability on his part and he continues to deny Giuffre’s allegations that he had sex with her, that she had been trafficked to him by Epstein or indeed that he had even met her
