Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice - 13

I know it probably sounds strange to say, but whenever I was in the Caribbean with Epstein, one of my favorite places to hang out wasn’t the boat dock or the beach, but the island’s big open kitchen. That’s because Epstein’s personal chef, Adam Perry Lang, was often there. Though Lang would later become a celebrity chef renowned for his barbecue, in the early 2000s he excelled at the healthy fare Epstein required: tofu, fish kabobs, hummus. I liked Lang because he treated me and Epstein’s other girls as human beings. Even if I was standing naked in front of him, which was not unusual since Epstein preferred us that way when we were on the island, Lang would look me in the eye, not ogle me. He also snuck me food that was not on Epstein’s approved menu.

The first time Lang asked me what I was hungry for, he threw together my favorite food—pizza—as if it were nothing. After that, I didn’t even have to ask. When I’d finish attending to Epstein or one of the other guests, Lang would have a cheesy hot pie waiting. I’d jump up on a stool, he’d hand me a beer, and we’d talk for a bit.

This probably doesn’t sound like much of a rebellion, but it felt like one to me. Epstein wanted us girls to stay thin, so pizza and beer were strictly off-limits. In this realm, as in so many others, Maxwell was his enforcer. Everyone knew what a stern taskmaster she was when it came to menus and household routines. At each of Epstein’s homes, she kept manuals that specified her preferences about everything from coffee (she liked Maxwell House, naturally) to thermostat settings (sixty degrees in the bedrooms, eighty-eight degrees in the pool) to toilet paper (she specified that the end of each roll be folded “into a ‘V’ ”). One night when Lang and I were having a drink, she walked into the kitchen and reprimanded us, but I didn’t care. Maxwell had so much power over me; it felt good to have a friendship that she didn’t sanction.

It was around this time that Epstein expanded the duties he expected me to perform for him. Already he was requiring me to dress him each morning. First I’d apply lotion to his feet, then scrunch up his socks and then roll them over his toes and heels like a parent would an infant. “You’re going to be such a good mother someday,” he’d say, as I knelt before him, holding his pant legs open so he could step into them. Now he began asking me to tuck him into his pink satin sheets each night. While “tuck him in” might sound like a euphemism for sex, it didn’t always mean that to Epstein. Though my job during the day was to arouse and satisfy him sexually, at night he mostly wanted to be soothed—and then left alone. He liked me to reach under the covers to massage his feet and maybe then his scalp. Only after he fell asleep was I permitted to pull the covers up to his chin and quietly exit his room. I am the only one I know of who was asked to do this for him, and at the time he told me that signified that I was “Number One” among the many girls and servants who attended to him. That designation gave me a proud feeling. Epstein intentionally fostered rivalries between the girls who serviced him, so to be held in his esteem seemed like a prize. Nevertheless, I found the tuck-in ritual, which could take more than an hour, increasingly tedious. Each night I’d emerge exhausted.

It wasn’t until we returned to Florida that I realized the bedtime rituals I’d been performing for Epstein had unlocked something in him. Suddenly he was confiding in me. One day we were in the massage room in Palm Beach when he showed me a hidden doorway next to some paintings of naked people stretching. I’d been in that room dozens of times by then but had never noticed a door there. Opening it, Epstein revealed what can only be described as a trophy closet. On the walls, from floor to ceiling, he’d tacked up hundreds of photos of young girls. All of the girls were naked, many of them quite obviously underage, and the images were raunchy, not demure. A stack of shoeboxes in the corner held the overflow. He had so many photos that he’d run out of display space.

I turned to him, speechless. He didn’t speak either, but the smug look on his face said, “Look at my conquests. Look at how powerful I am.”

Maxwell was seemingly beginning to trust me to some extent, too, but that wasn’t good news, because it meant I was assigned a new job: recruiting girls for Epstein. The first time was in the Caribbean. Maxwell, Epstein, Kellen, and I had been ferried over to Saint Thomas for dinner one night, and we were strolling around afterward when Epstein said to me and Kellen, “Why don’t you two hit the nightclub here and see if there’s anyone interesting to bring back for the evening?” Maxwell nodded her assent. I’d already been told his criteria: recruits were preferably white, with wholesome, “girl next door” looks that made them appear between twelve and seventeen years old. No piercings, no tattoos, and definitely no call girls. But his key requirement, other than looks, was vulnerability. Recruits had to be enough “on the edge,” as Epstein and Maxwell put it, that they would submit to sex in exchange for money.

On this night, it hit me: I was being trained yet again. For hours, I tagged along with Kellen as she chatted up girls, floating from one stranger to another with ease, flirting. While we didn’t find anyone suitable to take back to the island that night, I now knew the script that I would soon be using myself with shameful regularity: “I work for a billionaire who has a taste for beautiful young girls. He has contacts in the acting, modeling, and art worlds, and he’d love to help you make your dreams come true. Come meet him!”

For months I’d been watching how Maxwell and Kellen constructed their pyramid-like recruitment scheme. In New York City, they reserved afternoons for hunting. At 3:00 p.m., when the high schools let out, they’d be on the street, looking for pretty girls to approach. Maxwell, particularly, was amazing at sussing out what a particular girl might want or need, and she tailored her pitch for maximum appeal. After a girl visited Epstein for the first time, she’d be told she could make double the money if she brought a friend along next time. The incentive to lure another girl into the web was twofold: not only would the procurer make $400 (instead of the $200 she’d been paid the first time), but she’d usually avoid having to service Epstein herself, since the new girl would satisfy him.

It was my fear of disappointing Epstein, not the prospect of doubling my money, that really drove me to take on this new task. I was afraid of making him mad—the way he’d threatened Skydy still loomed large in my head—and I’d seen him sever relationships (if that’s the right word for his liaisons) with countless girls. But I was also utterly reliant on him at this point, not only for my rent but also for validation. Some other victims have talked about experiencing Stockholm syndrome—developing positive feelings for one’s abuser as a means of surviving. Today I can see that I did this too. I needed to believe that while Epstein was afflicted with an illness—sex addiction—still deep down, he believed in me and had my best interests at heart. I needed him not to be a selfish, cruel pedophile. So I told myself he wasn’t one.

Once, I asked Epstein if he ever thought he would settle down and get married. He said he didn’t believe that love with one monogamous partner was possible, but that love with many was. At the time, I believed that in his unusual way, he was saying that he loved me. And I had feelings for him, too—not love exactly, but I think the right word is fealty. He’d succeeded in convincing me that he was helping me—protecting me from a mediocre life that I didn’t deserve. I felt strangely indebted to him.

So I began to do the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life: I drafted other girls into Epstein’s sickening world. I knew it was wrong, but I rationalized my behavior by telling myself that at least I leveled with the girls I approached. Unlike Kellen, whose pitch made an encounter with Epstein seem not just lucrative but fun, I warned each potential recruit that they’d have to strip naked during the massage, and that the rich man they’d be servicing could sometimes expect more intimate physical contact. But the fact that I issued warnings doesn’t diminish the ugly truth: when I targeted girls who were hungry or poor, I knew I was exploiting their vulnerabilities. I stooped so low that I even brought Epstein a few friends of mine to abuse. No one ever turned me down—my friends had seen my nice apartment and those who said yes, I think, wanted to believe servicing Epstein would be easy money. But again that’s no excuse: that I targeted girls who said yes only proves how good I’d become at spotting those who were the neediest. The faces of girls I recruited will always haunt me. I know their pain, and I will never get over playing a role in causing it.

As 2001 began, Maxwell and Epstein indicated that they had bigger plans for me. “We need to get you a passport so you can fly international with us,” Maxwell announced in early January, and soon she told me where to get photos taken and helped me fill out the application form. On the line asking my occupation, she told me to write “masseuse.” January 20 was Epstein’s forty-eighth birthday, and Maxwell said we needed to make a fuss. As the day neared, I asked Maxwell, “Do you think he’d like a watch or something?” Maxwell scoffed. “He doesn’t want you to give him a watch,” she said, indicating Epstein wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a timepiece that a girl like me could afford. If I wanted to please him, she said, there was only one way: “All he wants is photos of you naked.”

A few hours later, Maxwell took me out to the patio around the pool and told me to take off my clothes. She posed me carefully, with an almost tender attention to detail. She arranged my hair and placed me in positions that revealed the parts of me she thought Epstein liked best. “Perfect. Beautiful,” she said, but she sounded as if she were talking to herself, not to me. I would soon be joining the other girls in Epstein’s trophy closet.