One of the women who says she was a minor when she started having sex with Jeffrey Epstein testified Tuesday that Ghislaine Maxwell personally inspected her body.
“She came in and felt my boobs and my hips and my buttocks and said I had a great body for Mr. Epstein and his friends,” the woman, who is being identified as “Carolyn,” said at Maxwell’s child sex trafficking trial in New York City.
Carolyn initially said she was 14 and later said she was 13 when she was introduced to Maxwell and Epstein by Virginia Roberts Giuffre — another woman who says the couple sexually abused and trafficked her.
“We were going to her friend’s house on Palm Beach Island, and we were going to meet one of her wealthy friends, and I was going to give a massage,” Carolyn told the court.
Once they were there, Carolyn said, Giuffre stripped off her clothes while she remained in her bra and panties, and they both began massaging Epstein.
Forty-five minutes later, Carolyn said, Epstein turned over and began having sex with Giuffre.
“I was sitting on the couch right in front of them,” she said.
Carolyn said she went back “over 100 times” to Epstein’s mansion, where she had sex with him and sometimes with another woman. She said she also posed for nude pictures.
“Maxwell would call and set an appointment time,” she said.
Asked by Assistant U.S. Attorney Maurene Comey why she kept going back, Carolyn answered, “Because I needed the money.”
Weeping at times, Carolyn said she stopped visiting the mansion after she had a baby in March 2004. She said that when she tried to go back, she was rejected “because I became too old.”
“I was 18,” she said.
Maxwell, 59, is accused of helping Epstein recruit and sexually abuse four underage girls, mostly in the 1990s. She has pleaded not guilty to all six charges.
Her defense team contends that she is being prosecuted because the government cannot go after Epstein, a convicted sex offender who hanged himself in a New York City jail two years ago as he awaited trial on sex trafficking charges.
Giuffre, who says she, too, was underage when she started having sex with Epstein and his friends, is not one of the four women Maxwell is charged with trafficking at this trial.
On Monday, Kate, the pseudonym for a model and musician who said she was lured into giving Epstein sexual massages when she was 17, told the court that during one such encounter, when she recalls being about 18, she was pressured into wearing a “schoolgirl” outfit. Kate said she was from a well-off family.
Carolyn said that she and her brothers were being raised by an alcohol- and drug-addicted mother and that she “was allowed to do whatever I wanted.” She said a lot of the money Epstein paid her went for the drugs.
“Marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, anything that could block out … the appointment” with Epstein, she said.
Later, on cross-examination, Carolyn admitted that she had been arrested once for possession of cocaine and another time for trying to pawn an Xbox that was not hers. She also admitted that she worked, for a time, for an escort service, where she took money for sex.
The incidents occurred after she stopped spending time with Maxwell and Epstein. She said that she still takes methadone and Xanax for her anxiety and that she sometimes hears voices that someone will take her child away.
In addition to Carolyn and Kate, the court has heard testimony from a woman identified as Jane, who said that she was 14 when Maxwell taught her how to sexually satisfy Epstein and that they trafficked her to other powerful men.
Maxwell, prosecutors have said, played a key role in procuring girls and young women for Epstein, a multimillionaire financier who was close to Ohio billionaire Leslie Wexner, buddies with Donald Trump and Britain’s Prince Andrew, and friendly with other boldface names, like former President Bill Clinton.
There are no allegations of trafficking against Clinton, Trump and Wexner. Giuffre has alleged in a civil lawsuit that Maxwell trafficked her to Andrew, a son of Queen Elizabeth II, when she was 17. He has denied the allegations.
The trial is being held in the Southern District of New York, where prosecutors could wrap up their case as early as Thursday, sources said.
U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan said she will schedule a charging conference for Dec. 18, which means the jury could get the case before Christmas.