Jeffrey Epstein Allegedly Promised A Victim's Family That He'd Help Her Receive Treatment For An Eating Disorder
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Three lawsuits filed in New York on Tuesday against the estate of dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein made a series of explosive new allegations against him, shedding light on the ways he pulled new victims into his orbit and the depraved depths of his abuse. One of the suits, filed by a woman referred to in court documents as “Katlyn Doe,” alleges that Epstein forced Doe to marry one of his associates, in order to keep the woman, referred to as “Associate 3,” who was not a citizen, in the United States. That suit lays out the deeply upsetting reason that Doe’s family allowed Epstein access to her to begin with: because she was suffering from an eating disorder, along with other medical issues, and he promised to help her recover.
Epstein died by suicide earlier this month while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. The suits were filed by Stan Pottinger, an attorney who represents 20 other Epstein victims. “We want to hold the Epstein organization to account first,” he told CBS. “It’s not primarily about money.”
The new lawsuits were filed in U.S. District court on Tuesday, on behalf of Katlyn Doe, “Lisa Doe” and “Priscilla Doe.” All of them build out the disturbing picture of the network that Epstein created in order to enable his continued abuses of new victims. As the criminal indictment against him previously claimed, Epstein is alleged to have paid his victims to recruit new girls, creating a “vast network,” as the indictiment put it, “of underage victims for him to sexually exploit in locations including New York and Palm Beach.” (His ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell is also accused of furthering the abuse and procuring new victims; in her suit, Priscilla Doe claims that Maxwell taught her the “right way” to sexually engage with Epstein, and at one point confiscated her passport so she couldn’t leave his Carribbean island. Maxwell, who’s been hard to find lately, has previously denied the allegations and has not been charged with a crime.)
In the case of Katlyn Doe, Epstein also allegedly relied on a familiarity with the girl’s family. The lawsuit states that in 2007, a female relative of Katlyn Doe worked for Epstein. The same year, the lawsuit claims, Doe “was suffering from an eating disorder, which made her vulnerable, and her young age made her particularly attractive to Jeffrey Epstein.” Epstein informed the relative “that he could help Plaintiff get better.”
According to the suit, Katlyn Doe’s relatives brought the girl to Epstein’s office in New York at 457 Madison Avenue “in order to meet and discuss treatment options for Plaintiff. In addition to the eating disorder, Plaintiff had another serious medical condition for which she would require a complicated surgery or series of surgeries to cure.” The suit says that Epstein promised he would pay for her surgeries, and, moreover, “utilize his expansive resources to obtain the most skilled medical doctors to perform those surgeries.”
This financial outlay, the lawsuit says, caused Doe to feel “indebted” to Epstein, which is where his grooming began. He began plying her with gifts, she says, including “free haircuts, beauty treatments, and medical care.”
The suit claims that Katlyn Doe was taken to Epstein’s New York mansion, where he ordered her to show him her breasts. “Jeffrey Epstein told her that he could tell by her breasts that she had an eating disorder that he could help cure,” the suit says, “and that he needed to continue to see her.” Throughout the ordeal, she alleges, another young female associate of Epstein’s told Doe that “it was OK” and she “could trust” him. Soon after that, she says, she was asked to return to the mansion and ordered to massage Epstein. She was sexually abused during the massage, she says, including forcibly penetrated with a sex toy.
Jeffrey Epstein told her that he could tell by her breasts that she had an eating disorder that he could help cure and that he needed to continue to see her.
Katlyn Doe, at that point, felt unable to extricate herself from the situation, the lawsuit says: “Plaintiff continued to reasonably rely upon Jeffrey Epstein’s promises and representations to secure her the medical care she needed, which caused her to return many times and be subjected to sexual abuse.” He instilled in her the understanding that she would only receive that medical care, the suit says, if she were “loyal and obedient” to him. The sexual abuse continued, and after she turned 18, Epstein took her to his private island of Little St. James and raped her, despite her telling him that she was a virgin and needed, for religious reasons, to wait until marriage to have sex.
Between 2007 and 2008, when he was finally charged with sexual abuse in Florida, Epstein continued this pattern of abuse and threatened retribution, Katlyn Doe says. The three Doe lawsuits all allege that following his conviction, Epstein created a corporation called HBRK, whose employees were “designated to fulfill different roles in recruiting, enticing, harboring, transporting, providing, obtaining, maintaining, patronizing, or soliciting by any means, young females.” While he was serving his jail sentence and free on work release, Doe alleges, Epstein coerced her into sending him sexually explicit photos of herself and her female relative, and told her to get a camera from an HBRK employee in order to take them.
The lawsuit indicates that Katlyn Doe never received inpatient treatment for her eating disorder or the full amount of medical treatment necessary to cure her health issues; it alleges that Epstein’s promises to get her that treatment were “false.” Epstein continued to sexually assault her — and to string her along with promises of medical treatment — through 2013.
That year, Katlyn Doe says, Epstein also told her that he needed her to marry an associate of his, referred to as Associate 3, so that the woman, a non-U.S. citizen could stay in the country. Epstein promised to pay her $20,000 that she needed for surgery, Doe says. The women were married, but Epstein only paid her $10,000, Katlyn Doe alleges, saying he’d give her the other half “when the marriage ended.” The sexual abuse only ended in 2014, a full seven years after it began, when Epstein deemed her “too old,” the suit says. She’d been living in an Epstein-controlled apartment and was forced to move out, leaving her without a place to live. In 2017, she divorced Associate 3, she says, but was never paid the remaining $10,000 she was promised. According to the lawsuit, she continues to need surgery to this day.
Business Insider has learned that at least two other women in Epstein’s entourage were married to each other, and a source familiar with the situation said they were directed to get married by the sex offender. As with Katlyn Doe’s accusations, one of these women was a noncitizen that Epstein may have wanted to maintain access to. The marriage had not been previously reported. The source told Business Insider that Epstein orchestrated at least three such marriages.
The Epstein accusations are an indictment of a deeply evil man, and the system that surrounded him. But what Katlyn Doe says happened to her is also an indictment of the failures of a social and medical system, which left a desperate young woman feeliing as if she had no choice, no resources, no other options, beyond a rich man’s tainted and deeply compromised “help.” In a saga whose revelations continue to darken by the day, it’s a profoundly bitter new turn.