The first victim to testify in Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2021 sex trafficking trial told the jury that she was a 13-year-old, eating ice cream with her friends, when a tall woman with a small dog approached three decades before.
“She was walking with a cute little Yorkie,” the victim, identified only as Jane, recalled of that first encounter at Interlochen summer arts camp in 1994. “We asked if we could pet the dog. We started chitchatting, petted the dog. And the rest of my classmates had to go to class. And probably about a minute later, a man came and joined her.”
The woman was Ghislaine Maxwell and her Yorkie was named Max. The man was Jeffrey Epstein. He and Maxwell were commencing a classic scheme to groom and sexually prey on an unsuspecting girl. One enduring question is how he came to acquire such a perfect target; a grieving child made vulnerable by the loss of a parent and her home.
She also conveniently came from West Palm Beach, near Epstein’s Florida home, 1,520 miles from this idyllic spot in Michigan. Epstein had gone to this camp as a teenage bassoonist and had since built a lodge and funded scholarships and was now using it as a hunting ground.
His grooming scheme would include seeking to impress Jane with Epstein’s fabulous wealth and social connections. He would drop the names of numerous celebrities and introduce her to Donald Trump.
(In response to a Daily Beast inquiry, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement: “President Trump threw Jeffrey Epstein out of his club because he was a creep. The Daily Beast is a trash publication that spreads lies and gossip for clicks. It’s truly disgusting.”)
At the start, it seemed to Jane to be just a chance encounter.
“I was there by myself. And I sat on the bench still eating my ice cream, and the man sat across from me,” Jane continued. “He seemed very interested to know what I thought about the camp, what my favorite classes were, what my least favorite classes, teachers, whatnot, what the experience was like. And proceeded to say that they were big benefactors of this camp; and that they went there every summer; and that they gave different kids scholarships. And so they wanted to really know what a student attending the camp, what their perspective was on it.”
The man asked where she was from.
“I said I lived in Palm Beach, Florida,” Jane continued. “And the man said, ‘What a coincidence, we live there too. What are your parents’ names?’ And I said, ‘Well, my father just passed away.’”
Her father was a composer who had died of leukemia six months before. He had learned only after he fell ill that his employer had canceled his health insurance. The cost of the treatments had left his grieving family bankrupt and homeless. She was exactly the kind of vulnerable child that pedophiles target.
She told Epstein and Maxwell her mother’s name. “He said, ‘I think we know your mom. It’s kind of a smaller town. We definitely know her,’” Jane remembered. “And he had a newspaper under his arm. And then he put the newspaper on the picnic table.”
Epstein wrote down the mother’s name and phone number. Jane remembered this first encounter with Epstein saying, “So nice to meet you…I’m going to call your mom.”
The call came after Jane was back in Florida and starting the eighth grade at Palm Beach County School of the Arts.
“I just remember coming home from school one day, and my mom said, someone you met at summer camp, someone from their office called me,” Jane testified. “I barely remember, because it seemed so long ago. It was maybe four or five or six weeks, but, you know, being that young, it seemed like an eternity.”
The mother said the caller had invited her and Jane to tea.
“He sent somebody to come pick us up, like a chauffeur,” Jane testified. “And we were driven to his house.”
She remembered it as, “This giant, like, beach-looking house with a big white fence around it. And these giant gates opened up, and the car pulled in. And it was just this, you know, big beautiful house.”
Epstein was on the phone when Jane and her mother were escorted into his home office.
“He got off the phone, stood up, and introduced himself to me and my mother, and then sort of let us outside to the back patio, which had this great big dining table,” Jane recalled. “And there was a big spread of, like, pastries and sandwiches and tea.”
Epstein engaged in classic grooming as practiced by sexual predators, asking Jane about school and her interests and what she wanted to do with her life.
“He was very inquisitive,” Jane remembered. “It didn’t last very long, I would say maybe 30 minutes in total. But he proceeded to say, ‘Well, I like to mentor young students who are artists. And I love music, and I love dance, and I give all kinds of scholarships.”
She recalled Epstein saying, “I’m very impressed with your daughter and, you know, would love to see her sing next time. “
Either Maxwell or somebody in Epstein’s office began sending a car for Jane every week or so.
“When you would spend time with Jeffrey Epstein at his house in those first few months, who, if anyone, was there?” the prosecutor, Assistant. U.S. Attorney Alison Moe, asked.
“Ghislaine Maxwell,” Jane answered.
“Did your mother go with you for these meetings?” Moe asked.
“No,” Jane replied.
“Why not?”
“She wasn’t invited.”
Epstein and Maxwell would sometimes take her shopping, buying her a cashmere sweater, a “preppy” button down shirt, pants and loafers. They also went to one of a huge chain of lingerie stores owned by billionaire Les Wexner, a primary source of Epstein’s millions.
“We went to a Victoria’s Secret and bought some underwear,” Jane testified.
The prosecutor asked what kind of underwear. It was more in keeping with pedophile fantasy than the sexy adult stuff for which the chain is famous.
“It was sort of those, like, white cotton briefs,” Jane reported. “Basic-looking ones that you would, sort of, wear when you’re younger.”
But the grooming by Epstein and Maxwell did not stop with the new clothes and feigned interest in her schooling with the possibility of scholarships and the chauffeur and the waterfront mansion and other manifestations of great wealth.
“During this time in the first few months when you were spending time with Maxwell and Epstein, did they ever tell you anything about their social circle?” Moe asked.
“From the very beginning there was a lot of bragging about how they were friends with essentially everyone, and they knew everyone,” Jane said. “And they would sort of name-drop or sometimes put people on speakerphones whose voices I didn’t know and then say, Oh, well, this was so-and-so and so-and-so; and just, you know, say that they were very well-connected and affluent.”
Moe asked Jane how that made her feel.
“I guess it made me feel slightly intimidated,” she replied. “It was overwhelming… I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel about it.”
“What names do you recall them mentioning to you when they would tell you about their social circle?“ Moe asked.
The first name Jane mentioned was one that she would cite three times while on the stand, twice more than any other celebrity.
“Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Mike Wallace,” she said.
Under cross-examination, Jane testified that Epstein had subsequently introduced her to Trump in person at Mar-a-Lago in December of 1994. A 2020 civil suit that Jane would later file against the Epstein estate and its executors would later allege, “Introducing 14-year-old [Jane] to Donald J. Trump, Epstein elbowed Trump playfully asking him, referring to [Jane], ‘This is a good one, right?’ Trump smiled and nodded in agreement. They both chuckled and [Jane} felt uncomfortable, but, at the time, was too young to understand why."
Trump later told New York Magazine, “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
That social life included dropping by Mar-a-Lago with a girl in her early teens whom Epstein’s driver, Juan Alessi, recalled from the stand as a “strikingly beautiful girl, beautiful eyes, long hair.”
Jane mentioned Trump a third time in her testimony when she confirmed that she later competed in the Miss Teen USA contest.
“In the mid-1990s, you participated in a beauty pageant, correct?” Messenger asked.
“Embarrassingly enough, “ Jane replied. “Yes.”
“And it was associated with Mr. Trump, right?”
“Yes.” she said.
Trump had bought the Miss Universe Organization, the parent company of the Miss Universe, Miss USA, and Miss Teen USA pageants, in 1996. He subsequently bragged about going uninvited to the dressing room while the contestants were changing.
“I’ll tell you the funniest is that I’ll go backstage before a show and everyone’s getting dressed,” Trump told Howard Stern in 2005. “No men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in, because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it. ... ‘Is everyone OK?’ You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody OK?’ And you see these incredible looking women, and so I sort of get away with things like that.”
As questions arose about his relationship with Epstein, Trump himself said they had a falling out over the former “fantastic guy” poaching staff from Mar-a-Lago.
On Tuesday, Trump confirmed to reporters that the people Epstein “stole” included Virginia Giuffre, who worked at Mar-a-Lago as a $9 an hour locker room attendant in 2000. She testified in a subsequent civil case that she was 17 when she met Maxwell there. Giuffre further alleged that Maxwell and Epstein groomed her in much the way they did Jane. One difference was that Giuffre says the groomers turned to pimps, farming her out to Prince Andrew.
After Jane and three other victims testified against Maxwell, she was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison. She still faced two counts of perjury for particularly egregious lies she allegedly told during a civil case arising from the civil case involving the sexual assault. The DOJ decided to drop those charges to save the victims from undergoing the trauma of further proceedings.
But the renewed contention over the supposed Epstein files is doing exactly that. And it is accompanied by the possibility that Trump may grant clemency to a well-heeled, Oxford-educated socialite monster who teamed up with Epstein to ensnare Jane and Giuffre and other unsuspecting girls.
Giuffre lost her life by suicide in April. Jane received a payment from the Epstein Victims Compensation Fund in a 2021 agreement that required her to drop the civil suit against the estate. It had not replied to her claims. She had already embarked on a long career as a working actor. Her attorney did not respond to requests to speak with her. But she no doubt still feels the effects of what followed after the tall woman with the little dog approached her at summer camp.
“Can you explain for the jury how what Maxwell and Epstein did to you affected your relationships as an adult?” Moe asked Jane during the trial about crimes that an early tip-off could have prevented and has resonated through decades.
“I didn’t even understand what real love is supposed to look like. It ruined my self-esteem, my self-worth,” Jane replied. “How do you navigate a healthy relationship with a broken compass?”
And against whatever Maxwell may have to say, there is Jane’s memory of meeting Trump at 14 and hearing Epstein tell the future president, "This is a good one, right?"
