Replies

From the Guardian 10 Jan 2015:

{Prince}Andrew reportedly met Epstein in the 1990s after being introduced by Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the the media mogul Robert Maxwell. At the time, Ghislaine Maxwell was the financier’s girlfriend.
The friendship returned to haunt Andrew this week courtesy of one the dozens of women the FBI identified as one Epstein’s potential victims: Virginia Roberts. Like many of the other teenagers, Roberts sued Epstein; the civil claim she lodged in a Florida court six years ago told a familiar story of exploitation.
Roberts was working for $9 an hour as a changing room assistant at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago beach club, where her father was a maintenance manager, when she claims she was recruited to work as a masseuse for Epstein. She claims the invitation came courtesy of Maxwell. It was 1998, and Roberts was 15 years old.
Her civil suit, in which Roberts is referred to as Jane Doe 102, alleged that Ghislaine Maxwell, now 53, and Epstein quickly began grooming her for sex. Despite being told by Epstein, on the cusp of her 16th birthday, that “he would soon have to trade her in because she was getting too old”, Roberts alleged she was thrust into a life of sexual servitude that lasted until 2002, when she fled to Thailand aged 19.
But in one important way Roberts’ allegations differ from those of many of the other Florida teenage girls who say they were victims of Epstein. Her lawsuit states that she was co-opted into Epstein’s inner-circle, flown by private jet to his ranch in New Mexico, his Caribbean island, and his 51,000-square-foot mansion in New York, reputedly the largest residence in Manhattan.
During the four years she claimed to have been a fixture in Epstein’s hedonistic world, she claimed she saw Epstein and his close associates abuse women from across the world, including three French 12-year-olds who she alleged were sent to him as a birthday present. That lawsuit did not identify any alleged perpetrators other than Maxwell and Epstein.
But Roberts’ lawsuit did imply there was more to her story. One elliptical reference alleged that Epstein “required” her to be sexually exploited by “politicians, academicians, businessmen”. These men were described in the document as Epstein’s “adult male peers, including royalty”. Epstein and Roberts settled the lawsuit out of court, with Epstein paying Roberts – just as he paid a series of other girls who were suing him – an undisclosed sum in compensation.