OUR INVESTIGATION WAS LONG, EXTENDED through the United States and beyond, and accumulated information from the early nineties through the mid-2010s. The Jeffrey Epstein cult, which had evolved to some degree over time, was coming into clear focus. It was far more complex than the media would ever report. There was no one-size-fits-all perspective from those who entered through the Epstein/Maxwell world, even among the victims.
Some believed their experience with Ghislaine and Jeffrey followed a sexually free, philosophical rule of law. Unlike many of Epstein’s victims who suffered from extreme depression, eating disorders, drug use, nightmares, loss of self-esteem, and other serious psychological trauma, some thought their experience was beneficial and carried on Epstein’s philosophy. This cultish operation was openly discussed within the inner circle, and Epstein and Maxwell mandated that everyone follow it in order to be elevated into that higher status.
Sex was central to the deeply held and guiding philosophy of Jeffrey Epstein. He thought female sexual availability should be determined by biology and not established by arbitrary social norms—or the law. He demanded that each of his recruiters be on the lookout for new sexual partners all the time. As for the target age, “the younger, the better,” according to Epstein. Under his law, science was all that mattered. Prepubescence, therefore, was where he drew the line.
According to Epstein, the age of consent, if dictated by anything other than biology, was arbitrary—which was a word signifying that it should have no application in any aspect of his life. How could a female whose body was able to bear children not be given the choice to perform the acts necessary to give birth? Society, through the years, had created these concepts of marriage and monogamy that not only contradicted human nature, they unbearably constrained and killed people’s freedom. Sexual freedom. The fact that a female can have multiple orgasms and a male only one was evidence that females were meant to have multiple partners—again, law according to Jeffrey Epstein.
These teachings were masterfully discussed by Epstein at just the right time in order to indoctrinate his new followers. Some of this information was disseminated early in the recruitment stage. Even some witnesses who were infrequent visitors in Epstein’s massage rooms knew his philosophy in general. The idea that a man with an abundance of money and resources should be sexually free to engage with multiple partners was a basic tenet of Epstein’s worldview, and anyone drawn in for even a brief period of time needed to tacitly accept it. Epstein’s regulars not only had to be familiar with his philosophy, they had to live by it.
Ghislaine so adored Jeffrey that she would do anything for him, including bringing him other girls. She was powerfully persuasive and influential in making the girls like him, too. Jeffrey’s brilliance was at the center of her pitch. For her, recruiting vulnerable girls like Virginia was an easy sell. Epstein had powerful friends. On his private island, he hosted his own personal scientific conventions attended by the most brilliant minds in the world. His impressionable young female followers watched in awe as he participated in high-powered group discussions about evolution, artificial intelligence, and cell regeneration.
The sell was even easier because Epstein was obviously very rich. Whatever the pitch had been to get some young girl to the home, it appeared to be true when she got there, which always helped him seal the deal. The allure of Jeffrey Epstein was even more attractive to the regular harem of girls brought to give him a “massage,” because he was always available to them. Many people are rich, of course, but most of them still have regular lives to maintain—calendars, meetings, and the need to be in certain places at certain times. Not Jeffrey. He had no children. No office he needed to visit. No work he needed to tend to. He could wake up every day and decide to jump on his private jet and go anywhere, at any time, with anyone. He could get three, even four massages a day. And he did just that.
It had taken years, but I had finally talked to enough witnesses to understand what really drove him. For the most part, it was simple. His philosophy was not something he shied from. Epstein accumulated disciples, like Ghislaine Maxwell, who could help grow his network of girls in each location he frequented into a massive web that included young children, just as he had done in Palm Beach, to serve his sexual addiction.
After meeting Ghislaine, his sexual appetite for new, and young, females became insatiable. He designed several different “systems to get girls,” as he would call them, and was always looking for new ones. To understand the systems and the progression of his operation, it is important to understand the different relevant time periods, as we learned. The first period began in the mid-1990s and lasted through Epstein’s Florida “incarceration” in 2008. The next began while he was on work release and continued upon his release from the Florida jail system through the time that he was arrested in 2019. This time period was important because jail had a real impact on Jeffrey Epstein. It taught him that he was not completely invincible and would not last long in any real jail.
Once released from his “jail” stint in 2009, Epstein “disciplined” himself, as his lawyer Marty Weinberg would earnestly characterize Epstein’s behavior modification at his bond hearing in federal court in New York on July 15, 2019. That just meant that he tried harder not to have sex with children after getting in trouble in Florida, making sure that each of the females recruited to his house was at least eighteen years old. His appetite did not diminish at all, and the harm he was causing to these barely legal females was significant. In some ways, his schemes to lure the girls into his homes became even more insidious. He targeted vunlerable young women with immigration problems, medical problems, or lofty professional ambitions and promised to make them legal, get them treatment, or make their educational or professional dreams come true. They just had to do as he said. Which, whether they liked it or not, was all about sex.