A connection with Victoria’s Secret helped Jeffrey Epstein implement a “pipeline” that was a part of his alleged sex trafficking recruitment, according to a new report.
Epstein, a wealthy financier, was arrested earlier this month on sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy charges.
Elisabetta Tai told the New York Post that in 2004, when she was 21, her booker gave her Epstein’s Manhattan address and told her he’d get her a job modeling for a Victoria’s Secret catalog.
“He told me this is one of the most important people in modeling,” Tai said. “He said that this man is in charge of Victoria’s Secret and he’s going to change your life.”
She said she went to the house, where authorities recently found nude photographs of girls who appeared to be underage, and was greeted by a woman she said resembled Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend.
She was introduced to Epstein, who soon removed his clothing and handed her a vibrator. She said she ran out of the room and tried to leave the house but was cornered by the woman who looked like Maxwell.
“She told me that I couldn’t just leave,” said Tai. “She said that this man is important, that he is a friend of President Clinton.”
Jennifer Araoz recently told NBC that she was 14 when Maxwell invited her to Epstein’s townhouse and that he manipulated her into giving him nude massages for a year before he eventually raped her.
“He raped me, forcefully raped me,” Araoz said. “He knew exactly what he was doing.”
A former Manhattan-based modeling agent told the Post that the encounter described by Tai wasn’t unusual.
“He [Epstein] portrayed himself as the back door to get a girl into Victoria’s Secret. Some of those girls got in,” he said. Another model entrepreneur added that Maxwell was often an attendee at Victoria’s Secret events.
According to a Vanity Fair profile of Epstein published online in 2011, the financier “is a familiar face to many of the Victoria’s Secret girls.”
One young woman told the magazine that Maxwell summoned her to a concert at Epstein’s house and found many more women there than men.
“These were not women you’d see at Upper East Side dinners,” the woman recalled. “Many seemed foreign and dressed a little bizarrely.”
Epstein and Leslie Wexner, the owner of L Brands, which owns Victoria’s Secret and Pink, were close, with the latter viewing Epstein as a protégé, according to the profile.
“Wexner saw in Jeffrey the type of person who had the potential to realize his [Jeffrey’s] dreams,” said someone described as a person who had worked closely with both men. “He gave Jeffrey the ball, and Jeffrey hit it out of the park.”
Wexner originally bought the mansion where Epstein lived for $13.2 million in 1989 and later seemed to give it to Epstein. According to Bloomberg, the deed to the mansion was transferred from Wexner’s company to Epstein’s company in 2011.
A source close to Wexner told Vanity Fair that he gave Epstein the power of fiduciary over all of his private trusts and foundations.
The relationship was mentioned in another profile of Epstein, this one in New York magazine in 2002.
“It’s a weird relationship,” a Wall Streeter who knows Epstein told the magazine. “It’s just not typical for someone of such enormous wealth to all of a sudden give his money to some guy most people have never heard of.”
Wexner was said to have been Epstein’s largest, and possibly only, client. He was reportedly seen visiting Epsten’s infamous Caribbean island, which locals knew as “pedophile island.”
“Les is an insecure guy with a big ego…he had a lot of money but craved respect,” Robert Morosky, a former vice chairman of Wexner’s retail company, told the Wall Street Journal recently. “They played off each other’s needs.”
Former executives said that Epstein tried offering advice as to which women Victoria’s Secret should select as models.
Wexner told Bloomberg through a spokeswoman that he ended his association with Epstein more than 10 years ago, after Epstein was accused of molesting dozens of girls. Epstein eventually reached a plea agreement that saw most charges dropped and spent 13 months in prison with permission to spend work hours at his office.
