Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell raped woman and threatened to feed her to alligators, lawsuit claims

A lawsuit claims that a new alleged victim of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell was raped by the pair in front of her son and reportedly threatened that she was going to be "thrown to the alligators” if she spoke up.

The allegations were filed last week against the estate of Mr Epstien at the US District Court of South Florida. The woman filing the claims used a pseudonym, Jane Doe, to protect her identity. The accusations against the couple in the lawsuit include rape, sex trafficking, sexual abuse, physical assault, physical mutilation, emotional distress, blackmail, intimidation, fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation, The Telegraph writes.

The lawsuit comes as Ms Maxwell was recently charged with two additional counts of sex trafficking by New York prosecutors. The investigation was recently broadened to include allegations that she groomed a teenage girl in 2004.

The 59-year-old Ms Maxwell has denied the charges brought against her. The Independent has reached to Ms Maxwell’s lawyer Laura Menninger for comment.

The lawsuit claims that Mr Epstein violently raped Ms Doe, a 26-year-old real estate broker in Florida. In the federal complaint filed last week, she claims that she was first sexually abused at the mansion of Mr Epstein in Palm Beach with the "assistance" of Ms Maxwell.

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After the alleged abuse, the pair reportedly drove the woman to pick up her 8-year-old son and stopped the car “at a large body of water that was infested with alligators," the lawsuit states.

The filing adds: “Epstein then ushered the Plaintiff to the body of water and told her in explicit detail that, as had happened to other girls in the past, she would end up in this body of water and be devoured by the alligators, should she ever reveal what Epstein had done to her.”

The horrifying claims included that Mr Epstein trafficked the woman to other men, including a local judge, The Miami Herald reported.

Ms Doe, a married Muslim woman from Turkey, said she met Mr Epstein and Ms Maxwell at a barbecue hosted by her employer in late 2006 or early 2007. The employer is not named in the lawsuit, which states that Ms Doe was told that Mr Epstein wanted to buy or rent a property. Ms Doe found a $10,000 a month rental for him.

The suit says that Mr Epstein wanted to hire Ms Doe and tried to convince her with lavish gifts and a promise of “highly-placed” work, The Miami Herald writes.

Ms Doe, a trained hairdresser, allegedly went to his Palm Beach estate in January 2008 to cut his hair, but when she got there, she claims Mr Epstein was naked and proceeded to "brutally rape" her with Ms Maxwell's help.

Ms Doe claims she was trafficked over the next five months under threats of deportation, murder, arrest for prostitution, or that her son would be taken from her, The New York Post reported.

After the alligator threat, the suit alleges that Ms Doe was checked into a hotel in Naples, Florida where “over a period of several days, Epstein and Maxwell repeatedly raped and sexually abused the plaintiff, all in the presence of her son," the Telegraph reported.

Ms Doe looked to be much younger than 26 and was told to tell men she was trafficked to that she was actually 17. The lawsuit adds that she was forced to have vaginal reconstructive surgery. It was carried out “in a wealthy person’s home by a man with a Russian accent,’’ in order to “create the false impression that she was a virgin for a ‘high-profile’ client," the lawsuit says. The filing states that she was left with permanent injuries.

Mr Epstein served 13 months in prison after being arrested on prostitution charges in June 2008. Aged 66, he died by suicide in a jail cell in Manhattan in August 2019 as he was awaiting trial on separate charges of sex trafficking.

Ms Maxwell's trial is scheduled for July 2021.