Ghislaine Maxwell, formerly a close associate of the late financier and alleged sexual trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, apparently once threatened a 15-year old girl who was "held as hostage" on the millionaire’s private island when the teen refused to have sex, the Daily Mail reports, citing US court documents.
This reveal comes as Maxwell finds herself a target of an FBI investigation, along with other individuals suspected of facilitating sexual abuse in Epstein’s case.
According to the newspaper, a butler who worked for hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin encountered the girl when she was brought to his employers’ place by Maxwell and Epstein.
As the butler, Rinaldo Rizzo, explained, he found the girl, "distraught and shaking...literally quivering", in the kitchen, where he and his wife introduced themselves to her, and the teenager told them of her mistreatment at the hands of Maxwell and her assistant Sarah Kellen.
"She proceeded to tell my wife and I… ‘I was on the island and there was Ghislaine, and there was Sarah’, and she said, ‘They asked me for sex. I said no’," Rizzo reportedly said in his testimony. "She didn't specify who asked for sex. She said they asked for sex."
He added that the girl’s phone and passport were taken from her by Kellen and given to Maxwell upon the teenager’s refusal to engage in sexual activity.
"And at that point, she said she was threatened," the butler said. "And I said, ‘Threatened?’ 'She says, ‘Yes. I was threatened by Ghislaine, not to discuss this’."
Rizzo also said that the girl went quiet when she realised that Dubin’s wife, who had stepped out of the kitchen prior to this conversation, was coming back, and that he saw the girl flying to Sweden with the Dubin family a month later.
The testimony comes from a defamation lawsuit filed by Prince Andrew’s accuser Virginia Giuffre (formerly known as Virginia Roberts) against Maxwell. Although the lawsuit was actually settled back in 2017, documents from its proceedings were unsealed on 27 December by order of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
The newspaper also notes that a spokesperson for the Dubins said that “Glenn and Eva Dubin are outraged by the allegations against them in the unsealed court records and categorically reject them.”
