Epstein files: Woman describes alleged 1980s abuse on Hilton Head
In 2019, a woman told FBI investigators something she had only disclosed to two trusted people over 30 years: Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender and financier, abused her in South Carolina in the 1980s.
After Epstein was arrested and charged with sex trafficking of minors on July 6, 2019, the FBI set up a hotline to allow more victims to come forward.
Four days later, a woman called the hotline, saying she was a victim of sexual exploitation by Epstein on a South Carolina island in the 1980s when she was 13 to 15 years old, according to FBI documents released by the U.S. Department of Justice Jan. 30.
A separate document shows days after the 2019 call, agents interviewed a woman in person, who described memories of the abuse she faced at the hands of Epstein. In the transcript of this call, the woman alleges the abuse took place at the then-Sea Pines Plantation on Hilton Head Island.
The claims in the woman’s FBI interview are the same ones made in a 2019 federal lawsuit filed by a Jane Doe, citing abuse by Epstein in the Hilton Head area when she was around 13 years old.
A summary of the initial phone call to the hotline and an interview with federal agents pointing specifically to Hilton Head were two of nearly 3.5 million documents released by DOJ on Jan. 30. The release was in response to a mandate passed by Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump in November.
The initial phone call to the hotline does not call out Hilton Head specifically, with the name of a South Carolina “island” redacted. But details line up: The FBI’s Seattle field office was told to follow up after the hotline call for an interview, and the plaintiff of the 2019 lawsuit lives in Washington state.
The most recent documents connecting Epstein’s abuses to the South Carolina resort island were first reported by The Post & Courier.
Her story starts at age 13
The woman told FBI investigators in a July 24, 2019 interview that her mother, who worked in real estate, asked her whether she would like to start a babysitting business when she was 13.
Thinking her daughter would be a great babysitter, the woman’s mother sent a flyer out to renters and owners, telling them about her daughter’s babysitting services, documents show. Soon after, her mother received a call from an interested man, who claimed he and his wife needed some extra childcare help at night.
The woman, then only a teenager, said she arrived at the man’s home: a condo in the Sea Pines Plantation area. The allegations occurred more than two decades before The Sea Pines Resort existed, according to a prepared statement from the resort.
The man, whom she came to know as “Jeff,” appeared to be alone in the home, she told the FBI. She wondered where his wife and children were.
“She never saw them,” the interview summary says.
Epstein offered her cocaine, alcohol and marijuana, the interview summary says. After taking the drugs and alcohol, she told agents, everything got “blurry” and “things slowed,” which later caused her to think something else had been slipped into her drink.
Then, the sexual abuse began, she said in the interview. Her story includes graphic accounts that span across several interactions with Epstein in the house, with allegations ranging from forced oral sex to rape, among other violent abuses.
She left his house the first time “still in a fog,” and told agents she was embarrassed to say she thought “my friends are going to love me, I found a guy with drugs.” He never paid her.
‘It would have been nice to not have been aware’
The third time she went to Epstein’s house, she told federal agents, she found photographs of herself in a drawer. She recalled being embarrassed that she was naked in the photos, but wanting to see if they could help piece together “the holes in her memory” as to what had happened.
When Epstein found her looking through the images, he violently abused her, she told agents.
“I would have given anything for him to have given me a cocktail again,” she told the FBI. “It would have been nice to not have been aware.”
In attempt to escape the abuse, she eventually “gave in” to Epstein’s many requests for her to bring him “fresh meat.” An attorney then told interviewers that their client may have mentioned Epstein to other girls on the beach, suggesting something to the effect of “if you want to party, go to Epstein’s.”
In a later interaction, there were two other men in the house who she recalled being older than Epstein and speaking with southern accents. She told the agents that she might have known one of their names, but she did not feel comfortable providing it.
When agents asked if the other men had participated in sexually assaulting her, the woman became emotional and ended the interview for the day, the summary says.
She said that since more than 30 years had passed, she had trouble remembering exactly when the interactions occurred and in what order. She had only previously told her story to her mother, who had since died, and a trusted friend, she said.
