A woman who was trafficked to Jeffrey Esptein’s private island said she thought she was going to die when he sexually abused her on a flight to the Caribbean.
Juliette Bryant, 43, said she was raped repeatedly by the pedophile financier after being recruited in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2002, when she was at university and an aspiring model.
She told Sky News that she believed her “dreams were all coming true” when she was recruited by a group of women at the age of 22, believing she would be able to “make a difference” for her family and improve their financial situation by modelling.
Juliette said she had initially been flown to New York before being told she would be travelling to the Caribbean with Epstein.
She told how the women who recruited her were waiting at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, where she boarded the private jet and was seated next to Epstein.
She said: “As the plane took off, he started forcibly touching me in between my legs, and I just freaked out and I suddenly realised – oh my God, my family aren’t going to see me again, these people might kill me’.
“I got such a fright, it was such a huge changing thing for me.
“I suddenly realised I had to be nice and be friendly, because I realised I was in great danger.”
Juliette said the women who recruited her for Epstein laughed when she was sexually assaulted on the flight.
“They saw and they just laughed,” she said. “I was really, really petrified. It really changed me, the whole thing, going through this.
“I just didn’t know what to do and I really thought that I was going to die.”
Juliette said she had “no way of getting away” once she arrived on Epstein’s private island – Little St James in the US Virgin Islands.
“They had my passport and by then we had landed on one of the Caribbean islands and then were taken on a helicopter to his island,” she said.
“There was just no way of getting away. I’m not strong enough to swim away. I wouldn’t be able to swim off there.”
She told Sky News she took more flights to Epstein’s homes in New York, Palm Beach, Paris and New Mexico.
She said she is still reckoning with the impact of his abuse.
“I look on Facebook, I see Epstein’s face. I look on X, I see Epstein’s face,” she said.
“I look at the news, there it is again. You know, there are times when it’s made me feel physically ill, to be honest, it is just constantly there and there is no way of escaping it.”
The US Justice Department has released millions of files related to the case of Epstein, shedding further light on his expansive network of high profile figures.
The latest release – expected to be the last – contains some three million pages, including 180,000 images and some 2,000 videos attached to the case. It brings the total to 3.5m documents released.
Epstein, who pleaded guilty to soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18 in 2008, died in New York in 2019 ahead of a pending trial.
