Chapter Fourteen Puppets on a String #2
In the years since, doctors and healers who I have consulted have suggested that my body—having withstood so much sexual trauma—was staging a kind of revolt.
That idea makes sense to me, especially because around this time Epstein was inventing new ways to abuse me.
He’d become interested in sadomasochism, and he didn’t care who knew it.
When a Vanity Fair reporter paid a visit to his Manhattan townhouse, he left a paperback copy of the Marquis de Sade’s The Misfortunes of Virtue out on his desk for her to see.
But he wasn’t just reading about it. He’d begun to experiment with whips and restraints and other instruments of torture.
At that time, I was the only one of his girls, so far as I knew, whom he subjected to this cruel torment.
In session after session, he would play out various fantasies, with me as the victim.
I was gagged, and often hog-tied. Epstein liked to put a black leather, metal-studded collar around my neck that continued down my spine, where it attached to a chain that bound my hands and feet tightly together.
The backbreaking contortions this contraption forced upon me caused so much pain that I prayed I would black out. When I did, I’d awaken to more abuse.
In the midst of all this, Epstein bought a ticket for me to see a Broadway play: The Phantom of the Opera.
I’d never been to the theater before, and I was stunned not just by the spectacle but by how much the phantom reminded me of Epstein.
A brilliant scholar, magician, architect, inventor, and composer, the Phantom had been born with a deformed face.
I’ll never forget the scene when he forces a young girl he has abducted to put on a wedding dress.
The girl explains that she fears not his physical appearance but rather his inner nature.
Even today, when I hear Andrew Lloyd Webber’s song “Think of Me,” I think of Epstein, the twisted monster who essentially abducted me.
Thinking about an imagined future when his prisoner has broken free, the Phantom sings, “Long ago, it seems so long ago / How young and innocent we were / She may not remember me, but I remember her.”
I had descended into a deeper level of hell.
As we moved into autumn, the world was going crazy.
On September 11, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers shook every American to his or her core.
But even before that, I had begun to fall apart.
My grandma Shelley had fallen ill, and while I’d managed to see her in Florida right before she died at the end of August, I felt guilty that my obligations to Epstein had long ago turned me into an absentee granddaughter.
In October, Maxwell flew up to New York City to host a dinner party for Prince Andrew, who was visiting the United States for the first time since 9/11.
Epstein and I stayed behind in Palm Beach, I remember, and that’s when he pulled me aside and said he’d noticed how strung out I seemed.
There were dark circles under my eyes, and my ribs were visible beneath my skin.
I told him I wasn’t sleeping well. I’d added cocaine to the drugs I was taking, and that wasn’t helping any.
Epstein looked disgusted; he said my drug abuse had become unacceptable.
He’d always demanded that his regular girls be cheerful and appear to desire him. Me, I was dead-eyed and listless.
“You’re not the same girl you were,” Epstein said coldly. “You need to clean yourself up.” I didn’t argue. He said he was going on a trip. “I’ll call you next time I’m in town,” he said. Then he sent me home.
All I felt was relief, at least at first. This was my chance for a new life, and I tried to treat it as such.
I had invested the money Epstein paid me in a car of my own, a used Dodge Dakota pickup truck with a great stereo system, so for the first time I could get myself around.
That was good because I needed to make money: Epstein had stopped paying my bills.
I worked briefly in an animal hospital, trying to make good on my childhood vow to learn what it took to become a veterinarian.
But I was a mess. I got there late and made up excuses.
They fired me. Chastened, I got my first waitressing gig, and while that restaurant didn’t keep me on for long, the experience I gained made it easier to find another job.
Little by little, the drugs I’d been numbing myself with left my system, and I began to feel more like the old Jenna.
At the same time, though, a nagging feeling of worthlessness remained.
Amid the awfulness, Epstein’s praise had been my main source of self-esteem for so long.
Even though I needed the break he had given me, I felt ashamed that I’d caused him to think ill of me.
Tony and I made a vow: we would go back to school.
We enrolled at the aptly named Survivors Charter, a place aimed at older students who wanted to get their high school diplomas.
I hoped having a common goal would help Tony and me improve our fraught relationship.
But if that had ever been possible, I soon found out that it was no longer.
Tony had gotten caught more than once stealing everything from DVDs to his brother’s truck.
I suspected drugs were driving his kleptomania, and at one point, I threw him out, only to take him back in a few weeks later.
We were both fighting to control our worst impulses, even as we tried to support each other. But we were unraveling.
In November 2001, my old tormentor Ron Eppinger—who’d pleaded guilty to charges of “smuggling aliens” to the United States for purposes of prostitution—finally received his sentence: twenty-one months in prison, a $6,000 fine, and the forfeiture of a boat and the limousine he’d used to promote his call-girl service.
To my mind, Eppinger had gotten off easy.
Not that I was surprised. Less than three years had passed since he’d first picked me up in that limo, but it felt like forever.
And everything that had happened to me in Epstein’s world had only confirmed that certain privileged men existed in a liminal space outside the law, no matter how dastardly their behavior.
During this period, Epstein was keeping busy.
Flight logs would later show that he and Sarah Kellen flew to Ohio to attend the funeral of Leslie Wexner’s mother, Bella.
But while I was unaware of that trip at the time, there was one thing I had figured out: I’d been naive to believe Epstein’s claim that I was his special “Number One.” Given how abruptly Epstein had sent me packing, and that he hadn’t reached out since, it was clear that he was doing just fine without me. In a weird, complicated way, that hurt.
Still, as time passed, those feelings of rejection were replaced by a tentative surge of optimism.
No, I wasn’t flying on Epstein’s jets anymore.
I was too busy waitressing for five dollars an hour (plus tips) at T.G.I.
Friday’s. And that was okay. Even as I faced how disposable I’d been, I was finding ways to establish my own value outside Epstein’s world.
My older brother, Danny, was about to get married to a great woman named Lanette, and I was happy that I would be able to attend their ceremony.
Had I still been on call 24/7 for Epstein and Maxwell, there’s no way I could have guaranteed that.
After T.G.I. Friday’s, I did a few shifts at a restaurant called Mannino’s, then I got a full-time gig at a place called Roadhouse Grill.
I liked my colleagues and enjoyed how my ability to read customers’ wants and needs translated into generous tips.
Then one night after my shift in March 2002, Tony—who’d borrowed my Dodge truck—came to the Roadhouse Grill to pick me up.
As he sat at the bar waiting for me, he noticed the jar that held the tip money that the waitstaff had pooled throughout the night.
When no one was looking, he helped himself.
I had no idea. I clocked out and we went home.
The next day, my boss called and accused me of stealing.
I said I hadn’t done it, but with a heavy heart I suspected I knew who had.
I begged my boss to take what was missing out of my next check, and when he said no, I went over the next day and paid the money back.
But still he told me I was fired and that he’d called the police.
I was terrified I would be arrested. That’s when Epstein called me to check in.
His timing was uncanny—eerie even—and almost made me believe he was as all-knowing as he liked to brag that he was.
“Come for lunch,” he said. “I want to see you.” When I arrived, he looked me over, evaluating whether I was still using drugs.
Only when he was satisfied that I was clean did he ask me how I was doing.
I burst into tears. The tip jar at work, I told him, my words pouring out of me—Tony had emptied it and gotten me fired.
What if the police came for us both? Epstein had never approved of Tony, but he said he could easily get the police to back off.
He had one condition, however: I had to return to El Brillo Way.
I had no job. My boyfriend was a screwup. So when Epstein turned and led me to the massage room, I followed him. That was all it took. I was back under his thumb.