Chapter Fifteen A Bridge Too Far
Fifteen
A Bridge Too Far
After I returned to the fold, she started to take these frustrations out on me in brutal new ways.
I’d always believed her when she said she wasn’t possessive of Epstein and didn’t care whom he had sex with.
Now, though, she seemed fiercely jealous of anyone to whom Epstein showed affection.
Maxwell was a lot of things—glamorous, captivating, boldly sexual in a way that many men found alluring.
But she was not a nurturer, and I think she and Epstein could both see that I was.
“You have a very maternal instinct,” he’d said to me more than once, and now he immediately resumed our nightly tuck-in routine.
In response, Maxwell began lashing out at me during our threesomes.
For example, she would grab a larger-than-life-size dildo and use it to hurt me.
If I complained, she hurt me more. For some time now, she’d teased me that soon I’d be too old for Epstein.
If I—an eighteen-year-old—was too mature for him, she had to know that he saw her as downright ancient.
But while her motivations were unkind, Maxwell was right to warn me about the implications of getting older.
In the context of Epstein’s world, if I wanted to glimpse my future, all I had to do was look at Sarah Kellen.
For a few years before I’d met her, she’d serviced Epstein sexually, or so I’d been told.
But as she entered her early twenties, she’d aged out and was forced into a new phase of servitude: recruiting others.
My sense of guilt about the times I’d recruited girls had been steadily growing.
Now I began to worry that if I stayed with Epstein and Maxwell much longer, I’d soon be like Kellen, responsible for luring an unending parade of young girls into a situation that I knew would damage them forever. [*]
If there was one thing I knew about, it was damage—the lasting reverberation of past trauma.
I had been trafficked to dozens of men by this point, and I remembered their faces clearly.
There were old men and even older men; nerdy, shy men and boorish, arrogant men.
There were men who wanted me to wear outfits and men who wanted to see me naked and men who didn’t notice if I was clothed, as long as I touched them.
There were men who couldn’t get or maintain erections.
There were men who behaved as if I were lucky to be with them.
There was at least one man who ignored me as I serviced him sexually, preferring instead to focus his eyes upon, and even to fondle, Epstein.
Some men seemed grateful for my attention, particularly the septuagenarians, many of whom thanked me afterward, calling me “a good girl.” While I appreciated that these ancient men were less brutish than others, I still felt sick when they said that.
Their words made it undeniably clear that for them, my childlike appearance was part of my sexual appeal.
It is truly impossible to say how many men there were, in part because I didn’t keep count, and in part because my interactions with many of them were so similar.
Still, I was expected to make all the men happy, even though doing so made me miserable.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse for me, they did: Epstein trafficked me to a man who raped me more savagely than anyone had before.
We were on Epstein’s island when I was ordered to take this man to a cabana.
Immediately it was clear that this man, whom I’ve taken pains to describe in legal filings only as “a well-known Prime Minister,” wasn’t interested in caresses.
He wanted violence. He repeatedly choked me until I lost consciousness and took pleasure in seeing me in fear for my life.
Horrifically, the Prime Minister laughed when he hurt me and got more aroused when I begged him to stop.
I emerged from the cabana bleeding from my mouth, vagina, and anus.
For days, it hurt to breathe and to swallow.
Afterward, I tearfully begged Epstein not to send me back to the Prime Minister.
I got down on my knees and pleaded with him.
I don’t know if Epstein feared the man or if he owed him a favor, but he wouldn’t make any promises, saying coldly of the politician’s brutality, “You’ll get that sometimes. ”
Today I know that Epstein liked to tell friends that women were merely “a life-support system for a vagina.” I didn’t know that then.
Today I know that Epstein made the following chilling distinction: “I’m not a sexual predator; I’m an ‘offender.’ It’s the difference between a murderer and person who steals a bagel.
” I didn’t know that then either. Today I see how little he cared about the girls and women he abused.
But for a long time, I couldn’t see it. Or maybe I didn’t want to see it.
My experience being brutalized by the Prime Minister—and the way Epstein glossed over it—changed that for me.
Before the Prime Minister’s attack, Epstein had me fooled.
I thought that Epstein’s predilection for childlike girls was a sickness, but that in his twisted way he meant well.
After the attack, I couldn’t stay a fool.
Having been treated so brutally and then seeing Epstein’s callous reaction to how terrorized I felt, I had to accept that Epstein meted out praise merely as a manipulation to keep me subservient. Epstein cared only about Epstein.
At that point, I hit bottom. I now knew I wouldn’t survive.
I saw only two possible options: either someone Epstein trafficked me to would kill me or I would take my own life.
About eight weeks or so after my encounter with the Prime Minister, Epstein informed me, as he often did, that he wanted me to service an important friend on one of his jets.
Epstein told me what time to be at the private airport in Palm Beach and said I’d only be up in the air for an hour.
Taking him at his word, I got Tony and some of his friends to drive me there, then asked them to stay and wait until I returned.
I had no idea who I was meeting that day as I climbed the stairs that led to the plane.
Then I ducked my head and stepped inside.
“Hello again,” said the Prime Minister, the man I feared more than any other.
The blood rushed to my head, and I could barely breathe.
“Will he kill me this time?” I wondered, and for a dizzy moment, I thought I might faint.
The pilot discreetly closed the door to the cockpit, and we took off.
For the next hour, I was on high alert, braced for a fatal blow.
As it turned out, this second encounter with the Prime Minister was more typical of those I’d had with other men—his only goal was ejaculation.
Still, it was the longest sixty minutes of my life as I anticipated the Prime Minister once again injuring and asphyxiating me.
When the airplane touched down, I emerged in a daze, stumbling back to the car where Tony and his friends were waiting.
I didn’t know it then, but my second interaction with the Prime Minister was the beginning of the end for me.
My behavior began to change. I’d bump into a beautiful young stranger in my favorite bookstore, realize she’d be perfect for Epstein, and then intentionally leave without getting her number.
A new sense of agency was taking hold inside me.
While I couldn’t yet save myself, at least I could spare one girl at a time.
Then, sometime in the summer of 2002, Maxwell and Epstein pushed me past my breaking point.
The three of us had spent an afternoon snorkeling in the shallow reefs around Epstein’s island.
As we dried off on the dock, I noticed Epstein share a glance with Maxwell before he sat down next to me.
He put his hand on my back—a fond gesture that was rare for him.
“I hope you know how much I appreciate you for embracing my lifestyle,” he began, as Maxwell cozied up next to me too.
“Over the past several months, you’ve shown me a devotion that is difficult to find.
The friends I’ve introduced you to agree: you are a delightful young woman.
” He took a breath, and I wondered where all this was going.
Then he came out with it: “Jenna, I want you to have our baby.”
Though I’d heard him talk hypothetically about seeding the human race with his DNA, his proposal shocked me.
I remember trying not to flinch as Maxwell joined in with the financial particulars.
“You’d have round-the-clock nannies to help you,” she said, her voice oddly chirpy.
“Jeffrey would buy you a mansion in Palm Beach or New York—your choice!—and you would have a hefty allowance.” If memory serves, she floated the astronomical figure of $200,000 per month.
But then came the conditions: like a modern-day handmaid, I would have to sign over to Epstein and Maxwell all legal rights to the child.
I would have to travel with the child wherever and whenever Epstein wanted.
I would have to attest, in writing, that Epstein and I were not a couple, and that the baby would remain with him if we ever had “a falling out.” That’s how Maxwell put it, as if it were conceivable that the end of Epstein’s and my relationship might ever be a mutually-agreed-upon parting.
That was laughable to me. Everybody knew that Epstein was the one who ended his relationships with young girls—never the other way around.
Up to that point, the idea of having kids had been a distant dream. I still felt like a child myself sometimes, so it was hard to imagine being a mom. Given what that doctor had told me the year before, I wasn’t even sure I could get pregnant again, let alone carry a baby to term.