The Recruitment Trip

In September 2002, Jeffrey Epstein sat at a restaurant table in Cape Town, South Africa, with a former U.S. president, a famous actor, and a well-known comedian. An American model recruiter approached a 20-year-old South African woman named Juliette and told her the man at the table was "the King of America."1

Juliette was an aspiring model. Epstein told her he owned a modeling agency in New York that could get her representation. He mentioned that his close friend owned Victoria's Secret.2 Within weeks, his scheduler had arranged her visa, her passport, and her airline tickets. Epstein personally called her mother to assure her that her daughter would be safe.3

She was not safe. The abuse began as soon as she reached the United States and continued for two years across four countries.4

The former president at that table was Bill Clinton.

The Entourage

One month after the Cape Town dinner, New York Magazine published a profile of Epstein. The article, by Landon Thomas Jr., described a Boeing 727 tour of Africa organized around Clinton's philanthropic schedule — with Epstein's jet as the transport.5

The article named the passengers explicitly: Clinton, Kevin Spacey, and Chris Tucker, along with Epstein and his entourage. The itinerary spanned five countries — South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, and Mozambique — with the magazine describing them as "soaking up the love from Cape Town to Lagos."6

This was not a secret trip. Clinton gave a public speech in Cape Town the day after the restaurant dinner. Juliette attended the speech, escorted by police cars tied to the security detail of "individuals associated with the former official."7 The trip had Secret Service coverage, press photographers, and local police escorts. It was documented in real time by one of America's most prominent magazines.

The article presented Epstein as a financial mystery man — a "globe-trotting billionaire" whose wealth nobody could quite explain. It described the Africa tour as a philanthropic mission focused on AIDS awareness and economic development. The tone was admiring. At the time, no one asked why a money manager with no public track record of charitable work was bankrolling a former president's tour of five African countries on a private Boeing 727.

And yet no one on that plane was ever asked what happened at that restaurant — or what happened to the young woman who was introduced to Epstein there.

The Pitch

Epstein's recruitment technique followed a pattern the SDNY prosecution memo would later document across multiple victims: the promise of a modeling career, the invocation of powerful names, and the deployment of staff to handle logistics.8

In Cape Town, the pitch was specific. Epstein told Juliette that his close friend Les Wexner owned Victoria's Secret — and that he could connect her to the fashion industry in New York.2 The modeling agency claim was a lie. But the name was real, and to a 20-year-old aspiring model in South Africa, it was enough.

The logistics were handled from New York. Lesley Groff, Epstein's longtime scheduler, called Juliette and arranged a U.S. visa, a passport, and airline tickets.9 Groff — who for eighteen years scheduled Epstein's "massages," booked victims' flights, and managed the daily operations of the trafficking enterprise — was the administrative bridge between the recruitment and the abuse. She made it procedurally possible for a young woman in Cape Town to arrive in Manhattan.

Epstein then called Juliette's mother directly. He assured her that her daughter would be safe and well cared for in New York.3

The Trap

Juliette arrived in New York and was taken to Epstein's apartment building on East 66th Street, where he housed models.4 She was then moved to Epstein's private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. There, an unnamed co-conspirator instructed her to go to Epstein's room for a massage. The sexual abuse began immediately.10

Over the next two years, Juliette was moved between Epstein's properties — his New York mansion, his Palm Beach residence, his Paris apartment, and his island — in a rotating circuit of abuse that spanned four countries and two continents.4 The pattern was identical to what the SDNY prosecution memo would later document for dozens of other victims: initial contact through a recruitment lure, rapid geographic displacement, and then a cycle of movement between controlled properties where escape became progressively more difficult.

In Paris, Juliette stayed with Ghislaine Maxwell. During this visit, she was forced to be photographed nude for Epstein and witnessed "young females on call to sexually pleasure Epstein."11 Maxwell, who was already named as a defendant in Annie Farmer's parallel civil case for normalizing sexual contact with a sixteen-year-old at Epstein's New Mexico ranch, controlled access to victims across multiple continents.12

In 2004, Juliette was taken to Zorro Ranch, Epstein's property in New Mexico. There, Epstein abused her again and introduced her to "another important government official" — a figure distinct from the former president in Cape Town.13 Pilot Larry Morrison would later testify in a 2009 deposition that he saw Governor Bill Richardson arrive at Zorro Ranch for dinner, confirming the property's role as a venue for entertaining political figures.14

At Zorro Ranch, Epstein told Juliette he wanted her to board his plane to California to "serve drinks to scientist friends."13 The request reveals the interchangeability of roles within the operation: victims were deployed as models, masseuses, servers, and sexual commodities depending on the context.

When Juliette's attorneys at Boies Schiller Flexner sought discovery from the estate, they encountered systematic obstruction. As of May 2020, the estate possessed over 700,000 documents. It had produced three — one of which it later clawed back.15

"The estate has taken the position of attempting to prove Epstein's innocence, therefore making all of this information highly relevant for the entire time period."16

The Long Reach

Epstein's control over Juliette did not end when the physical abuse stopped.

In 2016, Epstein emailed Juliette asking whether she knew another woman — a fellow victim — by name.17 The email demonstrated that Epstein tracked his victims across years and maintained a network map of who knew whom.

In June 2019 — two months before his death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center — Epstein emailed Juliette again. This time, he asked her to send him nude photographs.18

Seventeen years after the Cape Town recruitment. Seventeen years after Groff arranged the visa. Seventeen years after a former president sat at the same table. And Epstein was still reaching into Juliette's life, still treating her as available, still exercising the control that began at a restaurant in South Africa.

The timing of the June 2019 email is significant. By then, Epstein had already been arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in New York. He was weeks from his death at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. And he was still contacting a woman he had recruited seventeen years earlier in Cape Town, still treating her as someone who owed him compliance.

Juliette filed her civil complaint on November 14, 2019 — three months after Epstein's death — against estate co-executors Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn.19 Case number 1:19-cv-10479 was consolidated with three other survivor lawsuits, including Annie Farmer's case against Maxwell. The four cases together describe a trafficking operation that spanned continents and decades — and that operated, in Cape Town, in full view of a former president's security detail.