Fresh Meat

She was thirteen years old when her mother put the babysitting advertisement in the rental packets. The mother ran a small real estate business on a gated island community off the coast of South Carolina, and she was proud of her daughter, proud of the initiative. The ad went out to renters and property owners. A man called back. He said he and his wife needed a babysitter for their child for the night.4

There was no wife. There was no child. There was only Jeffrey Epstein.

Sea Pines Plantation

The house was a villa or condo in the Sea Pines Plantation area of the island. The girl — identified in FBI records only as a PROTECT SOURCE — remembered knocking on the front door, remembered thinking she hoped it would be a quick job so she could get back to enjoying the rest of her day.1

The man she came to know as "Jeff" answered alone. He offered her cocaine, an alcoholic drink, and marijuana simultaneously.1 She had tried each before, separately. Never all three at once. Everything went blurry. "Things slowed," she told FBI agents forty years later, and she thought something additional had been put in her drink.1

"I wasn't sober. He grabbed her hair and shoved her head 'down there.' I remembered seeing his penis and vaguely thinking, 'oh, that's a grown man's penis.'"1

She did not recall the rest of the time she was there. Only laying on a bed in a fog after the oral sex, and leaving while it was still light outside, semi-conscious. He did not pay her for the babysitting job she was supposed to have done.1

The next day, around noon, she went to ask her mother for food money. Her mother told her Jeff wanted her to come back to babysit again. The girl did not tell her mother what had happened. She was afraid she would get into trouble. She was afraid she would "screw up" her mother's business. Her mother was proud of her.1

She went back.

The Third Time

During her second interaction with Epstein, she remembered feeling "heavy." A strange feeling came over her. She saw a substance on her knee that looked like "snot." He wiped it off. She stared out the window of the office with all the books as she described what happened to FBI interviewers decades later. She remembered the pants she was wearing: red sweats with silver material on the knees.1

During her third interaction, she opened a drawer in the house and found photographs. Polaroid photographs of herself. She was naked in them. She wanted to take them, to try to piece together the holes in her memory from the previous visits.1

Epstein caught her looking.

"He raped me. He bent her over and raped her, and it 'wasn't vaginal.' He called her a 'stupid bitch' and stated that 'being nosy isn't good for you.' He told her she was going to get herself in trouble and 'now she owed him.'"1

That was when the threats started. That was when, in her words, he "turned."1

The photographs were systematic. Epstein used a tripod. Some images showed only her breasts, others only her face, some her full body. She remembered wearing one of his shirts in at least one image — she described it as "very crispy," possibly blue or white.2

She told FBI agents she believed she had more than six and fewer than twenty sexual interactions with Epstein over time.2

"Young Fresh Meat Girls. Virgins."

The sexual violence escalated and diversified. Epstein used objects — beer bottles, a golf club handle — to assault her anally and vaginally. He pulled her hair, covered her mouth and nose simultaneously, placed his hand on her throat. He yanked her nipples until the pain was "very painful." He never bound her. He did not, in her recollection, punch her with a full fist — but he squeezed, he yanked, he covered, he choked.1

"I would have given anything for him to have given me a cocktail again," she told the agents. "It would have been nice to not have been aware."1

During what she believed was her fourth or fifth interaction, two other men were present. She described them as "fat and disgusting" — both older than Epstein, both with southern accents, both apparently wealthy. Epstein introduced her to them. He bragged. He demonstrated what he had done to her, made the men watch, and addressed them while assaulting her.1

"This is why fresh meat is good, you can do whatever you want."1

Believing the abuse would continue unless she gave him something else, she eventually told him she would find him friends. He was specific about what he wanted.

"Young fresh meat girls. Virgins." He added: "Don't bring me any niggers."1

She never brought him any friends. But under pressure she did, at times, tell strangers she met on the beach that if they wanted to party, they should go to Epstein's. It was survival calculus: better to direct strangers there than to be the only one available.1

"Probably Given Drugs on Almost Every Interaction"

She was, she told agents at her second interview, "probably given drugs on almost every interaction" she had with Epstein. He always provided alcohol and marijuana. Usually cocaine as well. His drink of choice, she noticed, was gin and tonic. He "blared" Neil Diamond. He enjoyed classical music.2

The drugs served a function. They blurred memory, lowered resistance, made subsequent visits harder to evaluate clearly. They also gave Epstein leverage: she had taken drugs voluntarily, at least at first. Reporting him meant explaining that.2

She vaguely remembered other girls around and older men during the fifth interaction. She recognized none of the girls. The island was small — she knew most girls her age. She wondered where they came from.2

On one occasion, Epstein surprised her at a hotel pool where she and her friends were swimming. He appeared alone. She left with him without violence — she just left, because by then she understood there was no other option. They went to a different residence than his first house. "Same kind of bull shit," she told the agents.2

There was a woman she noticed in Epstein's company more than once — around his age in the 1980s, with darker skin and long dark wavy hair, appearing to have no money of her own, not in a relationship with any of his associates. The woman never spoke to her. She gave off a "cold feeling."2

The Rick James Concert

When she was approximately fifteen, she went to a Rick James concert in Savannah, Georgia with a friend and her mother. Epstein was at the concert. He surprised her again.2

He had a flask. He got her drunk. He kept her isolated at the concert for so long that her mother and friend left, drove back to the island, and spent a long period looking for her, terrified.2

Epstein left at some point during the night. She found herself alone in Savannah, high on marijuana, with no way home. She kept thinking: how am I going to get back to the island?

The police picked her up. They photographed her and held her in what she described as a "real jail cell." She ate what she remembered as really good fried chicken while she was there. At some point her mother and brother came to pick her up.2

She recalled thinking, when they arrived, that her mother was going to be angry — because she had gotten her ears pierced.2

What Epstein Said About Himself

At some point during their interactions — the chronological order was difficult to reconstruct across four decades — she asked Epstein why he did those things to her.

He answered.

"EPSTEIN responded by disclosing he had been molested as a child by a 'boy' in his family, and possibly his aunt. II thought the boy was either an uncle or a cousin; he definitely mentioned abuse by both a male and a female."2

It is one of the only personal disclosures by Epstein documented in the entire EFTA corpus. He was, she reflected decades later, "probably grooming me." He had two sides to his personality. The disclosure made her feel like she had some power. She "got super fascinated" in interactions wherein he was submissive. She felt relieved when she was not the one being abused.2

She did not "mix" the two types of interactions. The ones where he physically abused her were separate from the ones where he was submissive. But every time they entered a bedroom, "sexual abuse of some sort was involved, and in general, every interaction included sexual abuse."2

Jim Atkins and the Photographs

A man named Jim Atkins — a white male with gray hair, "big ears," and a hairy body, possibly in his fifties in the early 1980s — entered the picture not long after Epstein began assaulting her. He was connected to an Ohio university, possibly as its dean or financial officer. He owned or rented a residence on the island, where he stayed when he visited.2

Atkins came off as a "rich prick" who expected people to respond to him immediately. He developed a relationship with her mother — flying on and off the island to see her, claiming he loved her. He was rude to the girl and her brothers, had a short temper, and drank heavily.2

She recalled seeing Epstein and Atkins together at least once, at Epstein's second house on the island.2

Epstein had taken Polaroid photographs of the girl during the sexual abuse. Those photographs became the instrument of something worse. Epstein used them to blackmail her mother. Atkins and an accountant named Cecil — a Black male whose last name was not known to the victim — helped her mother "fix" her real estate books so she could embezzle funds to pay Epstein.2

Her mother tried, over years, to buy back the photographs and the secrets.2

At some point, Atkins and her mother had a falling out. Atkins, Epstein, and possibly Cecil turned the mother in to the Real Estate Commission — providing her accurate real estate records as evidence against her. The mother was convicted of embezzlement. She was sent to federal prison in Columbia, South Carolina. She served approximately two years.3

The victim was approximately seventeen or eighteen years old when her mother went to prison. She had not yet been told the full story. Her mother informed her "late into the process" that she had seen the photographs of her daughter, and that she had been paying people money.2

"EPSTEIN blackmailed her mother through explicit photographs of II, which resulted in her mother embezzling from her real estate company to pay him. II stated that her mother 'tried to buy back the photos and secrets' over the years."2

The blackmail had destroyed her family before she fully understood it was happening.

"Don't Ever Contact Me Again"

While her mother was in prison, unable to pay restitution, the girl called Jim Atkins at the Ohio university where he worked. She wanted to know why he had helped fix the books only to later turn her mother in to the police.

He told her.

"I don't give a shit if you end up in the gutter. Don't ever contact me again. Your mother knows what will happen."3

She Called After the Arrest

On July 6, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport on federal sex trafficking charges. A hotline was established for potential victims and witnesses.

Four days later, on July 10, she called.4

A Task Force Officer conducted an initial telephone interview. The victimization, the caller said, had occurred in the 1980s, when she was approximately thirteen to fifteen years old, on a South Carolina island. She provided enough information to warrant a follow-up interview. The New York office assigned the lead to the Seattle Field Office. She was interviewed in person three weeks later, on July 24, 2019, at her attorney's office.4

She came forward alone. By then, her mother was dead. The only other person alive to whom she had confided the details of what happened to her, before speaking to the FBI, was a close friend. She had never written any of it down. She had never made any recording.1

She told the agents she had not said anything yet. She wanted them to understand the weight of that. "I haven't said anything yet," she said. "So imagine once I do."1

She asked the agents to keep her safe. Throughout her life, she said, Epstein's people had found her. Had kept tabs on her. She had received threatening phone calls for decades — sometimes every two years, sometimes at random intervals. In the beginning, they were regular.3

The abuse she endured had caused her to "shut down." She became fearful, she said, "my whole life."1

She was 100% positive the man in the photograph her friend had texted her was "Jeff" — the man she had initially believed she was hired to babysit for, and who had sexually abused her beginning when she was approximately thirteen years old.1

Open Questions

• Jim Atkins has not been publicly identified, charged, or named in any court proceeding. His full name, his Ohio university affiliation, and the current status of any FBI inquiry into his conduct remain unknown.
• The accountant named "Cecil" who helped structure the embezzlement scheme has not been publicly identified.
• The two men with southern accents present during the fourth and fifth interactions — described as "fat and disgusting," apparently wealthy — have not been identified. The victim indicated she may know the name of one of them.
• The woman with darker skin and long dark wavy hair observed in Epstein's company on the island in the early 1980s has not been identified.
• Whether the FBI investigated the blackmail scheme involving the Polaroid photographs, or pursued Atkins as a subject, is not reflected in the documents released to date.
• The threatening phone calls the victim received across multiple decades — including at her workplace — were attributed by her to Epstein's network. Whether any were investigated or traced is unknown.
• The victim indicated she had two additional interactions with Donald Trump beyond the first, but declined to describe them during the August 2019 interview.