Lawsuit: Jeffrey Epstein raped woman in Naples hotel room and threatened to feed her to gators

A lawsuit alleges Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell raped a 26-year-old Florida woman at a Naples hotel and threatened to feed her to alligators if she told anyone.

The lawsuit, filed in the United State District Court for the Southern District of Florida last week, details the sexual abuse, physical assault, mutilation and sex and labor trafficking that occurred between January and May of 2008.

The woman, identified as Jane Doe, arrived in the state of Florida from Turkey in 2001. The woman comes from a devout Muslim family and was worried the nature of the allegations would bring shame to her family, according to the lawsuit.

She was a 26-year-old real estate broker who met the couple at a barbeque hosted by her employer. The woman was told Epstein was interested in renting or purchasing a property from her boss but she was instructed not to process Epstein’s ID and to make it cash transactions instead.

Maxwell, who the woman knew as G-Max, gave her Epstein’s personal phone number because he said he wanted to hire her to cut his hair.

The woman arrived at Epstein’s home and found him naked. With the help of Maxwell, the lawsuit states, the woman was “brutally raped.”

At the conclusion of the assault, Epstein forced the woman to accept $200. The woman said she was going to call the police, but instead, Maxwell purported to call the police herself. Shortly after, two people who claimed to be officers arrived and threatened to arrest the woman for prostitution.

They also threatened her with deportation and taking away her 8-year-old son.

The woman was then forced to drive Maxwell and Epstein to pick up her son and then to a hotel in Naples.

But before that, Epstein forced her to make a pit stop at a large body of water infested with alligators.

“Epstein then ushered the Plaintiff to the body of water and told her in explicit detail that, as had happened to other girls in the past, she would end up in this body of water and be devoured by the alligators, should she ever reveal what Epstein had done to her,” the suit states.

The woman was then taken to a hotel in Naples, which was not named, where she was repeatedly raped and sexually abused in front of her son.

Julie K. Brown, an investigative reporter with the Miami Herald, has been looking into Epstein’s crimes for the past five years. She broke the story about Epstein’s detour to Naples.

Brown, who received a George Polk Award for her Epstein coverage, said Epstein may have taken the woman to Naples to cover his tracks.

“We never heard of him doing anything in Naples so this was new, perhaps that’s why if her story is true, that could be why he took her to Naples because right around the time this happened he was under a lot of scrutiny in South Florida,” Brown said.

The lawsuit states that through May, Epstein threatened the woman to keep her quiet, using “his personal connections to many powerful actors within the legal system” who would not hesitate to act on his behalf.

Epstein claimed to have influence over the FBI, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Florida state and local law enforcement.

Epstein kept the woman’s passport in a locked box at his Palm Beach home. For months, the lawsuit states, the woman was trafficked to a number of men, including one who introduced himself as a local judge.

Though the woman was 26, Epstein told her to lie and tell people she was 17 because of her appearance.

In May of 2008, Epstein forced the woman to submit to unwanted and unnecessary vaginal surgery performed as a wealthy person’s home by a man with a Russian accent for the purpose of creating the impression that she was a virgin for a “high profile” client.

The surgery left the woman “permanently sexually dysfunctional.”

The woman was photographed and videotaped naked and performing lewd activities, the lawsuit states.

The suit also alleges the woman was asked to drive young women, some of who were believed to be minors, to locations where Epstein’s sex trafficking was perpetrated.

The woman was also asked to keep a box secure at her home. She was threatened with death if she ever opened it. The woman believed Epstein was trying to conceal the box from authorities.

The suit states the box was picked up by Maxwell in or about May of 2008.

“Due to the severity of these threats, Plaintiff lived in constant fear until learning of Epstein’s death in the summer of 2020, and even today maintained a certain level of apprehension about associates of Epstein carrying through on the threats Epstein had made,” the lawsuit states.

A video conference on the case is scheduled for Thursday before a federal judge in Fort Lauderdale.