In a sworn affidavit in a US court, Virginia Roberts said she believes Epstein “maintained videos in some rooms where I had sex with other powerful people” and that “some kind of major cover-up is going on to protect” the billionaire financier, the Independent reported.
Epstein, a former investment banker and hedge fund boss, was jailed in Florida in 2008 for sex offenses. He remains a registered sex offender.
“Based on my knowledge of Epstein and his organization, as well as discussions with the FBI, it is my belief that federal prosecutors likely possess videotapes and photographic images of me as an underage girl having sex with Epstein and some of his powerful friends,” she said.
Roberts also alleged that she was so badly assaulted by Epstein’s friends that she thought she might die, the Guardian reported.
“There were times when I was physically abused to the point that I remember fearfully thinking that I didn’t know whether I was going to survive,” she said.
Roberts’ statement was filed with the US district court in southern Florida, where she is seeking to join a long-running lawsuit against the US government filed by two other alleged victims of Epstein, the Guardian reported.
Even though an FBI investigation discovered dozens of alleged victims of Epstein’s underage sex abuse, he secured a deal that saw him serve 13 months in jail in exchange for pleading guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor.
The women claim that Epstein’s plea deal violated their constitutional rights, and that his powerful allies – including presidents, influential lawyers and other celebrities – may have helped win him special treatment, according to the paper.
The most recent allegations follow a December filing in which Roberts, now 31, claimed that when she was 17 she was forced to have sex with Epstein and a number of his friends while she was his “sex slave.”
Among the friends and associates she claims to have had sex with is Prince Andrew. She said she had sex three times with the prince while she was 17. Prince Andrew and Buckingham Palace have adamantly denied the claims on multiple occasions.
Dismissed as a liar by Epstein allies, Roberts filed with her affidavit previously undisclosed receipts for a September 2002 flight from New York to Thailand and a hotel stay costing several thousand dollars. All the bills appeared to have been paid by “J Epstein,” the Guardian reported.
She alleged that Epstein sent her on the trip to learn Thai massage and interview a Thai girl “to bring back to the United States” for him, the paper said. Instead, she said, she met a man whom she married and fled with him to Australia for more than a decade.
Roberts, who alleged she was recruited by Epstein when she was 15, also said she feared coming forward before now in part due to the “physical abuse that I suffered when Epstein forced me to have sex with other people,” the Independent reported.
