![Multimedia artist Katelyn Kopenhaver, right, with help from her brother Brent Kopenhaver, unfurls a banner reading [Jefferey] Epstein is the worst kind of virus, outside federal court where a judge held a bail hearing by video for Epstein's former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, Tuesday, July 14, 2020, in New York. - Sputnik International](https://cdn1.img.sputnikglobe.com/img/07e4/08/02/1080036795_0:117:3227:1932_600x0_80_0_0_d5ebd6b133c32e50d6efc11de9b21ac8.jpg "Multimedia artist Katelyn Kopenhaver, right, with help from her brother Brent Kopenhaver, unfurls a banner reading [Jefferey] Epstein is the worst kind of virus, outside federal court where a judge held a bail hearing by video for Epstein's former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, Tuesday, July 14, 2020, in New York.")
A previously-unknown girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein has come to light in the sexual abuse case against the late financier and his close associate Ghislaine Maxwell.
The woman has been identified as Shelley Anne Lewis, 43, who is allegedly running a US-based firm hosting yoga retreats, according to The Daily Mail.
She is said to have owned companies offering spiritual courses and worked for Christie’s auction house in New York – where she is understood to have met Jeffrey Epstein in 1999.
Lewis was a frequent fixture on the flight logs of Epstein’s private jet, which she used to travel to New York and his Caribbean island where instances of child sex abuse have been reported by his accusers.
She has not been implicated in Epstein’s crimes, but one of the lawyers representing his accusers said on Saturday that Lewis may have “valuable” information and urged her to cooperate with the FBI.
Her name came up in documents from the 2015 lawsuit filed by Virginia Giuffre, a woman who claims Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her as an underage “sex slave” for Epstein and trafficked her to other powerful men.
“I would appreciate it if Shelley would come out and say she was your g’friend — I think she was from end-99 to 2002,” Maxwell wrote in an email to Epstein in January 2015, according to the trove of court filings released on Friday.
“Ok with me,” Epstein replied the following day. “You have done nothing wrong and I woudl [sic] urge you to start acting like it. go outside, head high, not as an esacping [sic] convict.”
Epstein replied: “ok, with me,” Epstein replied a day later. “You have done nothing wrong and i woudl [sic] urge you to start acting like it. go outside, head high, not as an esacping [sic] convict.” pic.twitter.com/Nd4CsBoVVd
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) July 31, 2020
Lewis reportedly scrubbed all her social media profiles after the release of the court documents, but in previous interviews she has described a “mentor” in New York who “was so original in all his thought processes that he couldn’t even see the box,” The Daily Mail reports.
The period in which Epstein presumably dated Lewis largely coincides with the period Giuffre claims she was sexually abused by Epstein, Maxwell, and their powerful friends.
Those, according to her depositions, included Britain’s Prince Andrew, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, Senator George Mitchell, modelling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, the late MIT scientist Marvin Minsky, and lawyer George J. Mitchell, as well as an unnamed prince, a Spanish “president” and a “well-know prime minister”. All of those accused have denied any wrongdoing.
Maxwell was arrested last month on six counts related to sex crimes, conspiracy and perjury. She has been denied bail after pleading not guilty, and remains in a Brooklyn jail ahead of a planned trial next July.
