NEW: Jennifer Araoz alleges to SavannahGuthrie that Jeffrey Epstein assaulted her and raped her when she was 15 years old; asserts that she was recruited outside her New York City high school to provide sexual massages to the financier.
From the start, Araoz loved her high school. The Talent Unlimited High School was a small, specialized school for the performing arts located on E. 68th St. on Manhattan's Upper East Side.
Araoz eventually agreed to accompany the woman on a visit to Epstein's home. His townhouse, located less than 10 blocks from her school, was as impressive as the woman had described.There was a bank of cameras near the front entrance, with mini TV screens showing who was coming and going, she said. A secretary's office was off to the left. Up the hall to the right, there was a cavernous room filled with exotic animal trophies.
She returned a handful of times with the other woman, and left each visit with $300, Araoz said. Epstein talked about donating money to AIDS charities, which struck a chord for her given her father's death, and wanting to help with her career. "I thought it was maybe a little odd because I didn't know what he necessarily was getting out of it," said Araoz, who could not recall the other woman's name."But I said, 'This is a genuinely really nice guy, good man who wants to help me.'"
"When he first brought me up there, he was like, 'You know, you remind me so much of this woman in the painting,'" Araoz said. Over the next several months, Araoz's visits followed a familiar routine. Epstein's secretary would contact her by email, beeper or her family's landline to set up a meeting, Araoz said. When she arrived, she'd be escorted to the elevator and head straight to the massage room.
"Why don't we try something a little bit different?" she recalls him saying."Why don't you do the massage on top of me?" She said it wasn't until several years later that she confided in her boyfriend at the time, and subsequently told her mother and at least two close friends. Araoz is now a make-up artist living not far from her childhood home in Queens. She said she's still grappling with the emotional damage of her teenage encounters with Epstein."He took something from me that can never be repaired, never made whole," Araoz said.
The new indictment has ignited fresh criticism of Alexander Acosta, who was the U.S. attorney in Miami at the time and is now Trump’s labor secretary."With the evidence available more than a decade ago, federal prosecutors insisted that Epstein go to jail, register as a sex offender and put the world on notice that he was a sexual predator," he tweeted.
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