Jeffrey Epstein Accuser Sues Financier's Estate, Ex-Associate Maxwell, Others

A New York woman who said she was sexually assaulted by Jeffrey Epstein at the age of 14 sued the disgraced financier's estate and a former associate on Wednesday, in the start of an expected wave of lawsuits.

Jennifer Araoz, 32, said in her complaint that she was starting out in high school when an Epstein associate brought her to the financier's massive mansion on Manhattan's Upper East Side, beginning a grooming process that led to months of sexual abuse, including what she called a "brutal rape."

The lawsuit in New York County Supreme Court among the first of a series by women made possible by the state's Child Victims Act, which opens a one-year window to sue over alleged sexual abuse regardless of how long ago it occurred.

Epstein, who once counted Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic former President Bill Clinton as friends, died at age 66 on Saturday of an apparent suicide.

He had been found unresponsive in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan, after having apparently hanged himself, prison authorities said.

Epstein had been arrested on July 6 and pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking involving dozens of underage girls between 2002 and 2005. Prosecutors said he recruited girls to give him massages, which became sexual in nature.

Araoz's lawsuit says former Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell facilitated Epstein's abuse of several girls by overseeing their recruitment and "ensuring that approximately three girls a day were made available to him for his sexual pleasure."

A lawyer who had represented Epstein did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Lawyers for Maxwell did not immediately respond to similar requests.