NEW YORK -- A New York woman who said Jeffrey Epstein groomed her for sex starting when she was 14 and then raped her a year later sued his estate Wednesday, one of many possible lawsuits that his estate is expected face after his death.
While Epstein's death ended a federal criminal prosecution on child sex trafficking charges, his estate may still have to defend against civil suits. He was believed to have been worth at least $500 million.
Other women who have said they were victimized by Epstein said they planned to file lawsuits, and a new state law in New York that expands the amount of time that sexual abuse victims can sue could open the door to more claims.
Epstein, 66, died Saturday in a Manhattan federal jail where he had been held since his arrest in early July, authorities said.
In her lawsuit filed Wednesday, Jennifer Araoz said she was recruited by an unnamed woman outside her Manhattan high school in 2001 before meeting Epstein and giving him erotic massages once or twice a week in his Upper East Side town house.
In 2002, about a year after they met, Epstein pulled Araoz on top of him during a massage and raped her, according to the lawsuit. She did not visit his town house again, she said.
His lawyers could not immediately be reached for comment.
Araoz also sued the women she said helped Epstein, including Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's longtime confidante and the daughter of Robert Maxwell, a British publishing magnate. They also include three unnamed household staff members, including Epstein's secretary, his maid and a woman she called "the recruiter."
Dan Kaiser, Araoz's lawyer, said his client did not interact with Maxwell at the town house but included Maxwell in the suit because she was "one of the center spokes of this conspiracy."
"It wasn't just Jeffrey Epstein," Kaiser said. Maxwell "helped maintain the ring and is responsible as a co-conspirator for the injuries that Jennifer suffered. There was a whole circuit of enablers around him, adults who permitted this to go on."
Maxwell's attorneys did not respond to a request for comment. She has emphatically denied past accusations that she participated in sex trafficking.
Araoz, 32, first told her story to NBC News in July, after Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey on the federal charges. Her lawsuit could be one of many new claims that are filed against the Epstein estate in New York under the new law passed this year.
The law, called the Child Victims Act, expands the amount of time that prosecutors can file sexual abuse charges and victims can sue for abuse that occurred when they were a minor.
Crucially, the law created a one-year "look-back window," during which claims that had already passed the statute of limitations could be revived. That window opened Wednesday.
Araoz's attorneys said they planned to target Epstein's assets in this suit, which include his properties in New York, Florida and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
In the fall of 2002, the lawsuit said, Epstein instructed her to take off her underwear and climb atop him to give him a massage. He then raped her and told her "that she felt amazing, and that she did nothing wrong," according to the lawsuit.
She did not go to police after the incident. In an opinion piece for The New York Times on Wednesday, she said that for years she did not tell anyone about the abuses because she was intimidated by Epstein's insistence that she stay silent.
She said she was wracked with shame and eventually dropped out of high school.
On Wednesday, Araoz said Epstein and the people around him "robbed me of my youth, my identity, my innocence, my self-worth."
Her lawyers said she had spoken to federal prosecutors who were preparing a case against Epstein.
A Section on 08/15/2019