FILE PHOTO: U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein appears in a photograph taken for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services’ sex offender registry March 28, 2017 and obtained by Reuters July 10, 2019. New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services/Handout/File Photo via REUTERS
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Three more women on Tuesday sued the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, saying they were recruited to provide massages for the financier and then sexually abused.
The lawsuits, filed in Manhattan federal court, bring the total number of civil cases against Epstein’s estate since his apparent suicide in jail on Aug. 10 to at least five.
Two of the women say they met Epstein when they were 17, while a third said she met him when she was 20. All describe similar patterns of being brought to Epstein’s home to provide massages and then subjected to repeated, unwanted sex acts.
Lawyers for Epstein could not immediately be reached for comment.
Epstein was arrested on July 6 and pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking involving dozens of underage girls as young as 14. He died on Aug. 10 in his jail cell at age 66, and an autopsy report released on Friday concluded he hanged himself.
Just two days before, Epstein had signed a will placing all of his property, worth more than $577 million, in a trust called The 1953 Trust after the year of his birth, according to a copy of the document seen by Reuters.
His death at the jail triggered multiple investigations and had prompted U.S. Attorney General William Barr to criticize “serious irregularities” at the facility, and to remove the acting chief of the federal Bureau of Prisons.
Epstein, a registered sex offender who once socialized with U.S. President Donald Trump and former President Bill Clinton, pleaded guilty in 2008 to Florida state charges of unlawfully paying a teenage girl for sex and was sentenced to 13 months in a county jail, a deal widely criticized as too lenient.
Reporting By Brendan Pierson in New York; Editing by Andrea Ricci