A secret trove of photographs from paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s Caribbean sex island show the disgraced financier larking around with several alleged ‘sex slaves’ just months after being charged with abusing a large number of teenage girls.
The never-before-seen cache provide a visual record of daily life in the seedy orbit of the morally-bankrupt billionaire, who killed himself in prison this month while facing prosecution on multiple counts of paedophilia and child sex trafficking.
They were obtained by the Daily Mail via a source with detailed knowledge of events on Little St James, a stunning 72-acre patch of the U.S. Virgin Islands now nicknamed ‘paedophile island’ and ‘orgy island’.
There are multiple images of Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who orchestrated the billionaire’s social life, introduced him to Prince Andrew and has been widely accused of recruiting teenage girls to Epstein’s child prostitution ring.
Maxwell, the daughter of crooked newspaper tycoon Robert, who has previously denied any wrongdoing, features in several striking images.
She can be seen embracing Jean-Luc Brunel, a French model agency boss accused of helping Epstein traffic teenage girls.
Other images provide further insights into life on Little St James, revealing, for example, that Perspex boxes filled with condoms were kept in guest bedrooms
Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who orchestrated Epstein’s social life, can be seen embracing Jean-Luc Brunel, a French model agency boss accused of helping traffic teenage girls
Epstein, then in his 50s, tours his island on a quad bike, which he regularly used to transport topless teenagers to and from the beach
Epstein used the vehicle to visit an outdoor temple (shown) he built near a corner of the island
The morally-bankrupt billionaire is believed to have committed several sex crimes in the temple
Others show Maxwell inside Epstein’s main residence on Little St James and was taken shortly after Christmas 2006.
That date is significant as it was just six months after Epstein had been charged with abusing a large number of teenage girls.
He was in the process of assembling a superstar legal team which pulled strings to prevent him serving a substantial prison sentence.
Yet he seems to have barely a care in the world as he and Maxwell can be seen larking around with several alleged ‘sex slaves’ who had been flown to the island for the New Year holidays.
Most of the girls, whose pictures cannot be printed (as victims, they must not be identified), appear to be in their late teens.
Brunel, now 72, was alleged in recently unsealed court documents to have used his fashion business to provide the billionaire with a steady supply of impressionable young women who were then sexually assaulted.
In return, Epstein is said to have invested in his businesses. Now under investigation, he has also denied wrongdoing.
‘As you can see from the photos, Jean-Luc and Ghislaine were best of friends and worked very closely together with the girls they brought to Jeffrey,’ the source told The Mail.
‘Any time they were on the island, they managed groups of girls, told them what to do, how to do it, how to please Jeffrey, and instructed them how to behave in front of his guests.’
To this end — while it must again be stressed that Maxwell and Brunel have always denied criminality — they have been accused of committing hair-raising misdemeanours in a series of lawsuits and witness statements filed in the U.S. in recent months.
Cosy trip: Peter Mandelson, the former British Cabinet minister and long-term friend of Epstein’s closest chum Ghislaine Maxwell, stays on the luxury resort island of St Barts in 2005
Mandelson is seen taking time off from his work as the European Union’s Trade Commissioner, for which taxpayers were paying him a salary in excess of £200,000 a year
Most notably, Brunel (who was further accused of sexual assault by three women interviewed by The Guardian last month) appears in recently unsealed court documents, which claim he once flew three 12-year-old girls from France to the U.S. to provide erotic massages for Epstein, by way of a sordid birthday present.
A fourth photo from the cache obtained by the Mail shows Epstein, then in his 50s, touring his island on a quad bike.
He regularly used the machine to transport topless teenagers to and from the beach, and to visit an outdoor temple he built near a corner of the island where he’s believed to have committed several sex crimes.
‘You hear so many people who were there, or who knew and spent time with Epstein, now saying, “Oh, we never suspected anything bad was happening,” or “We never thought the girls were being exploited,”’ adds the source.
‘The pictures show just how absurd those claims are. Epstein, a man in his 50s, was surrounding himself with teenagers.
‘If you were sitting there, having a glass of champagne at sundown, or eating crab cakes at lunch, and you saw the young girls being made to parade around and asked to give people massages, you’d have to have been blind to think something wasn’t wrong.
‘There’s no way a right-thinking person could have spent time with Epstein on Little St James and thought some of the things going on were remotely OK.’
This island was a place where some of the world’s most famous and powerful men and women have seen fit to accept freebie holidays.