Epstein 101: The Lure, Grooming & Seduction

In the first part of this series, we'll examine the criminal profile of the notorious intelligence-linked pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, and his main accomplices. We'll also study the selection process and techniques which Maxwell & Epstein adopted to successfully lure, groom and seduce their young targets.

Listen to the read through of this article

N.B. This series has been adapted from the notes I made while helping with the research for “One Nation Under Blackmail Volume 2” by Whitney Webb.

In among the maelstrom of varying intelligence operations that Epstein and Maxwell were involved in running at anyone time, the majority of the public attention has focused on the duo’s grooming of minors for sexual exploitation. Indeed, throughout the 1990s and until around 2005, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell ran one of the most sophisticated and unique child trafficking operations ever documented. The operation, which targeted children and young women, was implemented subtly and the complex enterprise was more nuanced than US law enforcement agencies such as the FBI had encountered previously. In fact, while Epstein and Maxwell were beginning their many operations involving the trafficking of children and young girls, the FBI profiling methods which were designed to identify such offenders were only in their infancy developmentally speaking.

The word “grooming” may be a term which is verily used today when describing the entire process offenders use to manipulate their chosen victims, but in actuality, grooming is a term which has only been in regular use when referring to child sexual exploitation since around the 1980’s.¹ The use of the term ‘grooming’ in relation to the abuse and manipulation of children is also often misunderstood by many people outside law enforcement, and is in fact designed to describe just one part of the multistage process of organized child sexual exploitation. In modern times, it is a term which is often misused to generalize the entire process of what are essentially two different acts; the initial luring of the child victim and the grooming and/or seduction of the victim. The term grooming does not apply to violent crimes against children which are perpetrated by strangers. For instance, the offering of sweets to a child before an abductor were to kidnap their victim is not classified as a grooming technique, but instead is a classic example of a ‘lure’.

Grooming generally refers to specific techniques used by some child molesters to gain access to and to keep control of their child victims. The techniques a child molester employs are mostly influenced by the relationship between the offender and the victim. In an article from 1984 published in Social Service Review entitled, The Justice System and Sexual Abuse of Children, the author Jon Conte describes the process of grooming accurately, stating: “the perpetrator involves children in sexual abuse through a grooming process in which a combination of kindness, attention, material enticement, special privilege, and coercion are expertly applied.”² Conte added a footnote linking his own 1984 description to a 1979 book by Nicholas Groth entitled Men Who Rape: The Psychology of the Offender which had been published by Plenum Press.³ Until 1987, most training seminars and official FBI programs didn’t refer to this specific behavior as grooming, but instead they termed these actions as being part of the process of seduction.⁴

There are two facts which become very apparent to everyone who has thoroughly investigated the Epstein controversy; firstly, without the grooming and exploitation of children aspects to the case, the majority of their other crimes would have probably gone largely unnoticed, and, secondly, all of their other crimes became inextricably linked to the grooming and sexual abuse of unsuspecting young female victims. The act of grooming a child may seem like a very specific criminal trait, but Epstein and Maxwell also applied their grooming skills to adults, specifically, people in power who had a weakness for forbidden fruit. Epstein and Maxwell were compulsive in their exploitative behavior towards children but they were also willing to exploit any human, regardless of age, to meet their operational goals. Whilst exploiting naive adults is something most people in society can suffer and tolerate to a large extent, the exploitation of children is an unforgivable act which has made the Epstein case so well renowned.

In examining the criminal behavior of Epstein and Maxwell, it’s clear that they were guilty of abusing vulnerable girls, but, depending on how the individual victim reacted to that abuse, they enacted different strategies to best utilize that person further. They were experts in normalizing completely outrageous behavior, and their deviant advances on their young victims, and their target's initial response, didn't seem to deter them from squeezing the most potential out of each of their quarry. To understand this seemingly sadistic bent which Maxwell and Epstein showed towards their young victims, and how they could groom so many young girls to a point where those victims had become veritable sex slaves, one must first understand the category of sexual offender which fits the criminal profiles of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

In basic criminal profiling terms, Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein fit comfortably in the category of ‘sadistic preferential child molesters’⁵. This simply means that, as pedophiles, they have a sexual preference for children above adults, and that the relationship they form with their victims is based on sadistic control, coercion, and is essentially just a way to exert power over another human who is more vulnerable or naïve due to their age and/or experience. Sadistic preferential pedophiles are the most dangerous category of pedophile and are also the rarest. One of the ways in which sadistic preferential pedophiles differ to most other pedophiles is that they are likely to engage in a longer and more complex grooming process. Epstein and Maxwell’s grooming operation began properly in the 1990’s and the majority of the organizational aspects of these criminal activities were headed by Maxwell herself.

Most criminal pedophile behaviour experienced within society is committed not by ‘preferential pedophiles’ like Epstein and Maxwell, but are instead acts by criminals who are most often better categorized as ‘situational pedophiles’⁶. Situational pedophiles will normally maintain typical sexual relationships with other adults, but situational pressure in their life will see them offend, often by downloading pedophile imagery and movies and storing them in a disorganized fashion. Preferential pedophiles are much more aware of the social taboo surrounding their actions and are more likely to be extremely organized, hiding their actions whenever possible. Epstein and Maxwell, although themselves probably best classified as sadistic preferential pedophiles, understood the sexual dynamics and the wild proclivities of their targets for influence and compromise operations. These ‘marks’ were often a mix of wealthy people who were all situated in pressure cooker-like big business environments or affiliated to very stressful major political institutions or roles. Epstein and Maxwell used all of their skills and abilities to compromise these targets. so they could later be manipulated into taking actions which were normally perceived as against the target's own best interests.

When you examine the constituent parts of Epstein and Maxwell’s industrial grooming operation, you discover that not all the members of their team were preferential pedophiles. Instead their group were a complex mix of enablers, completely complicit co-conspirators, unwitting brainwashed victims, grafting opportunists, as well as the completely naive and innocent-minded. This same mix of characters also appears to be true for many of Epstein and Maxwell’s targets of their various compromise operations. There were many people who were briefly exposed to Epstein and Maxwell’s organization and, once they saw what was really happening behind closed doors, swiftly distanced themselves from the pair. But there were also many others who knew every single detail of what was happening to the children and young girls groomed by these prolific sex offenders and who continued to assist them regardless.

Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein were experts in running a multitude of complicated and multifaceted operations simultaneously. As offenders, they were often found to be operating in a range of environments and, at each particular base of operations, they were regularly propagating more than one criminal endeavour at any one time. Epstein and Maxwell were often more cunning than regular people can really grasp. Separately they were experts in understanding effective tactics for manipulating their targets, but when they joined forces, they became almost unstoppable, using every underhand technique to meet their many sinister ends.

For instance, in the late 1990’s and through the turn of the millennium, Sotheby’s Auction House in New York became a fantastic base for various operations involving Ghislaine Maxwell in particular. Where one could be so innocent and naïve to think that Maxwell was simply a passionate art lover, treading the carpets of Sotheby’s Auction House in New York, looking for nothing more than a good deal, the reality was much more complex and sinister. Ghislaine wasn’t a regular at Sotheby’s events just to get a discount Dali, but rather the structure of Sotheby’s was designed in such a way that it allowed for Maxwell to be extremely influential. Within Sotheby’s during this period, the elite and wealthy players in society, who the likes of Epstein and Maxwell fed off, were busy competing among themselves to scoop up a deal during a prolonged period of exploding art prices. This access to the elite was exactly what Epstein and Maxwell’s wider operation relied on, but this isn’t all Ghislaine had to assist her at Sotheby’s. Sotheby’s was under the leadership of Mega Group grandees A. Alfred Taubman and Les Wexner⁷, who had both been close allies of Robert Maxwell. Also working at Sotheby's during this period was Maxwell and Epstein’s close friend Tiffany Dubin, who was the head of the fashion department at the auction house⁸. These significantly powerful allies made Sotheby’s a very controllable environment.

There have also always been severe restrictions around photography at the major auction houses, leaving whatever happened behind closed doors to remain there. This secretive nature of the major art auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s during this period allowed for Ghislaine Maxwell to commit one type of crime in particular which was a specialty of the perverted duo. Grooming.

Alfred Taubman standing outside Sotheby's Auction House Courtesy of Forbes

Even though Epstein and Maxwell worked within many different shady areas, nearly all of their activities included some sort of grooming. The venues frequented by the wealthy New York elite were perfect places for Epstein and Maxwell to recruit potential collaborators, network with the well-connected Establishment players—all potential targets for their influence and compromise operations—but these havens for the rich were also perfect places for Maxwell to find the young aspiring female artists which she had often referred to as “Gallerinas’⁹. These young ladies, who can be considered as the prime targets of Ghislaine Maxwell and her billionaire pederast boyfriend, were often unassuming talented young women who were looking for a break in the art business, which made them fantastically easy game for wealthy and well-connected predators like Maxwell.

By the time Maxwell had coined the term “Gallerinas”, this group had evolved their grooming operation quite significantly. Many of their targets for sexual exploitation were not only talented young girls who had been lured into the proverbial lion’s den. Much of Maxwell’s operation is more reminiscent of the cliched, but unfortunately often true, image of a dirty old man offering sweets to children at the school gates. Epstein was key to grooming the wealthy and elite through sexual compromise and influence operations, but for that exploitation of young girls to occur, he required human fuel for their perverted fireplace. Ghislaine Maxwell was the person who was tasked with heading up the operation to identify and groom children and vulnerable young girls for the powerful elites to exploit and abuse. But, Maxwell was also tasked with supplying herself and Jeffrey Epstein with a regular flow of vulnerable girls they could exploit and abuse. During that experience, the victims all enacted various coping mechanisms to deal with their abuse, one of the main things Maxwell and Epstein were looking for, were girls who could be manipulated into participating in a range of further activities. They only met their evil ends by going through the known and studied techniques associated with the despicable crime of child sexual exploitation. Let’s break down the stages that Maxwell and Epstein used to capture, coerce, control and manipulate their victims. Firstly, as is common knowledge, any predator must initially attract their prey.

The Lure

In the United States, luring a minor for sexual exploitation is a class 3 felony¹⁰, and if the minor is under fifteen years of age it is supposed to be considered an even more serious crime. The luring of young girls in order for them to be sexually exploited is the initial stage in a very long and sinister process of human control and coercion. Jeffrey Epstein’s standard operation mainly revolved around a female proxy offering the potential young victims financial incentives in return for a simple “massage”. The initial massage usually became a coercive and forceful grooming technique and, afterwards, extra money was offered to the victim if they could successfully recruit other girls from their schools or individual friendship groups, often from the poorer areas west of Palm Beach. If the girls didn’t manage to immediately extricate themselves effectively from this cabal of wealthy pedophiles and their many enablers, then they usually became the beneficiaries of further, more complex lures which may include various gifts, opportunities to travel to far off places, and even in some cases, an entire education. These lures act as further incentives meant to suck their targets deeper into the twisted cycle of sexual abuse and leaving them to feel, in essence, entirely owned by their wealthy captors.

In the 2021 criminal case against Ghislaine Maxwell, Minor Victim-4, who was testifying under her first name, Carolyn, was a Florida victim of Jeffrey Epstein who was sexually abused by him up to three times a week for several years. Carolyn would testify¹¹ that Ghislaine Maxwell routinely called her to schedule “massages” and eventually invited the young girl to Epstein’s private island. Carolyn was only 14 when Epstein began to abuse her and she received a few hundred dollars after giving Epstein a massage that finished with the perverted billionaire masturbating while he touched her. Carolyn told the court, “I was young and $300 was a lot of money to me”. She also testified that Epstein molested her more than 100 times between 2001 and 2004 at his Palm Beach mansion. Once Carolyn was inside the group, she was offered further financial incentives by Epstein, Maxwell and their close collaborators to engage in other sexual behaviour.

Carolyn testified that Sarah Kellen snapped nude photos of her on the orders of Jeffrey Epstein whilst there was no one else present. She told the court that she had received a phone call from Kellen, who told her that she would get paid $500 to $600 if she was allowed to take further nude photographs of her. Epstein eventually pressured Carolyn into bringing him younger friends, and she recruited three girls who were approximately the same age as she was at the time. She told the court in 2021 that she was paid $600 for luring in other victims. Carolyn would also tell the court that Epstein had “asked me if I had any friends my age or younger”. She responded on that occasion by telling the pedophile billionaire, “I don’t hang out with younger people but I have some friends I can ask.”

The act of giving these vulnerable young girls from the poorer part of town, money, gifts, and opportunities which were otherwise unavailable to them, was not only a successful technique to attract new blood to the operation, but it would also prime the victims with a powerful psychological fallacy. After the girls had been abused and had received enough incentives, they often got caught in a simple fallacy-trap, believing that they were too deeply involved to complain or get away from their captors, with most seeing themselves as complicit. With a false feeling of responsibility instilled in their victims, Epstein and Maxwell had successfully captured hold of their lure.

A very well documented example of how Maxwell used a stereotypical lure to recruit vulnerable girls is that of the much maligned Haley Robson. Haley was a vulnerable young girl who was in college when she was offered a lucrative opportunity for such a young girl. The New York Times reported that Haley Robson was a 16 year-old high-school student when she was approached by an acquaintance in a Palm Beach swimming pool.¹² Her friend asked her if she wanted to make extra money giving massages to a local billionaire? At the time, Robson was a Palm Beach Community College student from nearby Loxahatchee¹³ and she soon had her first experience of Jeffrey Epstein’s wandering hands. Although Robson dismissed Epstein's advances very early on, showing her assertiveness, she had obviously also impressed Epstein in some other way and she was soon offered a more lucrative opportunity. This was the moment in which Haley Robson began to be groomed and coerced into recruiting other local girls. Haley was later accused of ‘rounding-up’ dozens of high-school girls from impoverished rural populations just outside the Palm Beach area for Epstein and Maxwell. Robson received $200 payment for each new “masseuse” she brought to Epstein’s home, according to police reports. Court papers suggest that Epstein thought that a young Miss Robson targeting these girls from poorer areas brought the operation less attention and that any potentially distressed victims were less likely to go to the authorities. In a later court deposition Haley stated,

“I didn’t have to convince them. I proposed to them. They took it.”

In October 2020, it was reported in OK Magazine that police interviews from the time of Haley Robson’s initial arrest in 2005 suggested that she “truly believed she was helping them by setting up these appointments with Epstein”.¹⁴ Although she claimed complete innocence, Robson also famously compared herself to the so-called “Hollywood Madam,” Heidi Fleiss¹⁵, during one interview with Palm Beach police. She also said to the police that she was told off by Epstein for bringing back a woman of 23, with the detective noting that Robson had been told by Epstein, “the younger the better.”

Haley Robson during her appearance as part of Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich (2020)

Each individual that Maxwell and Epstein recruited into their wider operations had their own individual experience of being groomed. Maxwell and Epstein reacted fluidly when grooming young girls, using responsive and adaptive techniques tailor-made for their individual targets. Haley Robson had refused Epstein’s advances very early on, which had showed courage, but she was still a vulnerable young girl whose brain had not yet formed enough to understand the true gravity of the situation in which she had become embroiled. She wasn’t perceived as a candidate for further sexual grooming, or to be used in compromise or influence operations, instead the spunky young lady was groomed by Maxwell and Epstein to become a recruiter and to bring them further victims. Haley Robson eventually got much criticism for her actions and, whilst some of what she did could be seen as entirely complicit, children and young people can easily be installed with a false set of moral and ethical values by people who they admire or who they see as appropriate senior role models. Haley Robson was groomed to recruit with the classic lure of cash and other rewards, but some were groomed for a range of more clandestine and secretive operations.

Epstein and Maxwell created an entire alternative reality within their various bases of operations. Epstein’s Palm Beach property, became an opaque bubbles of immoral and unethical control, where the abuse of young girls had been normalised. The offer of $200 to a young teenage girl for bringing their school friends into this criminal enterprise cannot be undervalued as a powerful tactic. Further victims have testified to their own abuse at the hands of Epstein and Maxwell having begun when they received a note in a class room or a school playground, and by the time each one of those young girls had crossed over the threshold of Epstein’s Palm Beach residence, they’d leave instilled with a feeling of shame and firmly holding onto a secret that they’d be unlikely to ever reveal. Although offering money to young girls who were from poor communities paid major dividends in relation to the successful recruitment of new victims, other victims were offered opportunities instead of cash rewards, most of which never materialized. In court testimony from 2021, a survivor referred to as Jane Doe #11 stated:

"He promised me that he would write me a letter of recommendation for Harvard if I got the grades and scores needed for admission. His word was worth a lot, he assured me, as he was in the midst of funding and leading Harvard's studies on the human brain, and the president was his friend.”¹⁶

Epstein, once in a locked room with the aforementioned witness, threatened to kill her and then raped her.

Marijke Chartouni also testified to having a similar experience of being lured into Epstein’s orbit of influence by Ghislaine Maxwell, stating:

"She told me he went to Cooper Union. He was a mathematical genius. That he had favorite girls that he would take to Chanel for 15-minute, all-you-can-buy shopping trips. She told me his right-hand person had connection to the arts and the fashion world, and she could help me."

Many victims of Jeffrey Epstein were not lured into these situations via low level recruitment efforts seen in such places as the poorer areas of West Palm Beach, some were also lured through much more sophisticated overlapping operations in much more high class settings. The child sexual exploitation operation which was being run by Epstein and Maxwell didn’t only target local teenagers of Palm Beach, or the young ‘gallerinas’ of New York, their operation was global.

One of the young girls who was a victim of Epstein was also one of the people who was later accused of being a willing accomplice. Nadia Marcinkova was a Yugoslavian teen who became known as Epstein’s personal sex-slave and assistant, but in Nadia’s case, their appeared to be no lure involved. It is widely reported that Marcincova had been purchased¹⁷ by the pedophile billionaire. It is almost impossible to contemplate the reality of what Nadia Marcinkova had to endure and how that affected her behaviour afterwards, but she has also been accused of participating in sex acts by some of Epstein’s other victims. Police records suggest that investigators had indications that Marcinkova could have been underage herself when she was purchased by Epstein. Marcinkova later changed her last name to Marcinko and declined to answer questions about Epstein’s abuse of girls when she was deposed in a lawsuit, choosing to invoke the Fifth Amendment.

Maxwell and Epstein, as extremely wealthy and powerful people, had many different means at their disposal to aid them in luring young girls from all different walks of life. But, regardless of their ability to attract a wide range of girls, there were one group of young women who are always the easiest to enslave. That vulnerable group which I speak of are those young girls who had already previously experienced abuse.

It is hard for anyone to effectively overcome the experience of being groomed for sexual exploitation, let alone the experience of being sexually abused or raped. Many people who have previously been groomed or abused by pedophiles are considered as being psychologically “primed” for potential further abuse.¹⁸ Once someone has been abused for a prolonged period of time, they begin to enact both conscious and unconscious coping mechanisms to manage the heightened stress and fear levels they experience. Once these survivors are exposed to further abuse in the future, they can easily slip back into automatic psychological avoidance mechanisms which their psyches have enacted previously. One of the most prominent and vocal Epstein survivors, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, had already been a victim of child abuse and was the perfect target for the elite pedophiles. Virginia Roberts was only 16 years-old when she claims to have first been lured by the offer of a career from Ghislaine Maxwell whilst she was working as a locker room assistant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Resort in Florida.¹⁹ She has said that she was desperate for the opportunity which could provide her with the security and stability she had longed for all through her childhood. Maxwell and Epstein took advantage of the eagerness which Virginia showed to forge a better life and they lured her into a situation where they could begin to abuse her.

The human psyche deals with unresolved sexual, physical or psychological abuse in ways many of us can never understand. When someone has experienced prolonged systematic abuse, they often, to the frustration of everyone who cares for them, return to the abuser. This also applies to someone who is abused by more than one person in their life. Quite simply, people who have unresolved experience of previous abuse are statistically much more likely to gravitate towards being in other abusive relationships. Some of those people never manage to struggle free of this cycle of abuse, while some go on to act out their own trauma on others.

Epstein and Maxwell used various lures to coax each of their young victims into their circles. But, for some of the victims, the real lure was the false sense of security which came from being within an abusive relationship, and Epstein and Maxwell had plenty of abuse to go around.

In the 2nd part to the Epstein 101 series, we'll learn more about the victims and some of their testimony relating to Maxwell and Epstein's use of grooming techniques.

1 Lanning, K. (2017) The Evolution of Grooming: Concept and Term

2 Conte, J. R. (1984). The justice system and sexual abuse of children. Social Service

Review, 58, 556-568

3 Groth, A. N., & Birnbaum, H. J. (1979). Men who rape: The psychology of the

offender. New York, NY: Plenum Press

4 Advanced Seminar on Sexual Exploitation of Children, 1987; Dallas Child Sexual Exploitation Seminar, 1987; National Law Enforcement Seminar on Sexual Exploitation of Children, 1983; Protecting Our Children: The Fight Against Molestation: A National Symposium, 1984; Sexual Exploitation of Children Seminar, 1985) and publications (e.g., Campagna & Poffenberger, 1988; Frost & Seng, 1986; Goldstein, 1984, 1987; Lanning, 1986; Lanning & Burgess, 1984)

5 Holmes R. M., & Holmes S. T. (2002). Profiling Violent Crimes: An Investigative Tool (3^rd edition) Page 165

6 Holmes R. M., & Holmes S. T. (2002). Profiling Violent Crimes: An Investigative Tool (3^rd edition) Page 161

7 Whitney Webb (2019). Mega Group Maxwells and Mossad: The Spy Story at the Heart of the Jeffrey Epstein Scandal: Mint Press News

8 Elizabeth Hayt (Sept. 26, 1999). Bringing the Party to Sotheby’s: The New York Times

9 Caroline Graham (August 9, 2020) Ghislaine Maxwell trawled high-end art galleries and auction houses for pretty ‘gallerinas’ to meet Jeffrey Epstein, claims a former friend: MailOnline

10 Michael Alarid III, Luring a Minor for Sexual Exploitation, What it Means. Alaridefense.com

11 Kate Briquelet, (Dec. 30, 2021) ‘I Told Him I Was Only 15’: Epstein Victim Weeps As She Recounts Orgies With Other Girls: The Daily Beast

12 Amy Julia Harris, Frances Robles, Mike Baker and William K. Rashbaum, (Aug. 29, 2019) How a Ring of Women Allegedly Recruited Girls for Jeffrey Epstein: The New York Times

13 Andrew Marra (Aug. 14, 2006) The Man Who Had Everything: Jeffrey Epstein craved big homes, elite friends and underage girls: Palm Beach Post

14 Chris Spargo (Oct. 29, 2020) Jeffrey Epstein Recruiter Was Raped Before Pedophile Paid The Teen To Lure In Girls: OKMagazine.com

15 Chris Spargo, (Jul. 29, 2019) 'I'm like Heidi Fleiss': Epstein 'pimp' Haley Robson 'bragged about providing pedophile with girls and was set to be charged by police - despite being in high school and a victim herself': MailOnline

16 Julia Reinstein (Aug. 27, 2019) 23 Women Stood In Court And Said Jeffrey Epstein Abused Them. Here Are Their Most Powerful Quotes: BuzzFeed.News

17 Chris Spargo (Jul. 28, 2019) 'He bragged she was his sex slave': Jeffrey Epstein 'purchased Nadia Marcinkova as a girl from her family, shot child porn of her with underage teen and forced her into threesomes': MailOnline

18 Coates, Domineik (Dec. 2010) Impact of Childhood Abuse: Biopsychosocial Pathways Through Which Adult Mental Health is Compromised: ResearchGate

19 Isabel Keane (Dec. 3, 2021) Pictures of young Virginia Roberts Giuffre emerge as Jeffrey Epstein’s housekeeper recalls her at Mar-a-Lago: Metro