A woman raped by Jeffrey Epstein says the president of the model agency representing her put her in danger, when he sent her to two photoshoots at the convicted sex offender’s Florida beach house.
At the time, in 2009, Epstein was serving a jail sentence for sex offences against a minor but was allowed to work each day from his home.
“My agency’s job was to protect me, and they failed. In fact, they put me in danger. And for that, they should be held accountable,” she tells the BBC World Service.
Roza was 18 when she was first sent to Epstein’s Palm Beach home by MC2 Model Management’s US branch, having only arrived in the US from Uzbekistan about a month earlier. MC2’s US president at the time, Jeff Fuller, now runs another US model agency called The Source Models.
“My agency knew exactly where I was. So Jeff knew exactly where I was going,” says Roza.
She shows us an expense statement suggesting Fuller himself booked her flight home from Palm Beach, following her second shoot at Epstein’s home. Fuller has previously claimed he did not know Roza was going to Epstein’s house.
She says the photoshoots led to her being employed as an assistant to Epstein. Other survivors have explained how the financier used the recruitment of assistants as an elaborate ruse to allow him to continue abusing young women.
Roza says Epstein went on to systematically rape her.
Fuller has not responded to the BBC’s allegations. He has previously said he did not know Roza was being abused.
We discovered through the Epstein-related documents released by the US Department of Justice [DOJ] that 10 models from MC2 met, or were in communication with, Epstein after his conviction.
The files also show Epstein gave $1m (£742,000) to MC2 in 2005 – despite the agency owners telling a US publication two years later that Epstein had no involvement in their company.
Testimony shared with BBC Eye also raises questions about the role played by two other individuals who were active in the model industry, and whom the DOJ files show had close relationships with Epstein – former agent Ramsey Elkholy and agency director Faith Kates.
A DOJ statement from last year, that no evidence has been uncovered which would warrant further investigation against “uncharged third parties”, is now being challenged by New York State senator, Zellnor Myrie.
He has proposed a new sex trafficking bill to give police greater power to investigate Epstein’s alleged enablers.
Sara Ziff, founder of the Model Alliance, which campaigns for stronger protections for models in the US, approves.
“Often, [model agencies] are the problem. They are the link between the model and these predatory men.”
Roza says the person behind the camera at the photoshoots MC2 sent her to was not a professional photographer, but Epstein’s girlfriend at the time, Nadia Marcinko.
Roza describes the set-up as “strange – there was no stylist” and the photos were never used. She has since become convinced the shoots were stage-managed by Epstein and MC2.
An email in the DOJ files, from Fuller to Epstein, makes clear the close ties between the agency and the financier.
“Had it not been for you, we would have fired her months ago,” Fuller writes of another model in March 2012. “And I would be careful as she blabs about things,” he says.
A month after Epstein’s second arrest in 2019, MC2’s US branch was dissolved and Fuller opened a new agency, The Source Models, which is still operating. The BBC has found that 50 models from MC2 were transferred to his new agency.
We asked The Source Models to comment on our findings – it did not reply.
Model agencies were useful to Epstein, says Sigrid McCawley, the lead lawyer for more than 100 of Epstein’s victims.
“Epstein said to many people he wanted three different girls a day. Think about those numbers… The [model] scouts were really critical because they were the ones who were identifying the type of woman that Epstein liked.”
In the case of former agent Ramsey Elkholy, BBC Eye has discovered he tried to connect 34 women to Epstein, including an 18-year-old who was still in school.
The experience of one of the women highlights how assistants would be co-opted into the structure of the abuse.
Elkholy, the DOJ files show, suggested to Epstein that one of the financier’s female assistants befriend this woman, before introducing her to Epstein.
We spoke to this woman, and she revealed that at her first meeting with Epstein, aged 19, he sexually abused her in his New York townhouse.
Ramsey Elkholy told the BBC: “I completely reject any allegation that I knew of or facilitated abuse of any kind… At the time, I had no knowledge of any abuse and I knew only his own [Epstein’s] account of his 2008 [legal] case, which I misguidedly believed.”
He continued: “The record and published reporting show that women were often groomed by other women in his inner circle. I was never part of that circle, or indeed of any such activity… my intention was to help models find professional opportunities by introducing them to an extremely well-connected individual.”
If you are in the UK and you have been affected by any of the issues in this story such as sexual abuse and violence, information and support is available at BBC Action Line
Lawyer Sigrid McCawley says these female assistants would have had “no choice” in how they conducted themselves.
“These young survivors were being abused regularly. Their livelihoods were being threatened… They had to do what they were being told to do.”
Another model we have spoken to, Simona (not her real name), from eastern Europe, told us Epstein had raped her more than 200 times.
“People think that we gained something, that we agreed on this abuse in order to gain something, whether it’s monetary or influential, but it’s not true. We’re left with deep trauma,” says Simona.
She says the first time she met the financier, aged 20, she was already signed with a model agency in New York, and he offered to introduce her to his “good” friend Faith Kates.
