Roza Gilles was barely 18 when she arrived in the United States from Uzbekistan to try to pursue a modeling career. What was supposed to be a professional opportunity ended up becoming, according to her own account, the beginning of years of abuse by Jeffrey Epstein.
Gilles told CNN that she had been contacted in her country by a modeling agent connected to Epstein. Once in the United States, the agency charged her thousands of dollars for her visa and accommodation, leaving her in debt. When she began having financial problems, Epstein offered her a weekend job as a receptionist at one of his offices in Palm Beach.
It was there, according to Gilles, that one of the first episodes occurred.
When she arrived at the office, she saw a woman massaging Epstein’s feet. Shortly afterward, the young woman was taken to him and saw something she did not understand at the time: a black band around his ankle with a small blinking box.
She later discovered that it was an electronic ankle monitor.
Epstein was serving a sentence related to an earlier case and had authorization to leave prison for much of the day through a controversial work-release program. According to Gilles, that did not stop him from continuing to abuse young women.
And the level of desperation she came to feel is reflected in one of her most chilling statements.
“I was walking all over New York City, young, trying to give myself an STD to kill Epstein, because I didn’t believe the government would ever stop him”, Gilles recounted.
The statement shows how deeply she came to believe that the authorities would never manage to stop him. According to her testimony, she was convinced that she would have to find some way herself to put an end to the man she accused of abusing her.
And there is another particularly disturbing detail in her account.
Gilles said that on one of the occasions when Epstein allegedly abused her, there was a sheriff’s deputy in a nearby room. She came to think that someone would finally intervene, but she says the officer spoke with Epstein and later left without doing anything.
“He didn’t stop doing what he was doing after he was convicted. He continued as before”, Gilles said.
The story once again focuses attention on one of the most questioned aspects of the Epstein case: how a man who had already been convicted could continue to have access to young people and maintain a practically normal life while serving his sentence.
Gilles decided to tell her story publicly years later. Her testimony joins those of other women who have described how Epstein used his position, money, and connections to maintain a system of abuse for years.
And perhaps the most unsettling part of her account is not only what she says Epstein did to her, but the desperation she came to feel when she thought that no one with the power to do so was going to stop him.