Exclusive: Roza Gilles was an 18-year-old model when Jeffrey Epstein first abused her — while he was serving jail time
By MJ Lee, Nicky Robertson, CNN
(CNN) — The first day Roza Gilles showed up for her new job at a high-rise office building in downtown Palm Beach in the summer of 2009, a woman was massaging Jeffrey Epstein’s feet.
Gilles, 18 at the time, had recently come to the US to pursue her career as a model after being approached backstage in her home country of Uzbekistan by a modeling agent with ties to Epstein. Gilles was immediately saddled with debt by the modeling agency, which charged her thousands of dollars for her visa and rent. Distraught, Gilles thought she’d be better off going back to Asia where she had a successful run as a teenage model, but Epstein offered her a weekend job as a receptionist in his office to supplement her income.
Now, in a room with Epstein inside of a 14th floor office, the woman invited Gilles to sit next to her. As Epstein gave Gilles his foot, she noticed a black plastic band around his ankle with a small box with a blinking light attached to it. When she asked what it was, Gilles says Epstein and the woman laughed. Epstein then told Gilles to take her shirt off.
“I froze,” Gilles said. “And the woman comes over and starts unbuttoning my blouse. She takes it off, then she takes off my bra, and then she walks out.”
Epstein sexually assaulted Gilles for the first time that day – the beginning of years of rape and abuse. She wouldn’t realize until sometime later that the device Epstein had been wearing was an ankle monitor and that he was serving jail time for soliciting prostitution from a minor.
Gilles is one of countless women abused by the late convicted child sex offender. Her story – which she is publicly sharing in full for the first time with CNN – offers a vivid window into the unusual parameters of Epstein’s controversial 2008 plea deal in Florida that authorized him to spend much of his sentence outside of jail. That arrangement allowed Epstein to continue abusing young women even as he was serving his sentence following his conviction. That included young foreign models such as Gilles – and at times, the abuse took place while a Palm Beach County sheriff’s officer was in the next room, survivors told CNN.
“He didn’t stop what he was doing while convicted. He was doing the same thing,” Gilles said. “He had no remorse. The things he was doing to me hurt me so much, and left the biggest scar, and I will never – I will never be able to move on from this, no matter how hard I try.”
Two women who spoke to CNN under the condition that they not be named publicly said that they too were abused by Epstein at the Florida Science Foundation office. The non-profit was created in November 2007 shortly before Epstein entered his guilty plea, and claimed to provide grants and financial support to science and research organizations. The women described the 14th floor office space as accessible by elevator that often buzzed with visitors and activity during the work week. One woman recalled that there were numerous white noise machines – white, mushroom-like domes – placed throughout the office.
Epstein appeared to have developed something of a routine for the days that he spent at the Florida Science Foundation, these women said. His mornings there began with coffee and a muffin, and the financier, who complained that he didn’t sleep well at the Palm Beach Stockade minimum security prison, would take regular naps on a futon in a conference room. One woman distinctly remembered moments when Epstein’s ankle monitor would go off, forcing him to run outside to try to reset the device.
Epstein’s conduct during this period was characteristically brazen. Both at his West Palm Beach home and at the office, survivors say Epstein sometimes sexually assaulted them while an officer in uniform was nearby, ostensibly to keep an eye on the newly registered sex offender. At the Florida Science Foundation, a rotating roster of officers would sit near the entrance to the office. Two women said they remembered thinking that the officers seemed afraid of Epstein. There was no question, they said, that Epstein was the boss.
For Gilles, her own encounter with a man in uniform who she believed was a sheriff’s officer took place one morning at Epstein’s West Palm Beach mansion, where she said she was asked to go on a weekly basis in the summer of 2009. Gilles walked downstairs one morning and saw the officer standing in the kitchen, and felt a sudden sense of hope. “I thought to myself, ‘Thank you, this is going to be the day that this all stops,’” she told CNN.
She watched the officer banter and laugh with Epstein, and after wishing Epstein a good day, walk out – without saying a word to her.
“After I saw that sheriff, I understood that no matter what you do, this man is never going to be arrested,” Gilles said. “This man will never be stopped, and regardless of whether you scream and shout from the top of the universe, nobody would care.”
Epstein’s controversial work-release program
The accounts from Gilles and other survivors who say they were abused by Epstein while he was serving out his 13-month sentence raise serious questions about the controversial 2008 plea deal that Epstein struck with former US attorney Alex Acosta.
Epstein began working “full time” as president of the Florida Science Foundation in October 2008, according to a 2021 review of Epstein’s work-release program conducted by Florida officials. For the first six months, Epstein was allowed to be at the foundation’s office from 10am to 10pm, Monday through Saturday. In May 2009, those hours were extended, requiring Epstein to be physically in jail for only eight hours a day. By the following month, Epstein’s work release program again expanded, letting him work seven days a week at the foundation.
The last two weeks before Epstein was released under house arrest, the financier was also permitted to visit his West Palm Beach mansion for two-hour windows in the afternoons.
His work-release program had many conditions, including the stipulation that he could only meet with business associates and a requirement to wear an ankle monitor until July 2009. Epstein was not allowed to have contact with family members, friends, girlfriends or minors.
Epstein’s lawyers and the Palm Beach County Sherrif’s Office (PBSO) also struck an agreement that Epstein would hire off-duty deputies – also known as “permit” deputies – to be present at his office to document any visitors. Epstein’s attorney, on behalf of the Florida Science Foundation, paid the sheriff’s office a total of $128,136 for those deputies during Epstein’s work-release, according to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) report. The report also said that 494 visitor logs were reviewed by PBSO and no violations of unauthorized contact were found, and that the records were later destroyed per policy.
In 2019, less than a week after new charges against Epstein were unsealed, Acosta stepped down from his position as Labor Secretary in the first Trump administration. A 2020 Justice Department review of the 2008 deal that Acosta negotiated concluded that he had exercised “poor judgement,” including in his failure to notify the girls and young women who alleged they were sexually abused by Epstein about the decision to not prosecute him on federal charges. But the review did not find that Acosta or other prosecutors engaged in professional misconduct.
In December 2019, four months after Epstein’s suicide in a New York City prison, the PBSO ended its work-release program. The FDLE’s 2021 report said that it found “no criminal activity was determined on the part of any PBSO member with respect to their participation in Epstein’s PBSO work-release or permit detail programs.”
The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to CNN’s request for comment for this story.
At the mercy of a modeling agency
The conditions of Epstein’s work-release program made young, foreign models like Gilles the perfect target after his conviction.
Gilles said she was approached by French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel in 2008 when she was backstage at a fashion show in Uzbekistan. Brunel introduced himself as the owner of the agency MC2 Model Management in New York City and offered her a contract on the spot. Gilles would learn later that Epstein was a significant financial backer of the company.
The contract that she signed with MC2, as Gilles describes it, gave the agency control over every aspect of her life. She immediately owed them $4,000 dollars for her visa, and $1,500 in rent each month for the over-crowded models’ apartment in Manhattan where multiple girls slept on bunk beds. Her debt ballooned to a sum her parents back home wouldn’t have dreamed of making in one year.
Several months after her move, Gilles said she started crying at the MC2 Miami office in front of Brunel. Her family back home depended on her modeling income, and by this point, she was around $10,000 in debt and failing to land modeling jobs. She had already raised the idea of going back to Asia where she had a successful modeling stint, but MC2 had rebuffed the suggestion.
“Jean-Luc Brunel sits there, looks at me, goes, ‘I see that you’re very sad, give me a second,’” Gilles said. “Picks up the phone, calls someone, and then hangs up the phone, goes, ‘I took care of it. I just sent $600 to your parents.’”
To her shock, within minutes, somebody had in fact dropped off $600 in Uzbekistan to her family. “I thought to myself: What just happened?” Gilles said. “I don’t know who he called. Did he call a friend that is American that happens to be there, or did he call somebody from the government, and they dropped it off?”
The message was unmistakable: She was at the mercy of the agency, and that included Epstein. Brunel was found dead in his prison cell in 2022 after he was arrested on charges of rape and sexual assault.
Gilles was instructed to go to West Palm Beach in the summer of 2009 for a photo shoot. The giant, white mansion where the shoot took place belonged to Epstein, and after her first brief encounter with him, Gilles’ permanent move to Miami was quickly set in motion. Epstein’s offer for Gilles to model during the week but work on the weekends at the Florida Science Foundation made little sense to her.
“For modeling, I need to go to auditions, build my portfolio, and do all these different things, but you’re offering me an office job and I don’t see how that’s going to help my modeling career,” she said. “I’m all alone. I’m broke, and this person tells me that in order to do my job, I have to take another one.”
After Epstein first assaulted her at the Florida Science Foundation, Gilles says she was molested and raped every weekend in West Palm Beach. The nightmare continued once she was allowed to return back to New York City in 2010 after Epstein’s house arrest in Florida ended.
The Epstein files that the Justice Department released earlier this year are littered with emails from modeling scouts to the convicted sex offender, offering up models from around the world.
Two women filed complaints in 2019 alleging that Epstein had sexually abused them during his work-release program. One of the anonymous women, identified as Katlyn Doe, said that she was “made to engage in sexual encounters” with Epstein at the Foundation office.
“While in Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘office’ at the Florida Science Center, Plaintiff was made to engage in sexual encounters with Jeffrey Epstein — both alone with Epstein during which she engaged in sexual intercourse, and also on one occasion with another young female and Epstein,” the complaint said.
Escaping Epstein
Gilles says she is certain that she has been in the presence of some of Epstein’s other victims: She recalls walking through his Florida mansion and encountering girls who spoke little or no English. “They were immigrants, there were people who had an accent, the people who spoke Russian,” she said. “Same thing was happening to them.”
It was only after Gilles’ modeling career took off in New York some years later and she gained financial independence that she was finally able to leave Epstein’s world. She relocated to the Midwest, and after meeting her husband, Pat, found a new calling as a fitness coach and trainer.
Gilles had kept her dark past a secret from almost everyone in her life – including her parents – until recently. Despite promises from the Justice Department to protect survivors, Gilles was stunned to see her name – and years of correspondence between herself and Epstein – had been published for the world to see when the Epstein files were released earlier this year.
“It was my story to tell. It wasn’t something I wish anybody read,” she said.
Gilles says she has been watching Epstein survivors over the past year publicly advocate for the release of the Epstein files and for the Justice Department to investigate Epstein’s co-conspirators. While she’s been invited to join them in their public advocacy work, Gilles says she is not quite ready. When a group of survivors gathered on the steps of Capitol Hill last year, Gilles chose to fly to Washington, DC, to join them – but could only watch from the sidelines.
“They were telling their stories, and that started destroying me on the inside,” she said. “It was so wrong for the government not to protect me.”
But Gilles says as she continues to work through her own trauma, she is beginning to imagine a future when she is able to be with the other survivors.
“I can see myself at some point gathering together with them,” she said. “I’m extremely proud of what each one of them are doing and I see the pain and it is very contagious. Courage is contagious, right?”
CNN’s Dugald McConnell contributed to this story.
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