Epstein model agency survivor allegations, Digi Mart USA News (Palm Beach, Florida): 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 told the BBC World Service.
Roza was 18 when she was first sent to Epstein’s Palm Beach home by the US branch of MC2 Model Management, having 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,” Roza said.
She showed the BBC an expense statement suggesting Fuller himself booked her flight home from Palm Beach after her second shoot at Epstein’s home. Fuller has previously claimed he did not know Roza was going to Epstein’s house.
Roza says the photoshoots led to her being employed as an assistant to Epstein, and 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.
The BBC reports that Epstein-related documents released by the US Department of Justice (DOJ) show 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 two other industry figures 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 said no evidence had been uncovered that would warrant further investigation against “uncharged third parties.” New York State senator Zellnor Myrie is challenging that position and 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, supports the effort.
“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 was not a professional photographer but Epstein’s girlfriend at the time, Nadia Marcinko. She describes the set-up as “strange – there was no stylist,” and says 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, shows close ties between the agency and the financier. “Had it not been for you, we would have fired her months ago,” Fuller wrote of another model in March 2012.
“And I would be careful as she blabs about things,” he said.
A month after Epstein’s second arrest in 2019, MC2’s US branch was dissolved and Fuller opened The Source Models, which is still operating. The BBC has found that 50 models from MC2 were transferred to his new agency.
The BBC said The Source Models did not reply to its request for comment.
Sigrid McCawley, lead lawyer for more than 100 of Epstein’s victims, said model agencies were useful to Epstein. “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.”
BBC Eye found that former agent Ramsey Elkholy tried to connect 34 women to Epstein, including an 18-year-old who was still in school. One woman told the BBC that Elkholy suggested an Epstein assistant befriend her before introducing her to Epstein, and that at her first meeting with Epstein, aged 19, he sexually abused her in his New York townhouse.
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 added: “my intention was to help models find professional opportunities by introducing them to an extremely well-connected individual.”
McCawley said the 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.”
A model from eastern Europe, identified as Simona (not her real name), told the BBC that Epstein 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,” she said.
Simona said that when she first met Epstein, aged 20, she was already signed with a New York model agency, and he offered to introduce her to his “good” friend Faith Kates. At the time, Kates was head of Next Management, one of the world’s biggest model agencies.
Kates stepped down from that position in December last year but is still legally listed as a director of the company. Simona says Kates suggested she undergo plastic surgery and sent details of a surgeon to Epstein, and that Epstein then convinced her to stop modelling.
Like Roza and several other victims, Simona became Epstein’s assistant and says he raped her and controlled every aspect of her life for nearly two years. The DOJ files show Epstein asked Kates to meet five additional models, though it is not clear how many of those meetings took place.
Lawyers for Kates told the BBC: “Jeffrey Epstein was a master manipulator… Ms Kates was one of those grossly misled by Epstein.
Had she known then what she – and everyone else – now knows, she would have never associated with him.” They added that she had never asked a model to have plastic surgery. Next Management did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
Myrie told the BBC that if his bill became law, “you were sending models to Epstein and you knew what Epstein was doing, or you should have known what he was doing, you will be held accountable.”
Roza hopes sharing her story will encourage others to come forward. “There are many, many survivors out there who never speak, because it’s scary.
So to all my sister survivors… you know me now. You know my name.
I say, reach out.”
