A number of high-profile art collectors and patrons are named in the first batch of unsealed documents related to a civil lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted sex offender and associate of Jeffrey Epstein. Among those mentioned are Thomas Pritzker, art collector and former chairman of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Glenn Dubin, trustee of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
The hundreds of pages of documents, released Wednesday night, are part of a since-settled defamation case against Maxwell brought by alleged victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre in 2016. Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in a scheme to recruit and abuse underage girls with Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while he was in jail for child sex trafficking charges.
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Dubin and Pritzker’s associations with Epstein have been publicly known for years. In the newly released deposition, Giuffre testified that Maxwell instructed her to give Dubin a “massage,” adding: “And when they say massage, that means erotic, okay? That’s their term for it. I think there are plenty of other witnesses that can attest to what massage actually means.” Dubin has denied the allegations.
Asked how many times she had sex with Pritzker, Giuffre responded, “I believe I was with Tom once.” A representative for Pritzker told Reuters that he “continues to vehemently deny” the accusations.
Also named in court records is Les Wexner, founder of the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University and former owner of Victoria’s Secret. He is not accused of wrongdoing in a deposition by Johanna Sjoberg, who denied ever meeting Wexner and other high-profile figures, and Maxwell, who denied providing “an outfit of a sexual nature” for a woman to wear for him. Wexner’s close financial and personal ties to Epstein are otherwise well-documented. Epstein allegedly gained access to young women via Wexner, posing as a Victoria’s Secret model scout, and is accused of sexually assaulting artist Maria Farmer, one of Epstein’s first whistleblowers, in 1996 in Wexner’s Ohio mansion. Wexner has repeatedly said that he was unaware of Epstein’s criminal activities.
Others accused in the transcripts include Marvin Minsky, known for his contributions to the field of artificial intelligence, whom Giuffre claimed assaulted her in Epstein’s notorious private island in the US Virgin Islands, and Epstein’s former lawyer and antiquities collector Alan Dershowitz. Both men have denied the allegations.
The trove of unredacted records and interviews is only the first of several batches expected to be released in the coming days or weeks.
Source: Hyperallergic.com