When Lisa Phillips met Jeffrey Epstein she had big dreams of becoming a top model.
Cover Girl, who said the late convicted sex offender abused her on his private island, is speaking candidly in a new podcast, “From now.” It aims to raise awareness about human trafficking and how it can affect anyone.
“It took me years to get to this point,” Phillips, now a model scout and agent in Los Angeles, told Fox News Digital. “I continue to struggle with the confusion of what happened to me years ago.”
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“But as I started talking to other survivors, I started to realize that my story so many years ago was the same story – that of younger girls in Florida and older girls who were 18-25,” they shared.
Phillips started modeling at the age of 16. At the age of 19, she was already making her mark in fashion capitals like London and Paris. At the age of 21, she found herself in New York City, where she had booked a photo shoot in the British West Indies.
It was here that a fellow model told her about a nearby island – Little St. James.
“We had an extra day,” Phillips recalled. “He said, ‘Let’s get out of here. Let’s do something. I have a friend, a very good friend. He’s amazing. He has an island near him. Let’s go see it. He said he’d send a boat for us , and we could hang out there.
The women boarded a boat and headed towards the island. When they arrived, there were other women already swimming in a pool and “enjoying themselves.”
At first, everything seemed “fine,” Phillips said. They had a “wonderful dinner” before Epstein came up to them and introduced himself.
“He was very charming,” she recalled. “He was the kind of person who captured you inside and made you feel very special, very safe and showed so much interest in who you are as a person. I’ve never received that much attention from a man, even Not even from my father, who expressed so much interest in everything I was talking about, what I was doing, what my aspirations and goals were.”
“I always remember he made me feel really special…he did that for everybody.”
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However, she claimed that things changed “very quickly”.
That same night, a woman casually approached him and said Epstein wanted a massage. Confused Phillips said she didn’t know how to give it. The woman casually told him, “Just calm down.” After reassuring her, Phillips followed the woman. She felt safe with him.
Philips claimed that massage changed Epstein’s sexual assault case him in the room.
“It wasn’t straightforward, ‘I’m going to pull you into a room and abuse you,'” Phillips said. “He does things casually, like, ‘It’s just a massage, right?’ The girl went along with it and brought me into the room to massage her. It was a slow thing that turned into abuse.”
“I was on an island,” she said. “I wasn’t in a house where I could say, ‘Sorry, I need to go,’ and take my stuff. I was on an island far from home that I should never have been to.”
Phillips later learned that several women like her had alleged that Epstein had assaulted them under the guise of massages.
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She returned to New York City Filled with shame.
Phillips admitted, “After that, my life changed.” “I started doing drugs and drinking… I felt like I was stigmatized, or there was something wrong with me that I didn’t stand up for myself… And at that time everyone looked up to Jeffrey.
“During those years, he wasn’t some playboy hanging out on the scene. People talked about him a lot. When I brought up his name to people, they’d say, ‘We love Jeffrey. He did that for me, he got me the visa, he introduced me to my husband. He was always doing these big things for people, which was confusing to me.”
Phillips also pointed out that this incident occurred in the early 2000s, long before the #MeToo movement, where victims of sexual abuse came forward publicly with their accounts. At the time, he said, “You would never speak about someone with that kind of power.”
Phillips said she “suppressed” the shame and confusion she felt because Epstein portrayed himself as a mentor who wanted to help.
“Nobody talked about the creepy massages and what was happening,” she said. “It was all hush-hush… He was dominant, and he was manipulative. He groomed you to believe he was your master.”
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In 2006, Epstein was arrested on allegations that he hired teenage girls Erotic massage in your home in Florida,
Two years later, prosecutors allowed Epstein to plead guilty to a charge involving one of the victims. He served a 13-month sentence in a prison work-release program, then quietly began rebuilding his network of influential friends with the help of his socialite ex-girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Following a series of Miami Herald stories about litigation denying justice to Epstein’s victims, federal prosecutors in New York revived the investigation and charged Epstein with sex trafficking in 2019.
Epstein allegedly created and maintained a “vast network” and operation from 2002 to at least 2005 that allowed him to sexually exploit and abuse dozens of underage girls, in addition to paying victims to recruit other girls. “Enabled to do.
Prosecutors said the victims would be taken to a room with a massage table where they would perform massages on Epstein.
At the time of Epstein’s arrest, prosecutors said they found a cache of photographs of naked and semi-nude young women and girls in his $77 million Manhattan mansion. They also say additional victims have come forward since the arrests. He pleaded not guilty.
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On August 10 of that year, Epstein was found dead behind bars. He was 66 years old. The cause of death was suicide.
When Epstein killed himself in prison, prosecutors accused Maxwell of facilitating his illicit sexual relationships and participating in some of the abuses. The 62-year-old was convicted and is Serving a 20 year prison sentence.
Phillips said that although she hated her abuser, she cried after learning of his death.
“I don’t know why,” she explained. “He was a bad man, but I also had good thoughts about him… I was emotionally confused. But if he were still alive, I probably would have been too afraid to speak. I probably would have “Never talked openly. But… I was finally ready to talk about what happened to me.”
Phillips testified in a 2022 civil case involving another Epstein accuser, Virginia Roberts Giuffre. USA Today Informed. She also filed as Jane Doe under the Adult Survivors Act, citing abuse by an Epstein associate. According to the outlet, she received a settlement in a case involving JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Epstein’s accusers.
“The pain is in the numbers,” she explained. She said, “You can go through some kind of abuse and deal with it on your own… but when you start hearing about other women who had similar experiences with Jeffrey and other people, it makes you Has some effect on the psyche.”
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“…And when I started talking to other survivors, that’s when I felt validation…That’s when I felt safe talking about my experience without people shaming me. I wasn’t alone.”
Today, Phillips hopes her podcast will provide a platform for other victims like her who are recovering.
“I want people to know that there is a place you can come and be heard,” she said. “I also want to educate people how to advocate for themselves, and how to be mindful of red flags when building their career. Because this can happen in any type of business.”
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“I feel different today than I did yesterday,” she reflected. “It’s getting better. But I’m ready to start speaking out. And I’m ready to help others speak out, too.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.