Juliette Bryant, 43, a woman who was trafficked and taken to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, revealed that she was trafficked all the way from Cape Town, showing how the sex trafficking ring extended to South Africa. She recounted that she felt like she was going to die as she was forcibly touched by Epstein on a private jet that took her to Little St James, or ‘Paedophile Island’ as dubbed by locals.
In 2002, Juliette Bryant was 20 years old and an aspiring model at university. Speaking to Sky News, she said that she was recruited by a group of women who told her that Epstein, a friend of theirs, was like the “King of America.” She joined them, thinking that she would be able to make a difference for her family and improve their financial condition by being a model.
She was initially flown to New York before she was told that she would be travelling to the Caribbean with Epstein on a plane he nicknamed the “Lolita Express”.
The women who recruited her were waiting at Eterboro Airport in New Jersey, and when she boarded the plane, she was seated next to the convicted paedophile.
“As the plane took off, he started forcibly touching me in between my legs, and I just freaked out, and I suddenly realised – oh my God, my family aren’t going to see me again, these people might kill me,” she told Sky News.
“I got such a fright, it was such a huge changing thing for me.”
“I suddenly realised I had to be nice and be friendly, because I realised I was in great danger.”
Juliet said that the women on the plane laughed as the assault happened.
“They saw, and they just laughed,” she said. “I was really, really petrified. It really changed me, the whole thing, going through this.”
“I just didn’t know what to do, and I really thought that I was going to die,” she said.
As per documents in the Epstein library released by the DOJ, Juliette was not the only woman recruited from Cape Town.
Flight details show that multiple unnamed female travellers were moving from Cape Town to London, Atlanta and New York until 2018.
Juliette said she realised that she had no way of getting away once she arrived at the island.
“They had my passport, and by then we had landed on one of the Caribbean islands and were taken on a helicopter to his island,” she said. “There was just no way of getting away. I’m not strong enough to swim away. I wouldn’t be able to swim off there.”
She also said that she was not trafficked to other men but was raped by Epstein repeatedly.
Later on, she took more flights to Epstein’s multiple properties in New York, Palm Beach, and New Mexico.
At the different properties, she recalled seeing women and underage girls from Brazil, Romania, France and Spain.
She said that she is still reckoning with the aftershock and the impact of his abuse.
“I look on Facebook, I see Epstein’s face. I look on X, I see Epstein’s face,” she said.
“I look at the news, there it is again. You know, there are times when it’s made me feel physically ill, to be honest, it is just constantly there, and there is no way of escaping it.”
Juliette is one of the victims whose name was displayed without redactions in the documents.
The files show that she had expressed support for Epstein ahead of his trial in 2008 and continued contacting him until 2017, a year before he allegedly died by suicide.
“I have nothing to hide. It has obviously been upsetting because it confuses people, because obviously the man had a terrible grip on my mind.”
Juliette said that she never told anyone about the sexual and psychological abuse she faced until Epstein’s death, as she felt like she was being held by “invisible chains.”
