Epstein abuse survivor testifies she was assaulted while he was under house arrest

Roza was eighteen when she met a modeling agent in Uzbekistan who promised her a career beyond her dreams. She came from a family with little money, and the offer seemed like a way out. What followed was a decade of exploitation that began the moment she arrived in America.

In July 2009, Roza met Jeffrey Epstein at his house in West Palm Beach, Florida. She had been brought to the United States on a visa by Jean-Luc Brunel, a modeling agent who worked with Epstein. At the time of their meeting, Epstein was under house arrest—a consequence of his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor. The arrangement allowed him to leave his residence for up to sixteen hours a day, six days a week, ostensibly to work at his Florida Science Foundation. Epstein offered Roza a job there. Instead, she said, she was sexually assaulted in his home, and the assaults continued for three years.

On Tuesday, Roza testified about this abuse before Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee during a field hearing held in West Palm Beach. It was her first public account of what happened to her. She spoke alongside other survivors of Epstein's crimes in a session organized by House Democrats, including Representative Robert Garcia, who noted that the hearing was held in the city where Epstein's offenses first became known to authorities. The location was also chosen, Garcia pointed out, because of its proximity to Mar-a-Lago, the residence of President Donald Trump. The hearing carried no legal power, but Democrats intended it to keep scrutiny on the Epstein case and, specifically, on how the Trump administration has handled the release of files related to his crimes.

Roza's testimony was tearful. She described how her vulnerable circumstances—her financial instability, her distance from home, her youth—made her an easy target for manipulation. When Epstein's masseuse called her into his room one day, she said, the abuse began. "For the following three years I was subject to ongoing rape," she told the lawmakers. The fact that this occurred while Epstein was supposedly confined to house arrest underscored a central failure of the justice system: the arrangement designed to restrict him had instead enabled him to continue victimizing women.

A report released by Democratic committee members on the same day Roza testified found that a plea deal negotiated by Epstein's lawyer in 2008 had allowed him to "continue his abuse and trafficking activities for almost another decade." Epstein died in a New York prison cell on August 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. He never faced justice for the crimes he committed during his house arrest.

Roza's retraumatization did not end with the abuse itself. When the Department of Justice released files related to Epstein's case, her name appeared in the documents due to flawed redactions. She learned this when reporters from around the world began contacting her. "I cannot live without looking over my shoulder," she said during her testimony. "I can only imagine the long term impact this 'mistake' will have on my life." The DOJ acknowledged the error, saying it had removed files from its website after victims reported their identities had been compromised, and attributed the mistakes to "technical or human error."

Another survivor, Maria Farmer, also gave evidence in a recorded message. She said she first reported Epstein's abuse in 1996 and had watched law enforcement agencies fail to act repeatedly over the decades. "The government needs to start telling the truth," she said. The hearing revealed not just the crimes of one man, but the systematic failures that allowed him to operate with impunity for so long—and the ongoing failures that continue to harm the people he victimized.