Epstein survivor says model agency that sent her to his home 'put me in danger' and should be held accountable

In 2009, an 18-year-old named Roza had been in the United States for about a month, having arrived from Uzbekistan, when her modelling agency sent her to a photoshoot at a house in Palm Beach, Florida. The house belonged to Jeffrey Epstein. He was then serving a jail sentence for sex offences against a minor, but was permitted to leave custody each day to work from his home. Roza says she was raped by him, and she now tells the BBC World Service that the agency that sent her put her in danger and should answer for it.

The agency was the US branch of MC2 Model Management. Its president at the time, Jeff Fuller, now runs a different American agency, The Source Models. Roza says she went to two shoots at the house, and that Fuller knew where she was going. She points to an expense statement that suggests Fuller himself booked her flight home from Palm Beach after the second one. Fuller has previously claimed he did not know she was going to Epstein's house, and has said he did not know she was being abused. He has not responded to the BBC's latest allegations.

Roza describes the shoots as strange. There was no stylist, she says, and the person behind the camera was not a professional photographer but Nadia Marcinko, then Epstein's girlfriend. The photos were never used. She has come to believe the shoots were stage-managed by Epstein and MC2. The sessions led to a job as Epstein's assistant, a route other survivors have described as an elaborate ruse that let him keep abusing young women. Roza says he went on to rape her systematically.

Documents released by the US Department of Justice add weight to the picture. The BBC found in them that 10 MC2 models met or communicated with Epstein after his conviction, and that Epstein gave MC2 $1m in 2005, even though the agency's owners told a US publication two years later that he had no involvement in the company. One email in the files, from Fuller to Epstein in March 2012, concerns another model: without Epstein, Fuller wrote, the agency would have fired her months earlier, and Epstein should be careful because she "blabs about things." A month after Epstein's second arrest in 2019, MC2's US branch was dissolved and Fuller opened The Source Models, which the BBC says took on 50 MC2 models. The Source Models did not reply to a request for comment.

Testimony shared with BBC Eye raises questions about two other figures in the industry. Former agent Ramsey Elkholy, the files show, tried to connect 34 women to Epstein, including an 18-year-old still at school. He suggested that one of Epstein's female assistants befriend a woman before introducing her to the financier. That woman told the BBC that at her first meeting with Epstein, aged 19, he sexually abused her in his New York townhouse. Elkholy rejects any suggestion he knew of or facilitated abuse, saying he knew only Epstein's own account of his 2008 case, which he "misguidedly believed," and that he only meant to help models find opportunities.

The second is Faith Kates, who led Next Management, one of the world's biggest agencies, and stepped down from that role last December but is still legally listed as a director. A model called Simona, a pseudonym, from eastern Europe, says Epstein raped her more than 200 times. She met him at 20, already signed to a New York agency, and he offered to introduce her to his "good" friend Kates. Simona says Kates suggested plastic surgery and sent a surgeon's details to Epstein. Afterwards Epstein persuaded her to stop modelling; she became his assistant and says he controlled her life for nearly two years. The files show Epstein asked Kates to meet five more models, though it is unclear how many meetings happened. Kates's lawyers say she was grossly misled by a master manipulator, would never have associated with him had she known, and never asked a model to have plastic surgery. Next Management did not reply.

Sigrid McCawley, lead lawyer for more than 100 Epstein victims, says scouts were critical because they identified the type of woman he liked, and that he wanted three different girls a day. She says assistants had no choice, since their livelihoods were threatened.

A DOJ statement last year said no evidence warranted further investigation of uncharged third parties. New York State senator Zellnor Myrie is challenging that with a proposed sex trafficking bill giving police greater power to investigate alleged enablers. Anyone who sent models to Epstein knowing, or who should have known, what he was doing would be held accountable. Roza hopes her naming herself will push other survivors to come forward.