Epstein PA says she was ‘violently raped’ by billionaire boss — even while he was behind bars
Claims he flew her to Los Angeles for a 'casting' call where she stripped to her bra and underwear
Author of the article
enette Wilford
Published Jun 08, 2026 • 4 minute read
Jeffrey Epstein's former assistant Sarah Kellen arrives to testify at a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill on May 21, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Jeffrey Epstein's former assistant Sarah Kellen arrives to testify at a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill on May 21, 2026 in Washington, DC. Photo by Andrew Harnik /Getty Images
A woman who worked as a personal assistant to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell testified that Epstein “violently raped” her — and maintained that abuse from prison.
Sarah Kellen was previously under criminal investigation, named as one of his co-conspirators, but never charged.
She has since claimed she was a victim “trapped inside Jeffrey Epstein’s world” for more than two decades, Kellen told the House Oversight Committee on May 21, according to a transcript released Friday.
Abuse by Epstein and his associates
Kellen, 46, recalled how before she met Epstein, she was allegedly sexually assaulted by French celebrity hairstylist Frederic Fekkai, as well as former Miami Beach mayor Philip Levine, when she was in her 20s.
Fekkai allegedly introduced her to Epstein, whom he referred to as “a scout for Victoria’s Secret.”
He flew her to Los Angeles for a “casting” call where she stripped to her bra and underwear.
“I remember just like doing a little turn, turning around so he could see my body,” she recalled in her testimony, before she soon discovered he was actually a money manager, not a model scout.
Jeffrey Epstein's former assistant Sarah Kellen arrives to testify at a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill on May 21, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Jeffrey Epstein’s former assistant Sarah Kellen arrives to testify at a closed-door interview with the House Oversight Committee on Capitol Hill on May 21, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) Photo by Andrew Harnik /Getty Images
She was eventually hired as an “assistant” to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, a job that initially went unpaid.
Kellen testified that the late billionaire pedophile “groomed me, sexually and psychologically abused me, controlled me, manipulated me, dominated me and gaslit me until I could no longer tell which thoughts were mine and which were his.”
She detailed that Epstein reminded her “every day how powerful he was, how influential he was and that to turn on him or disobey him would mean losing everything: my job, my home, everyone I knew in the world, even my life.”
‘Slave and minion’
Kellen added: “From the beginning, he showed me that he was more powerful than basically anyone in the world. After months of unpaid labour, Epstein instructed me to draw him a bath on (his private) island, then ordered me to undress and get in with him. And he said, ‘The job is yours.’”
She testified: “Only after Jeffrey confirmed that I would submit to his sexual abuse did he begin paying me,” claiming she was paid a mere “$25,000 a year for working non-stop, on-call 24/7, months at a time with no days off,” with Maxwell allegedly calling her their “slave and minion.”
She told the committee: “I understood the math exactly. I was being paid, in part, to be raped.”
Abuse continued after he was jailed
Kellen recounted one attack in a Palm Beach gym where Epstein “blasted the music so loud so no one could hear, choked me and violently raped me.”
She also claimed the abuse continued while Epstein was serving his 18-month sentence in 2008 for soliciting prostitution from a minor.
“He even Skyped me from a computer inside the Palm Beach County Stockade and ordered me to undress for him on camera,” she said, detailing that he was in a room with “plain, white walls.”
Kellen said that the years under Epstein and Maxwell left her with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell
This undated photo provided by the U.S. Justice Department on Dec. 19, 2025, shows Jeffrey Epstein, a wealthy U.S. financier who died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking underage girls, and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell in an unidentified location. (Handout/Department of Justice/AFP/Getty Images) Photo by Handout /US Department of Justice/AFP via Getty Images
“As a result of the years of abuse, constant sleep deprivation, and coercive control inflicted by Jeffrey and Ghislaine, psychological conditions hampered my ability to identify my own emotions, differentiate reality from Jeffrey’s manipulated reality, and crippled me from making decisions or asserting agency when it mattered most,” she told the committee.
Previously, she was named as the “lieutenant” and is claimed to have “served as both his (Epstein’s) scheduler and a recruiter/procurer of the girls,” according to a 2010 docket since released by the Department of Justice.
Not a ‘monster’
This wasn’t the first time her abuse claims have came to light.
She told the U.K. Sun in 2020 that she was “raped and abused weekly” by Epstein and any depictions that she is a monster are “not true.”
Kellen — married to NASCAR star Brian Vickers — was identified as the “lieutenant” who “served as both (Epstein’s) scheduler and a recruiter/procurer of the girls,” according to a 2010 docket previous released by the Justice Department.
As for her accusations against Fekkai and Levine, Chair James Comer noting in a letter to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that the committee “is not a law enforcement entity, and our role is not to determine guilt or innocence” and they would be referring her allegations to Department of Justice, “which has the tools to investigate criminal misconduct.”
A spokesperson for Levine said in a statement to NBC News, “Nearly a quarter century ago, our client had a brief intimate encounter with another consenting adult. Any allegation suggesting otherwise is not true.”
Fekkai’s spokesperson Mark Herr also issued a statement to the outlet: “Mr. Fekkai was astonished to read of Ms. Kellen’s testimony. Mr. Fekkai never abused anyone. He never participated in any illegal behavior. He knew nothing about Epstein’s repugnant depravity or trafficking. He did nothing wrong.”
The committee asked for the probe after Sarah Kellen, Epstein’s former assistant, testified that she’d been preyed upon by three men, one of whom is dead.
nbcnews.com
United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
oversight.house.gov
A woman who worked as a personal assistant to Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell testified that Epstein “violently raped” her. Read on.
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