My daughter was abused by Ghislaine Maxwell & Jeffrey Epstein when she was just 14 – I wish I could have protected her
A DEVASTATED mum has said she wished she could have done more to protect her teenage daughter who was was abused by Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.
Dorothy, 60, said she thought her 14-year-old daughter Carolyn was topping up her pocket money by cleaning a house for a wealthy man who lived in a mansion in Palm Beach.
But Carolyn was actually being paid £220 at each visit to give Epstein “sexualised” massages as she was drawn into Epstein and Maxwell’s “pyramid scheme of abuse”.
In haunting testimony at Maxwell’s trial, Carolyn, 34, told jurors she was just 14 when the British socialite had groped her breasts and told her she had “a great body for Mr Epstein and his friends”.
She said Maxwell, 60, often summoned her for sex with Epstein and claimed she was recruited by her then friend Virginia Roberts Giuffre – the woman who has accused Prince Andrew of rape, which he strenuously denies.
Carolyn, who used only her first name, said Virginia had asked her if she “wanted to come make money”.
She said she went to Epstein’s mansion “over 100 times” between the ages of 14 and 18 before she became “too old” for his tastes.
After Maxwell was found guilty of sex trafficking and grooming girls for Epstein to abuse, Carolyn’s mum Dorothy has questioned how she did not know her teenage daughter was being abused by the sick pair.
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She told the Daily Mail: “It makes me feel horrible. It makes me ask, ‘What did I do wrong? Could I not have protected her better?'”
Carolyn described how her daughter’s behaviour started to change over time after taking the “cleaning” job at Epstein’s mansion.
She said Carolyn started to get calls on her phone from a woman asking where she was because she had “an appointment” to keep at the house.
Dorothy, who is only using her first name, said: “All of a sudden Carolyn started shutting down. [She was] cutting herself really bad and I couldn’t figure out why.
“I noticed she started wearing more make-up. And her clothes started changing.
“And I’m like: ‘Carolyn, what’s going on here? You’re looking pretty provocative for a girl your age, you know?’ It kind of bothered me.”
She added: “Sometimes she didn’t come home at all. She was always smelling of perfume [but] I could smell alcohol on her, too.”
On one occasion, it was Epstein who called Dorothy to ask where Carolyn was.
Following the first FBI investigation into Epstein in 2008, Carolyn started to reveal what really happened to her as a teenager.
Dorothy said: “She says, ‘Mom, I did things I didn’t think you would be proud of me for and I don’t want to discuss it. It’s just not nice. And you would hate me’.
“And I’m like, ‘Carolyn, but what could be so bad? I thought you were cleaning houses?’ She goes, ‘Mom, it was more than that . . . I had to give massages’.”
‘TOO ASHAMED’
She added: “That’s all she would tell me and that she had to bring girls with her.
“I guess she was too ashamed to tell me the whole truth.”
Two decades after the horror ordeal, Carolyn has been left addicted to drugs and suffering from mental health problems.
Dorothy said her daughter feels “ashamed” of what she did as a teenager and she has been left too traumatised to look after her own children aged 17, eight, seven and four.
Dorothy said she is now caring for the kids after Carolyn moved out of the family home in Florida indefinitely.
She said: “My daughter suffers nightmares. She’s on medication. She’s got fears that her kids are going to be kidnapped and molested.
“She’s devastated and all she does is cry.”
A few days after Carolyn gave evidence at Maxwell’s trial, Dorothy said her daughter sent her a YouTube video featuring a song called I Don’t Feel Any More.
Dorothy said: “Nobody knows how deep this goes. I don’t whether she is going to be alive from one day to another.”