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Lisa Phillips had big dreams of becoming a top model when she encountered Jeffrey Epstein.
The cover girl, who said she was abused by the late convicted sex offender on his private island, is speaking out candidly in a new podcast, “From Now On.” It aims to raise awareness of human trafficking and how it can impact anyone.
“It took me many years to get to this point,” Phillips, now a model scout and agent in Los Angeles, told Fox News Digital. “I struggled with the confusion of what happened to me years ago.”
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“But as soon as I started speaking to other survivors, I started realizing that my story from so many years ago was the same as those – both the underage girls from Florida and the older girls that were 18-25,” she shared.
Phillips began modeling when she was 16 years old. By 19, she was already heading to fashion capitals, like London and Paris, making her mark. At age 21, she found herself in New York City, where she had booked a photo shoot in the British West Indies.
It was there that a fellow model told her about an island nearby – Little Saint James.
“We had an extra day,” Phillips recalled. “She said, ‘Let’s get out of here. Let’s do something. I have a friend, a really good friend. He’s amazing. He owns an island close by. Let’s see him. He said he would send us a boat, and we could hang out over there.'”
The women boarded a boat and headed to the island. When they arrived, there were other women already there swimming in a pool and “enjoying themselves.”
At first, everything seemed “fine,” said Phillips. They had “a wonderful dinner” before Epstein approached them and introduced himself.
“He was very charming,” she recalled. “He was that type of man who just locked into you and made you feel very special, very safe and so interested in who you were as a person. I never had that attention from a man, not even from my father, expressing that much interest in everything that I was talking about, what I was doing, what my aspirations and goals were.”
“I always remember that he made me feel really special… That’s what he did for everybody.”
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However, things took a turn “pretty quickly,” she claimed.
That same night, a woman casually approached her, saying that Epstein wanted a massage. A confused Phillips said she did not know how to give one. The woman nonchalantly told her to “just chill.” After assuring her, Phillips followed the woman’s lead. She felt safe with her.
Phillips claimed that the massage turned into Epstein sexually assaulting her in the room.
“It wasn’t a straight, ‘Let me pull you into a room and abuse you,’” said Phillips. “He eases into things, like, ‘It’s just a massage, right?’ The girl went along with it and brought me into the room to do this massage with him. It was a slow thing that escalated into abuse. The whole process was very confusing to me.”
“I was on an island,” she said. “I wasn’t in a house where I could say, ‘Excuse me, I need to leave,’ and grab my stuff. I was far away from home on an island I should never have been on.”
Phillips later learned that multiple women, like her, alleged that they were assaulted by Epstein under the guise of a massage.
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She returned to New York City filled with shame.
“After that, my life spiraled,” Phillips admitted. “I started doing drugs and drinking… I felt like I was tarnished, or something was wrong with me that I didn’t stand up for myself… And everybody looked up to Jeffrey at the time.
“During those years, he wasn’t a playboy who hung out in the scene. People talked about him highly. When I would bring up his name to people, they would say, ‘We love Jeffrey. He did this for me. He got me a visa. He introduced me to my husband. He put me through school.’ It was always these big things that he did for people. That was confusing for me.”
Phillips also pointed out that the incident occurred in the early 2000s, long before the #MeToo movement where victims of sexual abuse came forward publicly with their accounts. At that time, she said, “You would never speak out about somebody like that with that kind of power.”
Phillips said she “suppressed” the shame and confusion she felt as Epstein portrayed himself as a mentor wanting to help.
“Nobody talked about the creepy massages and what was happening,” she said. “It was all hush-hush… He was influential, and he was manipulative. He groomed you to believe that he was your mentor.”
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In 2006, Epstein was arrested over allegations that he had hired teenage girls to give him sexualized massages at his Florida home.
Two years later, prosecutors allowed Epstein to plead guilty to a charge involving a single victim. He served 13 months in a jail work-release program then quietly started rebuilding his network of influential friends, with the help of his socialite former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell.
After a series of Miami Herald stories about the plea bargain that deprived Epstein’s victims of justice, federal prosecutors in New York revived the investigation and charged Epstein in 2019 with sex trafficking.
Epstein reportedly created and maintained a “vast network” and operation from 2002 “up to and including” at least 2005 that enabled him to “sexually exploit and abuse dozens of underage girls” in addition to paying victims to recruit other girls.
Prosecutors said that victims would be escorted to a room with a massage table where they would perform massages on Epstein.
At the time of Epstein’s arrest, prosecutors said they found a trove of pictures of nude and seminude young women and girls at his $77 million Manhattan mansion. They also say additional victims have come forward since the arrest. He pleaded not guilty.
On Aug. 10 of that year, Epstein was found dead behind bars. He was 66. The cause of death was suicide.
When Epstein killed himself in jail, prosecutors charged Maxwell with facilitating his illicit sexual encounters and participating in some of the abuse. The 62-year-old was convicted and is serving a 20-year prison term.
Phillips said that while she hated her abuser, she cried after learning of his death.
“I didn’t know why,” she explained. “He was a bad guy, but I had good thoughts about him too… I just had this emotional breakdown of confusion. But if he was still alive, I probably would’ve had way too much fear to speak out. I probably would have never spoken out. But… I was willing to finally talk about what happened to me. I needed answers.”
Phillips went on to testify in a 2022 civil case involving another Epstein accuser, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, USA Today reported. She also filed as a Jane Doe under the Adult Survivors Act, citing abuse by an Epstein associate. According to the outlet, she received a settlement in a case involving JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Epstein accusers.
“The pain is in the numbers,” she explained. “You can go through some type of abuse and deal with it on your own… but when you start hearing about other women who had the same experiences with Jeffrey and others, it does something to your psyche,” she said.
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“… And when I started speaking to the other survivors, that’s where I felt validation… That’s when I felt safe to talk about my experience without people shaming me. I wasn’t alone.”
Today, Phillips hopes her podcast will provide a platform for other victims who are healing, like her.
“I want people to know that there’s a place where you can come and be heard,” she said. “I also want to educate people on how to advocate for themselves, and look out for red flags while you’re building your career. Because this can happen in any kind of business.”
“I feel different today than I did yesterday,” she reflected. “It’s getting better. But I’m ready to start speaking out. And I’m ready to help others speak out, too.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
