A teenage girl walks into one of America’s most luxurious homes thinking she’s about to earn extra cash giving a simple massage. Forty-five minutes later she walks out with $300 in her hand and a secret that would eventually help bring down a billionaire predator and send his accomplice to federal prison for 20 years.

Court documents unsealed between 2019 and 2021 contain page after page of Virginia Giuffre’s sworn testimony describing her very first sexual encounter with Jeffrey Epstein – an encounter that took place in the summer of 2000 at Epstein’s sprawling Palm Beach estate when Giuffre was just 17.

According to the now-public deposition taken in 2016, Ghislaine Maxwell – Epstein’s longtime girlfriend and later convicted sex-trafficking accomplice – personally escorted the teenager upstairs to the master bedroom. A portable massage table had already been set up next to the king-size bed.

“Take all your clothes off,” Maxwell allegedly told her. When Giuffre hesitated, Maxwell repeated: “He likes it that way. Completely naked.”

Epstein entered the room wearing only a towel, dropped it, and lay face-down on the table – fully exposed. What followed was not a therapeutic massage. Maxwell stood beside the table the entire time, directing the terrified girl’s hands from Epstein’s shoulders down his back, to his buttocks, and finally to his genitals.

When Epstein flipped over, he was visibly aroused. Maxwell allegedly guided Giuffre to climb on top of him and instructed her – step by step – how to perform oral sex until Epstein climaxed. Giuffre told the court she cried during the act. Maxwell’s response, according to the testimony: “Don’t be a baby. This is what you have to do if you want to be part of this world.”

Afterward, Epstein handed Giuffre three $100 bills and told her to keep quiet. Maxwell patted her on the back and said, “See? That wasn’t so bad. You did very well.”

That single afternoon marked the beginning of what Giuffre says became two years of repeated sexual abuse at Epstein’s properties in Florida, New York, New Mexico, and on his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The “massages” quickly escalated to threesomes, the use of sex toys, and – Giuffre alleges – being lent out to Epstein’s powerful friends.

Other former employees backed up her account. Longtime house manager Juan Alessi testified he frequently saw “many, many, many” young girls who appeared to be high-school age arriving at the mansion, often carrying massage tables. Another employee, Alfredo Rodriguez, kept a handwritten journal that simply read “Massage = sex.”

The Palm Beach “massage” testimony became cornerstone evidence in both Epstein’s 2019 federal indictment (he died in custody weeks later) and Ghislaine Maxwell’s 2021 trial, where she was convicted on five of six counts, including trafficking a minor. She is currently serving a 20-year sentence.

Giuffre, now 41 and a mother of three, has spent the past decade speaking out and suing powerful men she claims participated in the abuse – most notably settling a defamation case against Britain’s Prince Andrew in 2022 for an undisclosed sum widely reported to exceed $12 million.

In interviews following the unsealing of the documents, Giuffre has been blunt: “They stole my childhood in that marble bedroom. I was a kid who just wanted to make some tip money after my shift at Mar-a-Lago. Instead, they turned me into a sex slave from the very first ‘lesson.’”

The Palm Beach mansion itself – a 14,000-square-foot waterfront palace – was raided by police in 2005, leading to Epstein’s controversial 2008 plea deal that allowed him to serve just 13 months, much of it on work release. The property was sold in 2021 for $26 million and has since been demolished.

For millions who have followed the Epstein saga, the newly public details of that first “massage lesson” remain among the most disturbing – a stark reminder of how predators hiding behind wealth and privilege can destroy lives in under an hour.