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Jeffrey Epstein’s Cape Town Trafficking Ring: Survivor Juliette Bryant’s Story of Grooming and Abuse
“They were laughing. I was really petrified.” Those are the words of Juliette Bryant, a South African woman who says she was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein in 2002, as recounted to Sky News. Bryant’s account details a harrowing journey from Cape Town to Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean, and reveals the extent to which Epstein’s trafficking network reached across continents.
Bryant, then a 20-year-aged university student and aspiring model, was recruited by Epstein while he was in Cape Town accompanying Bill Clinton on an AIDS awareness trip, alongside actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker. She was initially lured by the promise of financial stability for her struggling family. Three weeks after meeting Epstein, she found herself on a flight to New York, her first trip outside of South Africa.
The journey quickly turned sinister. Shortly after arriving in New York, Bryant was directed to a private jet bound for Epstein’s Caribbean island. Onboard, she alleges, were Epstein and the women who had initially recruited her in Cape Town. “He patted the chair next to him… and then I went and sat there. It was such a confusing situation for a young person to be in,” Bryant told Sky News. She described being sexually assaulted during the flight, while the women who had brought her there laughed.
Bryant’s experience highlights the psychological manipulation employed by Epstein and his associates. She described feeling “handcuffed invisibly,” trapped by a sense of obligation and fear. She stated she did not disclose the abuse to her family until after Epstein’s death in 2019.
Flight details contained within the Epstein files, as reported by Sky News, corroborate the pattern of young women being transported from Cape Town to locations including London, Atlanta, and New York up until late 2018. While Bryant states she was not trafficked to other men, she alleges repeated sexual abuse by Epstein himself during stays at his properties in New York, Palm Beach, Paris, and New Mexico. She also encountered women and underage girls from Brazil, Romania, France, and Spain at these locations.
Bryant documented her time with Epstein by taking photographs with disposable cameras she found on his island, capturing a stark contrast between posed smiles and moments of profound loneliness. She described feeling utterly trapped, stating, “There was no way of getting away… They had my passport and by then we had landed on one of the Caribbean islands and then were taken on a helicopter to his island. There was just no way of getting away.”
The recent release of Epstein files by the US Department of Justice, despite redaction failures, has forced Bryant to confront her trauma repeatedly as her emails to Epstein were published unredacted. These emails, sent between 2008 and 2017, were often written when she was “drinking or having a bit of a breakdown,” according to Bryant, who believes Epstein fostered a sense of surveillance that compelled her to contact him. “I have nothing to hide,” she said, adding that the publicity surrounding Epstein “confuses people because obviously the man had a terrible grip on my mind.”
Bryant continues to grapple with the psychological aftermath of her abuse, and the constant re-emergence of Epstein’s name in the news. She is currently piecing together the full scope of Epstein’s network, while navigating her recovery.
