WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Roza said she was born in Uzbekistan, and she was 18 when Jean-Luc Brunel, of MC2 Model Management, promised her a modeling career beyond her dreams.
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Roza said Brunel, who died in 2022, secured a talent U.S. visa in less than six months, and she traveled to New York, where the agency said she owed $10,000.
“Less than a month after I arrived to the United States, my agency sent me to the home of a sex offender,” Roza said about her first meeting with Jeffrey Epstein, who she said sexually abused her for three years.
Roza testified on Tuesday during the House Oversight Committee Democrats’ shadow field hearing at West Palm Beach City Hall. She said the agency moved her to Miami, and she was abused in Palm Beach.
Epstein “spoke of his arrest like it was a game, bragging about girls visiting his cell and his friendships with authorities,” Roza said, adding he raped her while he was on house arrest in 2009.
Through tears, Roza said she was re-victimized when her name was mentioned over 500 times in the Department of Justice’s records release.
“While the rich and powerful remained protected by redaction, my name was exposed to the world,” Roza said.
Survivors Jena-Lisa Jones, Dani Bensky, Courtney Wild, and Maria Farmer also testified during the hearing.
In a video, Farmer said she was living in New York when she reported Epstein’s abuse to the FBI in 1996. She said she talked to FBI agents again in 2006.
“The government offered Epstein a sweetheart deal,” Farmer said about former U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta’s non-prosecution agreement.
Wild said Epstein sexually abused her from when she was 14 years old until she was 17 in Palm Beach, and the deal included her case.
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“I was homeless. My parents had addiction problems. He preyed. He knew what he was doing,” Wild said, adding that Epstein’s attorneys portrayed her as an “underage prostitute” after she reported the abuse.
Wild said prosecutors did not notify her of the non-prosecution agreement. It wasn’t until years later, she said, that she was able to read the records.
“It seemed like they had forgotten that there were 40 of us kids who had been abused by him,” Wild said
Virginia Giuffre’s brother and sister-in-law, Sky and Amanda Roberts, and attorneys Spencer Kuvin and Lauren Hersh also testified.
“She believed accountability should reach everyone involved — no matter their status,” Sky Roberts said about Giuffre.
The survivors demanded that lawmakers work on stronger legislation to protect victims’ rights and pass Virginia’s Law to eliminate statutes of limitations for civil claims brought by adult victims.
House Oversight Committee Ranking Member Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., presided over the hearing.
“This cover-up must end,” Garcia said.
U.S. Reps. Lois Frankel, Ayanna Pressley, Melanie Stansbury, Emily Randall, Maxwell Frost, Dave Min, Summer Lee, Wesley Bell, Jasmine Crockett, Yassamin Ansari, James Walkinshaw, Suhas Subramanyam, and Raja Krishnamoorthi also participated.
“We have to do everything in our power to block a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell,” Krishnamoorthi said about the sex offender sentenced to 20 years in prison for her role in Epstein’s crimes.
Epstein died in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City. The Medical Examiner’s office ruled he died of suicide by hanging.
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Roza explains abusers’ grooming
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