Marina Lacerda was raped by Jeffrey Epstein between the ages of 14 to 17, but throughout that time she was never allowed into his bedroom.
The paedophile financier would ritually abuse her in the massage room of his $77million Manhattan mansion, not trusting the Brazilian immigrant, now 37, to venture into his chamber.
But there was at least one time the teenager - aged 16 or 17 - was ushered into those forbidden four walls to meet Epstein, and on this occasion, he wasn’t the only adult in the room.
Lacerda’s memories of the ordeal are patchy, because she says her brain has ‘blacked out’ a lot of the trauma. But she can recall his soft, white, cotton sheets and his enormous bedframe - a far-cry from the mattress on the floor she was accustomed to at her home in Astoria, Queens.
She was ordered into the room with another 18-year-old girl - a Brazilian model who she says Epstein ‘was in love with’ - and told: ‘We're going to have a special day today. We're going to have some fun in my bedroom.’
Once the two girls were in the bed and the abuse began, Epstein had another unusual announcement: ‘My friend will be joining us today.’ After this his jailed co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell entered the room, Lacerda told the Daily Mail.
‘A lot of things happened in that bedroom. They both raped me and this girl. They had sex toys. They did a whole bunch of things,’ she said.
‘I remember the white sheets - everything being white - and just me sitting on my knees, Jeffrey playing with me and the girl, and then Ghislaine walking in and playing with us, and after that, I just blacked out.
‘But I know they played with us, and they brought sex toys, and I know that they definitely raped me and this girl.’
For years, Lacerda was only known as ‘Minor-Victim 1’ but she waived her anonymity in September 2025 to be a voice for hundreds of other victims
Ghislaine Maxwell, 64, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2022 for recruiting and trafficking teenage girls so that Epstein could abuse them
It took Lacerda years to recall the memory and she did not even realise who Maxwell was until she started appearing in the media after her arrest by the FBI on July 2, 2020, at a luxury hideaway in a small town in New Hampshire.
The alleged incident occurred around 2005, when the disgraced British socialite would have been in her early-to-mid 40s and Epstein in his early 50s.
Lacerda is desperate to remember the full extent of the rape, and is eager to reach out to the model also present in the room to jog her memory. But not all survivors of Epstein’s abuse have the ability to spend time recalling the darkest chapter of their life.
She adds: ‘I can't remember if Ghislaine went down on us, or if she had a strap-on. I really want to talk to this girl, because a lot of things happened in that bedroom. I know sex toys were used, I know they raped us, but I can't remember the detail.’
Maxwell, 64, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2022 for recruiting and trafficking teenage girls so that Epstein could abuse them.
Even so, victims have criticised the US Department of Justice for its perceived soft touch approach to Maxwell, especially after she was transferred from a prison in Florida to a minimum-security facility in Texas last August, where she is reportedly ‘much, much happier’.
She’s one of 650 female inmates at the Federal Prison Camp Bryan, where most of the prisoners are serving time for non-violent offences and white-collar crimes.
At the time, the family of the late Virginia Giuffre - one of Epstein's victims - expressed their ‘horror and disgust’ at what they described as the ‘preferential treatment’ given to Maxwell.
Lacerda isn’t alone in alleging that the former socialite took part in sexual abuse. At her historic trial, three of her accusers - Jane, Carolyn and Annie Farmer - gave testimony about how Maxwell touched them inappropriately on their breasts and buttocks, with some as young as 14.
Maxwell's lawyer, attorney David Oscar Markus, is trying to push the Trump administration into granting her clemency, claiming that only then will his client ‘speak fully and honestly’ about the scale of Epstein’s trafficking network.
Unsurprisingly, Epstein’s victims resolutely oppose this ever coming to fruition.
Maxwell is ‘100 per cent’ a paedophile, Lacerda says. ‘She was going out to different schools and recruiting girls for Jeffrey and then taking advantage of them. She wasn't just a madam getting him girls. She was participating full on in these abuses.’
She adds: ‘Some of the victims say that Maxwell was worse than Jeffrey Epstein, because not only was she an abuser, but she was very mean. She was jealous that Jeffrey liked some of these girls.’
Maxwell was transferred from a prison in Florida to a minimum-security facility in Texas last August, where she is reportedly ‘much, much happier’
Lacerda now lives in Florida with her daughter and four dogs
Epstein knew Lacerda came from a poor family and took advantage of her vulnerability as part of the grooming process, she told the Daily Mail
Every time an Epstein victim comes forward into the public with her story, she is taking an enormous personal gamble.
For every one person who offers a kind word of support, there’s another ten on the internet accusing her of being a liar who just wanted to steal the financier’s millions.
People seem to forget that these stories are not only about children - who don’t have the ability to consent - but deeply vulnerable minors, many of whom heralded from poverty and broken homes, where sexual abuse was already sadly normalised.
Lacerda knows the risks inherent in being honest, but she’s proud of her story - for ultimately surviving a challenging childhood and building a vibrant life for herself and her daughter today.
She came from humble beginnings, which is exactly why Epstein targetted her.
Aged 14, her stepfather had just gone to jail for sexually abusing her between the ages of eight and 12, and her relationship with her mother was strained as a result.
When another young girl recruited her to work for the financier, telling her she could earn $300 for a 30-minute massage, it was a no-brainer to step into the orbit of the man who knew everyone worth knowing in New York City, whom she thought might help her accomplish her dreams of being a ballerina on Broadway.
And so began years of abuse at the hands of the serial paedophile, who preyed on her youth, economic insecurity and wide-eyed hopes for the future with tactical precision.
The first time she gave Epstein a massage, she was told by the girl she’d have to take off her top but keep on her bra - ‘just like a bikini, just like you'd be going to the beach’ - and at the time to Lacerda, that seemed okay.
When Epstein told her to take her bra off too, she was horrified and immediately froze. Feeling pressured, she eventually obeyed and he started masturbating.
The grooming happened ‘very slowly’ as Epstein gained her trust over the coming months. 'And then next thing you know, he's raping me. I would say sex, but I guess at 14, you're not having sex, you're getting raped,' she added.
As the years went on, he repeatedly begged her to introduce him to her little sister, who he knew was ten or 11. Lacerda refused.
‘He knew everything about me. The only thing I think Jeffrey did not know was that I got abused by my stepfather, but he knew where I was living, that I had a boyfriend and I was taking care of my sister. He knew all of this,’ Lacerda adds.
One way he kept in the know was through his intricate system of hidden cameras, which Lacerda said were installed all over his New York mansion, even in the bathrooms.
One time, she was wandering around his house and spied an open door to the right side of the property’s entrance, which she deduced was a CCTV control room.
Lacerda said: ‘I was able to see that he had multiple monitors, displaying everywhere in the house. I couldn’t stay there long, but I just peeped into it.
She was completely floored, adding: ‘This man is not only videoing the front door, he’s videoing the whole house. He definitely had cameras everywhere.’
It was because of this intricate network of cameras that Epstein knew when Lacerda and a fellow victim took drugs one day in his massage room.
Throughout her teens, alcohol and drugs became a way Lacerda could cope with her multiple struggles. She came to the US when she was aged eight and by the time she was a freshman in high school was already balancing three jobs to support her family.
She started smoking weed from the age of 12, after her stepfather went to jail. At 15, she was prescribed Xanax by a doctor, triggering a slippery slope into her taking Percocet, cocaine and eventually drinking heavily.
If she had an 'appointment' with Epstein at midday, she’d arrive under the influence of a cocktail of substances as a way of ‘numbing' herself out so she couldn’t feel the pain.
One time, when Epstein had been away for a week, he called on Lacerda and another girl to meet him together - which was unusual, because he rarely met two victims at the same time, preferring to abuse them on a kind of rolling rota.
‘He came up to us, and he was like: "Are you using drugs?" And we were like: "No, we're not."'
Epstein responded: ‘Let me tell you something. I'm going to give you a week to straighten out. I know you're using, and I'm going to tell you right now, none of my girls use any drugs. I'm going to give you a week, and if I feel like you're using, I'm going to take a hair sample to the lab, and I'm going to find out.’
It was then that Lacerda discovered Epstein was watching all their behaviour, all the time, and nothing could be hidden from the financier if you were in his mansion.
Epstein wasn’t just the richest man they knew. He also convinced them he was a brain surgeon, a top scientist in his field. When the victims would see young girls at his mansion, they would immediately assume they were just students from Yale he must be mentoring.
But over time, Lacerda realised he wasn’t going to offer her anything for the betterment of her career and that he was only exploiting her, using her to ‘teach’ other victims how to act in the bedroom.
'He would use me as a doll, prompt me to say to the girls, "this is how you're supposed to do things, this is how you're supposed to move your body". He would say: "This is what a good girl would do."'
One day, aged 17, she was walking home and spotted a coffee shop with the phrase ‘help wanted’ plastered on the door. She took her chances and applied for the job, gradually meeting a new network of friends her age.
Day by day, she left Epstein’s orbit, embarking on her new life.
Epstein survivor Marina Lacerda was abused by the paedophile between the ages of 14 to 17 at his New York Mansion
Epstein with Maxwell in a photograph provided by the US Justice Department
On April 9, the Epstein saga took an unexpected turn when Melania Trump made an unprecedented statement that shook and confused the White House in equal measure.
In a speech Donald Trump said he didn’t know ‘anything about’ beforehand, the First Lady denied she ever had a relationship with Epstein and Maxwell, denied she was his victim and claimed he didn’t introduce her to the US President.
It came after the justice department released a trove of more than three million files related to the late sex offender earlier this year, including an email that was sent to Maxwell in late October 2002, signed ‘Love, Melania’.
One email, sent on the evening of October 23, 2002, with the subject line ‘HI!’ begins ‘Dear G!’
The sender explains there is a ‘nice story about JE in NY mag’, before asking the recipient about future travel plans and to call them when they’re back in New York.
‘G Max’ responds by saying they won’t have time to see the sender when back in the city, but promises they would ‘try and call’.
In her speech, Melania called on Congress to give a hearing to victims of Epstein’s crimes, giving them ‘their opportunity to testify under oath’.
That suggestion enraged victims like Lacerda, who felt the First Lady was shifting the burden of responsibility to the abused, when in fact it was high time for perpetrators to be investigated and have their own day in court.
‘First Lady Melania Trump is now shifting the burden onto survivors under politicised conditions that protect those with power: the Department of Justice, law enforcement, prosecutors, and the Trump administration, which has still not fully complied with the Epstein Files Transparency Act,’ said a statement signed by 13 survivors, along with the family of Giuffre.
For Lacerda, a public hearing full of survivor testimony, broadcast on television, would just be ‘re-traumatising’, especially when so many of the victims have already told their stories countless times to the press and the authorities - securing the 2019 indictment against the financier before he killed himself in jail awaiting trial.
‘I’m going to speak for myself: I will testify under oath in front of the whole world and Congress, again, with no problem - as long as the men that are on the files will testify and there will be criminal charges put against them,’ she told the Daily Mail.
Now in Florida, Lacerda is busy. In the week of our interview, she already has five podcast sit-downs scheduled in an extraordinary effort to keep the world’s attention from shifting away from Epstein.
Before making the decision to waive her anonymity in September, Lacerda was known for years only as ‘Minor Victim-1’ - just another anonymous child whose innocence was snatched away by the notorious paedophile.
Now, she’s a mighty force for change, having shrugged off the mantle of shame that so many survivors carry, replacing it with a sense of unapologetic pride.
Many aspects of her childhood were traumatising, and those memories will never go away. Some days she spirals and the panic sets in. But every year of difficulty was also a year of survival for Lacerda, who has come out the other side with an addictive zeal for life.
She adds: ‘I'm just not the type of person who's going to live in the past. I have a life today. I have a daughter. I have my four dogs. I have my health. I have the opportunity to help people break their silence and share my story. Why am I going to be sad?
‘I love my life. I'm scared of dying. I want to live for a long time. And while I'm here, I want to enjoy it.’