Epstein accuser says she sought STD to stop alleged abuse
Roza Gilles told CNN she tried to contract an STD as a child, believing it could kill Jeffrey Epstein and end the abuse she alleges.
By Georgia Hale · Staff Writer
2 min read
Roza Gilles, a woman who says Jeffrey Epstein abused her when she was a minor, has spoken publicly for the first time and described a desperate plan she says she formed as a child: trying to contract a sexually transmitted disease because she believed it might kill him.
Gilles told CNN she did not trust authorities to step in and thought killing Epstein was the only way to stop the abuse she alleges. In a clip shared by CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront” on X, Gilles said, “I ran around New York City as a child trying to get an STD to kill a pedophile.”
According to CNN, Gilles said she first came into Epstein’s orbit after he hired her as a secretary while she was struggling to make progress in modeling. She said one of the duties she was given was massaging his feet.
Gilles told CNN that Epstein was then in a 12-hour-a-day work-release program following his guilty plea to solicitation of prostitution charges. She said she did not know about that conviction at the time and only learned something was different when she saw his ankle monitor.
During one of the massages, Gilles told CNN, Epstein asked her to remove her top. She alleges he then groped her and masturbated.
Gilles said the abuse became a repeated and traumatic pattern over years. According to her account to CNN, it began at Epstein’s mansion in Florida and later continued in New York.
She told CNN she felt trapped and believed speaking out could get her killed. In New York, she said, that fear and lack of faith in government intervention led her to try to contract an STD as a way to end what she says was happening to her.
Why she is speaking now
Gilles told CNN she is now sharing her story in hopes it may encourage someone else experiencing something similar to come forward.
Epstein’s work-release arrangement lasted about nine months under a plea deal that drew intense criticism, according to the CNN and TMZ reporting. He later died by suicide in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors and conspiracy to commit sex trafficking.
Epstein cannot respond to Gilles’ allegations. The account aired as part of CNN’s reporting on survivors connected to Epstein, whose criminal cases and associations have remained under public scrutiny years after his death.
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This story draws on original reporting from TMZ.