(NEW YORK) — Sarah Kellen, a longtime personal assistant to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, told the House Oversight Committee on Thursday that she was “sexually and psychologically abused” by the late financier for over a decade, according to a copy of her prepared opening statement obtained by ABC News.
“He groomed me, sexually and psychologically abused me, controlled me, manipulated me, dominated me, and gaslit me, until I could no longer tell which thoughts were mine, and which were his,” the statement said.
The closed-door session was part of the panel’s ongoing inquiry into the federal government’s handling of investigations into the late sex offender.
Kellen, 47, was previously a subject of criminal investigations but has never been charged — due, in part, to her own allegations of persistent sexual abuse at the hands of the disgraced financier, according to court documents and records released earlier this year by the Justice Department.
Kellen, in her statement, said she was recruited for the job as Epstein’s assistant by a co-worker at a hotel in Hawaii, where she had gone to live after getting married at 17 years old. She claimed that after a divorce and ex-communication from her church, she was completely alone and “a perfect target” for Epstein.
“I was 21 years old, far from where I grew up, stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere, with no college degree, no family, no friends, no money, and nowhere to live,” she said.
Her job with Epstein, she said, began as a period of training where she traveled with him on his private jet to his homes in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Florida and New York, where she says she was “surrounded by unimaginable luxury.”
“After months of unpaid labor, he instructed me to draw him a bath on his island, then ordered me to undress and get in with him, and he said, ‘The job is yours. Now you just have to keep it,'” she said in the statement. “He then pulled me onto his bed and made clear what ‘keeping the job’ required. Only after I submitted to his sexual abuse did the paychecks begin.”
Kellen told the committee that Epstein’s abuse happened on a “weekly basis” and was at times violent, including an incident in Palm Beach where she says he violently choked and raped her.
“I was being paid in part to be raped. I was on call to him every hour of every day,” her statement said.
Kellen said she continues to suffer from depression, anxiety and PTSD as a result of Epstein’s abuse.
Kellen was one of four women named as potential co-conspirators in the non-prosecution agreement reached in 2007 between Epstein and federal prosecutors in Miami.. She told the committee that she was completely in the dark about the agreement and had no idea her name was in it until it became public a few years later.
“No one from law enforcement ever spoke with me, ever heard my side, ever asked me a single question. I did not even know my name was in that agreement until after it had been signed and released to the public. The federal government of the United States branded me a criminal in a secret deal with my own abuser, without ever once speaking to me,” the statement said.
Anticipating questioning from committee members about why she stayed with Epstein — even after he went to jail for a crime involving an underage girl — she explained that she felt she had “nowhere else to go.”
“I had no money, no family, no education, and no sense that I deserved any better,” her statement said.
She also noted that Epstein’s connections to the “highest echelons” of society made her fearful of defying him.
“He knew everyone in the fashion industry, academics, finance, government, powerful world leaders, dictators, and everyone in between,” her statement said. “From the beginning, he showed me that he was more powerful than basically anyone in the world.”
“Jeffrey was able to fool and manipulate the brightest minds in the world; us victims didn’t stand a chance,” the statement said. “I was a high school dropout from North Carolina. I was a silent body in a chair beside men who started and ended wars. I understood, completely, that if Jeffrey could walk into those rooms, he could walk into any room in the entire world. He could find me anywhere on earth.”
Kellen’s appearance at the Capitol comes as the committee ramps up for a busy stretch of its investigation, which was officially launched in February of last year. Other notable witnesses scheduled in the coming months include Epstein’s longtime executive assistant Leslie Groff, former U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, former Goldman Sachs chief counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, and billionaires Bill Gates and Leon Black.
The committee’s chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), has indicated that a report on its findings will be produced before the end of the year.
Following Epstein’s death in custody in July 2019, federal prosecutors in New York investigating possible collaborators engaged in discussions with Kellen and her attorneys that spanned more than a year. Documents released by the DOJ earlier this year included prosecutors’ internal assessments of a potential case against Kellen and emails from her attorneys trying to dissuade the government from filing charges.
“We feel that given [Kellen’s] abuse, and given the fact that we see her basically as a cog in Epstein’s wheel, acting entirely at his direction and doing what she did at a time that she herself was a very vulnerable victim, a [non-prosecution] would be the appropriate disposition,” an attorney for Kellen wrote in the spring of 2020.
According to DOJ records, the government did not dispute that Kellen “was herself a victim of abuse by Epstein,” noting that her account was consistent with others who worked for Epstein and allegedly experienced sexual exploitation.
Prosecutors detailed in a proposed “statement of facts” sent to Kellen’s attorneys in late 2020 that several “minor victims reported to federal agents that Epstein paid them for sexualized massages while they were underage girls, including during massages that [Kellen] scheduled.”
Kellen conceded that Epstein directed her to schedule his daily massages in the early 2000s when he was staying in his Palm Beach, Florida, residence, according to the DOJ records. She claimed she was provided a directory of names and instructed on who to call, and denied having knowledge that some who came to the house were underage.
She told prosecutors she viewed the “masseuses as her peers — i.e. young adults in their early 20s — and it never [crossed] her mind that any of them were minors,” government lawyers wrote in a December 2019 memo summarizing their investigation for Geoffrey Berman, then the top federal prosecutor in New York.
Kellen said she “only learned that Epstein was sexually abusing minors when news articles started coming out about it” in the mid-2000s, according to the records. “She recalled being shocked, angry, and disappointed. She was particularly angry with Epstein for manipulating her to help orchestrate the abuse of other women,” the records said.
Federal prosecutors ultimately decided against charging Kellen, though the internal deliberations that led to that outcome are unclear. Much of the legal analysis in the prosecution memos remains redacted in the publicly available versions of the DOJ records.
Epstein’s former associate Ghislaine Maxwell remains the only other person charged in connection with Epstein’s crimes. She is serving a 20-year sentence in a federal prison camp in Texas. Maxwell is presently seeking to have her conviction vacated or her sentence reduced.
Kellen — who has largely avoided public comment surrounding the Epstein investigation — told a reporter from a British paper who approached her on the street in New York in 2020 that she was “raped and abused weekly.”
“I have been made out to be such a monster — but it’s not true. I’m a victim of Jeffrey Epstein,” Kellen said, according to the U.K. Sun report.
An attorney who represented Kellen during discussions with federal prosecutors did not immediately respond to a request for comment ahead of Kellen’s appearance in Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
