The invitation often sounded ordinary. A wealthy employer needed an assistant. A young woman was offered an opportunity to travel. Someone studying massage therapy heard about a job with generous pay and valuable connections. The arrangements were made over the telephone or during a meeting, with instructions about where to go and whom to expect.
For the women receiving those invitations, the person making the arrangements was often their first contact with Jeffrey Epstein’s world. They knew little about the wealthy financier whose homes they were being invited into. They relied on the information supplied by the people working for him, particularly when employment, money or the prospect of a better future was involved.
Sarah Kellen was one of those employees.
She entered Epstein’s household as a young woman trying to establish herself. Over the following years, she became closely associated with the daily operation of his homes, dealing with appointments, visitors and the practical arrangements surrounding his private life. Her name would eventually appear in accounts from women who described entering those properties under circumstances far removed from what they had been promised.
Kellen’s own description of those years presents another account of life inside Epstein’s household. She says he sexually abused her, exploited her financial vulnerability and exercised control over her life. Her experience, according to her lawyers, left her dependent on a man whose wealth and influence made resistance difficult.
The women who encountered Kellen remembered someone with considerable access to Epstein, someone who understood the routines of his household and communicated directly with people outside it. Some described her participation in encounters they later reported as sexual abuse.
These accounts raise a difficult question about the relationship between exploitation and responsibility. A person subjected to abuse might also participate in the abuse of others. Establishing what happened requires examining the circumstances of each encounter, the power exercised by those involved and the evidence available to investigators.
For Sarah Kellen, those questions would follow her long after her employment with Epstein ended. Her story begins with a position inside one of America’s most notorious households, but the consequences of her work would extend far beyond its walls.
