A New York City artist who said Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell shopped her around to men is among the survivors claiming that Epstein used the lure of a university education to ensnare her in their sexual abuse network.
Rina Oh was a 21-year-old art student when she was introduced to Epstein in 2000 by Lisa Phillips, a model and Epstein survivor who has since emerged as a powerful voice in the survivors’ network pressuring for full accountability in the long-running money, sex and power scandal.
“He told me: ‘You’re really talented. I think you should be in school,’” Oh recalled.
Epstein invited her to come sit down next to him. “He explained that he was a philanthropist, known by so many people, a very generous man, and had sent so many young people to university, often the kids of women he’d been at school with. I completely believed him.”
Oh says Epstein told her she need a bachelor of fine arts degree to make it in the art world and was offering her a scholarship to New York’s School of Visual Arts “with no strings attached”. But, Oh said: “He attached a lot of strings to that scholarship. When I wouldn’t do all that he wanted he took it away.”
Oh, who spent roughly two years in Epstein’s network, is one of a number of survivors coming forward to detail how Epstein used offers to help enrol and sometimes pay for tuition at prestigious universities to maintain his sway over them.
Other similar stories aired last week via victim interviews with Democrats on the House judiciary committee. It also comes as a new, perhaps voluminous tranche of Epstein-related documents is expected to be released by the justice department in the coming days.
“Mr Epstein repeatedly lured young women into his network by promising to help them gain admission into colleges and universities,” said the Maryland Democrat congressman Jamie Raskin in letters sent to Columbia University and New York University asking for more information on this aspect of the scandal.
Epstein, Raskin added, “not only lured young women who he and his co-conspirators would come to sexually abuse and rape, he also ensured his victims were indebted to him and less likely to come forward to report crimes to law enforcement”.
For Oh it sounds like her experience. “He was very much obsessed with infiltrating the minds of young people,” Oh says. “He didn’t just want to infiltrate for physical abuse, he wanted to infiltrate their brains because he was a cerebral beast.”
In her case, Oh says, the promise of a scholarship was replaced by a few lessons at the school and a painting commission. “It was an awful painting. He was obsessed with female body parts. He didn’t want a whole person. He didn’t want an abstract.” Epstein wanted a crotch. “He just said keep it real.”
Phillips, who, like Oh, was in her 20s when she met Epstein, told the Wall Street Journal this week that Epstein dangled an education at New York University, arranged for her to visit the campus and she eventually took classes. Phillips and Oh say another woman who was also being sexually exploited by Epstein was also studying at NYU.
Another woman told the Journal that Epstein sexually exploited her and that he had made her feel indebted to him by implying she had got in via his connections at the university. “He framed it to me as if he is the one who got me in, and he told the other girls that he got me in,” she said.
According to the committee, Epstein paid for a survivor, whom he abused from 2002 to 2005, to attend NYU between 2000 and 2002 and arranged a scholarship for her. Another survivor, then in high school, was repeatedly promised by Epstein he would get her admitted and pay for her to go to NYU. A third said he helped pay for her to attend Columbia between 2004 and 2007. A fourth said she was promised a visa and admission to NYU by an associate of Epstein but did not accept the offer.
A spokesperson for NYU told the Guardian in an email it was reviewing Raskin’s letter and that it was “fully committed to cooperating with this inquiry”. The spokesperson added: “We also support efforts to bring transparency to Epstein’s horrific conduct.” A Columbia official said the university had received the letter and was reviewing it.
Raskin’s reaching out to Columbia and NYU is probably part of an effort to better understand Epstein’s financial operation and – potentially – connections at the universities. The enrolments and tuition payments were directed by Epstein and managed by Epstein lawyer Darren Indyke and accountant Richard Kahn. Both men are co-executors of Epstein’s estate and have been subpoenaed to testify before the oversight committee.
Epstein’s connections to other universities, including Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and high-level faculty members, became apparent after he died in custody in 2019. Many university officials maintained their connections with Epstein after he pleaded guilty to solicitation of a minor in 2008. MIT’s director, Joi Ito, resigned in 2019 over his extensive financial ties to Epstein.
In November, the former Harvard president Larry Summers announced he was stepping away from public life after emails between him and Epstein revealing a close relationship were released. Epstein had an office at Harvard, where Summer’s wife Elisa New ran an Epstein-supported non-profit called Poetry in America.
“It’s pretty creepy,” says Oh. “There seems to be a larger scheme and pattern. Epstein wasn’t just sending students to school, I think he was infiltrating the schools. His reach seems to have been wide and deep across state borders through many educational institutions.”
Epstein-related documents released last month as part of the justice department’s obligation to the Epstein Files Transparency Act revealed a lawsuit that claimed he met his first known victim at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, a Michigan fine arts summer camp, in 1994.
The lawsuit claimed that the victim, named as Jane Doe, met Epstein and Maxwell at the camp when she was 13. Epstein allegedly bragged to her about being a patron of the arts and giving scholarships to talented young artists. The complaint also alleges that Doe was used as a “guinea pig” for their grooming scheme and subjected to years of escalating sexual abuse.
Epstein’s ties to academia and his offers of education created financial dependence that could then be withdrawn, creating a form of dependence and control masked as generosity.
“He definitely wanted access to young students – high schoolers bring other high schoolers, and college girls to bring other college girls – but he also had ties to professors at prestigious universities,” Oh says. “He wanted to collect these people so that he could own them. He had this whole thing about ownership. Nothing with Epstein came for free.”
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