By A woman who says she was a sexual abuse victim of Jeffrey Epstein filed a lawsuit Monday against the famed psychiatrist, entrepreneur and commodities trader Henry Jarecki, alleging that Jarecki raped and sex trafficked her after Epstein sent her to Jarecki for psychiatric treatment.
The federal civil suit by the unidentified woman in Manhattan federal court says Jarecki, 91, was “close friends” with the late money manager Epstein, who killed himself in a New York jail in 2019.
Epstein allegedly sent Jarecki other young women for the psychiatrist to “treat” confidentially, in order “to avoid unwanted attention on Epstein’s sexual abuse of these young women,” the suit alleges.
“Jarecki also understood that the females Epstein was sending were under Epstein’s control and Jarecki could himself attempt to sexually abuse them without risk of being reported,” according to the suit, which first was reported by The Wall Street Journal.
Jarecki’s lawyer, Sarita Kedia, in a statement to CNBC, said, “The allegations will be shown to be entirely false and baseless. Dr. Jarecki never engaged in any abusive conduct with the complainant or any other person.”
The complaint, which refers to the woman as “Jane Doe 11,” says Jarecki “repeatedly raped” her beginning in 2011 until December 2014.
It also alleges the Moviefone co-founder and movie producer used testosterone pills to elevate “his sex drive,” and “started inviting other guys over and forcing Jane Doe 11 to have sex with these other men in front of him, which he did on numerous occasions.”
The suit is seeking unspecified monetary damages for sexual battery, sex trafficking, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Brad Edwards, a lawyer for the accuser, said in an email to CNBC, “This is an important lawsuit filed by a courageous young woman who we are honored to represent.”
“We hope that her bravery will encourage others to feel safe in coming forward,” said Edwards, whose co-counsels in the case are David Boies and Sigrid McCawley.
Their suit comes a year after the same lawyers obtained a $290 million settlement from banking giant JPMorgan Chase on behalf of Epstein victims who accused the bank of benefiting from and facilitating Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation.
Edwards told CNBC that his Jane Doe 11 was one of the women who received a monetary settlement from a compensation fund set up in the U.S. Virgin Islands for victims of Epstein.
The lawsuit notes that before it was filed, Jane Doe 11 and Jarecki entered into a so-called tolling agreement that allowed her to file the complaint under the New York Adult Survivor’s Act despite the expiration of that law last November. The law allowed, for a limited window open from Nov. 24, 2023, to Nov. 24, 2024, people to file civil actions alleging sexual misconduct that would otherwise be barred under the statute of limitations.
An adjunct professor at the Yale School of Medicine, Jarecki was awarded the Pardes Humanitarian Prize in Mental Health by the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation in November of last year. He is the co-author of the textbook “Modern Psychiatric Treatment.”
In the 1980s, Jarecki was dubbed “the dean of the American gold market” by The New York Times, for his role as chairman of Mocatta Metals Corp.
In 1999, he and his son, Andrew Jarecki, a documentary filmmaker who made “Capturing the Friedmans, sold their online ticket website Moviefone to AOL for nearly $390 million in stock.
Epstein, 66, killed himself in a New York federal jail in August 2019 after being arrested a month earlier on child sex trafficking charges.
Epstein had many high-profile and wealthy friends over the years, including Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew of Britain.
E. Jean Carroll, a writer who had alleged that Trump raped her in the 1990s in a Manhattan department, sued the former Republican president under New York’s Adult Survivor’s Act in late 2022.
A Manhattan federal court jury in May 2023 found Trump liable in that suit for sexually abusing Carroll in the department store attack and defaming her in 2022 when he denied her claim, and ordered him to pay her $5 million in damages.
Trump is appealing that verdict, along with a separate civil jury’s verdict in the same court that in January ordered him to pay Carroll $83.3 million for defaming her statements he made while president after she first made her rape claim.
