By Famed psychiatrist and former commodities trader Henry Jarecki on Wednesday said he had a “consensual, non-secretive and mutually respectful relationship” with a victim of Jeffrey Epstein who is now suing Jarecki for allegedly raping and sex trafficking her.
Jarecki, 91, said the consensual relationship with the woman occurred more than a decade ago.
His accuser was one of a group of women who received compensation from a fund set up for victims of the convicted sex offender Epstein, her attorney told CNBC.
Jarecki’s statement, sent to CNBC by his lawyer Sarita Kedia, came two days after the Epstein victim, identified as Jane Doe 11, filed a civil lawsuit against the married psychiatrist in Manhattan federal court.
That complaint accuses Jarecki of “coercing her into being his modern-day sex slave” after the wealthy money manager Epstein sent her to his “close” friend Jarecki to treat her for depression she says was as a result of Epstein’s sexual abuse.
The suit alleges that Jarecki was Epstein’s “go-to doctor” for his sexual abuse victims. And it says Jarecki, then around 80 years old, raped the accuser during her first visit with him.
In his statement Wednesday responding to the suit, Jarecki said, “False accusations have been made against me by lawyers seeking money on behalf of a woman with whom I had a consensual, non-secretive, and mutually respectful relationship over a decade ago, when she was a successful professional in her late 20s.”
“I have never engaged in any abusive conduct with her or anyone else,” Jarecki said. “I will contest these demonstrably untrue claims in the appropriate forum.”
Brad Edwards, a lawyer for the accuser, in an email to CNBC wrote, “A ‘consensual’ relationship to describe a patient 60 years his junior, referred by Jeffrey Epstein, and known to be a sexual abuse victim, is a creative ‘defense,’ if nothing else.”
The lawsuit against Jarecki alleges he repeatedly raped the accuser starting in 2011 through December 2014, and ultimately forced her to have sex with other men while he watched.
The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages for sexual battery, sex trafficking, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Jarecki, who is an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Medicine, last year was awarded
the Pardes Humanitarian Prize in Mental Health by the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation.
He and his son Andrew Jarecki, a documentary filmmaker, in 1999 sold the online ticketing website Moviefone, which they had co-founded, to AOL for nearly $390 million in stock.
Epstein, 66, killed himself in a federal jail in Manhattan in August 2019, a month after he was arrested on federal child sex trafficking charges in New York.
Scores of women have accused Epstein of sexually abusing them at his grand townhouse on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, at his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and his residence in New Mexico.
Epstein was a former friend of Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew of Britain and other wealthy celebrities and businesspeople.
