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Testimony from a Maine native who was allegedly a victim of Jeffrey Epstein featured prominently in a ream of documents released Wednesday, including a claim that Epstein once told her that former President Bill Clinton liked “young” girls.
The 943 pages of documents were released by a federal judge’s order in a long-settled defamation case against Epstein and his longtime companion Ghislane Maxwell. Maxwell was convicted of child sex trafficking and other crimes in 2021 in connection with Epstein, a financier who faced similar charges before he died by suicide in a New York jail cell in 2019.
Taken together, the documents make few new allegations. Most of the people mentioned in them, including former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell of Maine, Clinton, former President Donald Trump and Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom, have been linked to Epstein already in court documents and media reports.
But among the eye-catching documents was a lengthy 2016 deposition of Johanna Sjoberg, a Hodgdon native who has said she was hired by Maxwell to provide massages for Epstein between 2001 and 2006. When Sjoberg was hired, she was attending college near Epstein’s home in Florida.
Lawyers asked her at that time about many of Epstein’s prominent associates, saying the financier once told her that Clinton “likes them young,” referring to girls. Sjoberg also recounted a time that Epstein wanted to go to Trump’s former casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
However, Sjoberg said she had never met nor massaged Clinton or Trump. She was also asked about a male senator from Maine whose name is redacted in the documents. She said she never recalled meeting that person, even though she said they would likely stick out in her mind.
Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, is the only prominent Mainer linked to Epstein so far. Virginia Giuffre, who alleges Epstein trafficked her for sex while she was underage, named Mitchell in documents made public in 2019 as someone she visited as part of the ring. He denied her allegations, saying he never knew of Epstein’s illicit behavior during their friendship.
In the deposition, Sjoberg also repeats claims she made to the Daily Mail, a British tabloid, in 2007 about Andrew, the son of the late Queen Elizabeth II. When she was 20 in 2001, she said she was with the 17-year-old Giuffre in Epstein’s New York mansion with the prince.
Maxwell had a puppet that caricatured Andrew, and they took a picture with Andrew putting the puppet’s hand on Giuffre’s breast and his own hand on Sjoberg’s breast. Andrew has denied the incident after past reports on it.
“It was a great joke,” Sjoberg said in 2007. “Everybody laughed.”
In that interview, Sjoberg said she was from a church-going family and hoped to be a family therapist when Maxwell recruited her to answer phones and serve drinks at Epstein’s home. But she said she was quickly offered an opportunity to make more money giving massages.
Sjoberg testified in 2016 that she was naked for many of the massages, and that she had intercourse with Epstein at times. She also said that she believed what Giuffre said about being abused by Epstein and Maxwell because of her own experiences.
“I was groomed for it,” she told the Daily Mail in 2007. “I made a pact with the devil in exchange for excitement and glamour. I was only a college student. I was hard-up and foolish.”
Sjoberg’s father, Paul, a pharmacist who still lives in Hodgdon, told The Mirror in 2019 that he hoped Epstein’s suicide would not derail justice for his daughter and other victims. At that time, he said his daughter was doing well but that he had not spoken to her on the topic.
“We don’t want her dwelling on it by having us talk to her about this,” he said then.
