Soft White Underbelly: w/ Jeffrey Epstein Survivor-Marina Lacerda (Transcript)

Back then, teachers didn’t do anything. Teachers were like, “It’ll go by, you’re going to survive.” There was none of that bullying awareness. People normalized it in a way — even growing up, we were bullied and your parents were like, “You’ll be fine.” Now it’s a big deal.

Making this friend that I did, she protected me a lot. I never had a fight in school, and it’s sad to say she did fight a lot for me. A lot of the girls wanted to fight me. I think it was maybe my skin color, or maybe they were jealous. I was just quiet and I felt intimidated by these girls. I don’t know why till today. I do talk to some of them on Instagram. Sometimes I want to ask them, “Why did you make fun of me?” But I don’t ask them any of that. I think life goes on.

A Troubled Friendship and Early Exposure

MARK LAITA: What kind of people were you hanging out with at that point in your life?

MARINA LACERDA: In high school?

MARK LAITA: Yeah.

MARINA LACERDA: When I was in high school, I had this friend — and I have to tell you, she definitely was not a good friend. She was already doing cocaine at the time. I remember when I started ninth grade, she would do coke in the bathroom and she would put it in her lip gloss and she would say, “Come on, try it.” And I was like, “No, no, no.” I was already smoking weed and she really wanted me to try cocaine. And I was like, “I am not trying cocaine.”

It is funny because she used to literally be in the bathroom sniffing cocaine. One time we were walking in Astoria on Steinway Street, and it so happened that she found a huge pack of coke on the floor. Crazy, right? She stepped right on it and she was like, “Bingo.” It was a lot of cocaine, and she managed to finish that in two days.

So that girl is actually the girl that introduced me to Jeffrey Epstein. And before that, she had some connections with other men that would ask her for things and she would bring me along. For instance, she had this guy who would ask us to put on a strap and him, and he would give us $500 to go to his house. I don’t know how she had all these connections, but she always had connections and she always brought me along.

I don’t know if she knew what she was doing. But being in a spot where I was very vulnerable and I was taking care of my mom and my sister at the time, I was willing to do anything, really, to take care of that household. And it’s something that I say now — God forbid anything ever happens to me and I can’t pay for stuff. I think I’d probably sell my ass just for my daughter not to go through what I went through. I would literally do anything that I have to to keep my daughter safe and not have her be responsible for anything. That’s just what we’re supposed to do.

MARK LAITA: What age did that kind of behavior with this friend start?

MARINA LACERDA: I can’t remember exactly what age, but I’m really thinking the end of eighth grade. So I was still 13 at the time, possibly turning 14. This happened a lot.

MARK LAITA: And you were involved in some of that kind of stuff?

MARINA LACERDA: Yeah, I was involved. I can’t remember it all, but I do remember this guy. We used to go to his house. He was an older man, he was bald. He did a lot of coke, and he liked for us to put a strap on and come from behind, which was really disgusting. And then at times he would ask us to make out and do stuff with each other.

Being young and having — I already had experience being with girls, so it meant nothing to me. Today, if you ask me, “Do you like women?” — I think women are beautiful, I think they are attractive. Do they turn me on sexually? Absolutely not. I absolutely know that I do love men now. I think all women go through that at a certain age.

Introduction to Jeffrey Epstein

MARK LAITA: So she introduced you to Jeffrey Epstein?

MARINA LACERDA: She introduced me to Jeffrey Epstein. However, everybody already knew in my neighborhood that I had gotten abused by my stepfather from the ages of 8 to 12. When I arrived to America, my mom — I stayed in Brazil for a year before my mom took me to New York. When I came to New York, my mom had this boyfriend.

Childhood Abuse Begins

MARINA LACERDA: And I didn’t know until I got to New York. And my uncle was the one that brought me to New York to be with my mom. And my mom didn’t know about this boyfriend either.

When it was time for, well, I was supposed to go back with my uncle, and my mom lied to my father who had said to me, who had written, you know, who had signed and said that I could travel, but I was supposed to come back. So when it was time for me to come back, my mom fought with my uncle and was like, “She’s not going back.” They got into a physical fight, and he was very upset that he wasn’t bringing me back to Brazil. And I didn’t know why at the time, because I wanted to be with my mom. And I was like, why is he trying to take me back?

I ended up staying in New York. We had a little studio on Steinway Street on top of Kings Deli. Whoever’s from Astoria will definitely know because Kings Deli is still there.

And my mom used to work in the afternoons through night. And my stepfather was working from — he had a weird schedule because he was one of those cab drivers that was illegal. So he would just pick up people. It was already his second time crossing the border. So he was definitely very much illegal in the United States. And he would pick up people from the airport. I feel like people still do that. They kind of just ask if you want to get picked up. He was an illegal cab driver, so he had a pretty weird schedule.

Now my mom had a set schedule and she was not home from the afternoon until she would come home maybe 2, 3 in the morning. I was staying home by myself after school. And at one point I just started to go to school by myself because my mom didn’t have time. My mom didn’t want to wake up, she was coming home late. So I would make my own breakfast, I would bring my own lunch. After school I would fetch for my own dinner. My mom would just leave things out and I would have to figure things out for myself.

And my stepfather was coming home and I don’t remember when it started, but he started to put on porn on the TV and he would lay me down on his lap. I would have my head on his lap and he would cover it with a blanket. And I was 8 years old and I was very, you know, interested in what was under this blanket. And I was curious. Everybody’s curious as adults. We’re curious, right? So I would peek under the blanket and I would see these things on TV that I was not aware of. But I think in my mind at the time it was like, wow, they’re like feeling good, like something good is happening. Well, my stepfather started to reenact those things with me.

MARK LAITA: And what age is this?

MARINA LACERDA: Eight years old.

MARK LAITA: Eight.

The Abuse Continues

MARINA LACERDA: And it’s really sad to say this, and I always like to be transparent. It felt good, right? I feel like any of us, even if we’re not attracted to the person, if they know what they’re doing, you’re going to feel good. As an 8 year old, I did not know what was happening to me. All I know is that I was feeling good, this might be good. And I let it happen and I let it go on. I did not think it was anything bad.

My mom got pregnant with my sister. She had my sister. We moved into a bigger apartment. We moved into a four bedroom and out of those four bedrooms it was two living rooms. But we made it into four bedroom, two bedrooms. Got rented out. Two bedrooms was. One bedroom was me and that other bedroom, my sister was still in the crib. And my stepfather and my mom slept in that bedroom. So he would come in the middle of the night. He would do all kinds of things to me. He would, you know, play with my. He would kiss me. He would do a lot of things that. He would go. He would do a lot of things that felt really good.

I think at the time, I didn’t know I was climaxing, right? And then I started to venture off into being everything in the house, which is weird, right? Because I feel like when you’re growing up, I think everybody was hopping everything in their house. And I was just like, wow, this. This feels great. And then I started to realize that I was close. I was like, this is what climaxing is. It’s really good.

And my sister was one day in the crib, and my stepfather was playing with me in the bed. He was, like, rolling me around, but kind of, like helping me at the same time or touching me. I can’t remember exactly. And my mom opens up the door, and he threw me off the floor. I, like, threw me off the bed. I went flying off the bed. And I was like, what the. Like, what just happened? You know, so confused. Like, I thought it was okay.

And my mom is like, “What the f* is going on here?” And she asked me to go into my room. She took him on the side, and she was like, you know, screaming at him. I couldn’t really understand what was going on because I was in my bedroom, and I’m like, what just happened? You know? And they fought. They fought.

And she comes in the room and she’s like, “Listen, I just want to tell you that whatever’s been going on, you cannot let a man do that to you. That is not okay. You know, I know what’s been happening.” Didn’t ask me, like, what was happening. You know, I just thought that my stepfather honestly told her all the things, and she immediately just assumed that there was only sexual abuse. But by that point, he already had me. And she never asked me.

And, you know, just to think that at 10 years old, I was no longer, you know, like, I wasn’t a virgin anymore, you know, when she walked in on us, I was about 10 and a half. So at 10 and a half, 10 years old, when she explained all this to me that it was wrong, I wanted to tell her, but he has put something inside me, you know, which was his dick, you know, and she never asked me, and until today, she’s never asked me.

And my mom moved on with that and said to me, “That’ll never happen, I can promise you that.” And I realized by then that that was wrong, that an older man should not touch me and should not be doing these things to me. But he still continued to do it. And it just became a cycle. It became such a bad cycle that he would do it. I would tell her, he would stop for like two weeks, then he would do it again.

And it just went on to the point where if I would tell my mom, then he started to physically abuse me. He started to kick me down the stairs, he started to punch me, he started to do all these things. And the worst part is my mom knowing all of this still. She would leave the house, go to the supermarket, go do whatever the f* she was doing. And she would leave me in the house.

And at that point I was getting aggravated. And I would sit by the window and I would just pray that this man would not come and touch me or do anything. And he still would. And he would hold me down and he would do things to me. When I used to tell him, “Please stop, please leave me alone. I just want to be left alone.” And I don’t know if he felt even better that he was doing something that I didn’t want him to do.

And it got so bad where my friends would come over, he would abuse them, he would like play around. He would come in and play with us and would touch them in a certain area, would pick them up on their private area and my friends would go tell their parents. And then now I no longer had friends around. Boys weren’t allowed to call me because my stepfather was obviously jealous of me and my mom thought it was right. Like an 11 year old should not have boys calling her.

I have a daughter and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with girls having friends as a boy. I think you should teach your kids, you know, boundaries and limits. So I really didn’t have that, that freedom, but that life that a 10, a 9, 11 year old should have.

Begging for Help

Got to the point where my mom would take me outside and I would just ask her, I’m like, “Why the f* are we still living here? Why can’t we just move? Why can’t you? Why? Like why, why, why, why?” “Oh, well, you know, you have to understand, we’re from Brazil, we don’t have our papers. We are undocumented here. I’m scared to go to the police. I’m scared they’ll deport us.” And I’m like, I really don’t care at this point. I just want to go back to Brazil.

And I remember when I was talking to my mom when we were walking outside, she was like, “Shh, shh. Stop screaming, stop screaming.” I’m like, “No, I don’t give a f*. I am going to scream.” I was just like 11 years old, you know, and just begging my mom to really please go to the police. Like, I don’t want to live this life.

You know, I remember one time we. I had told my mom, one of the many times I had told my mom my stepfather was starting to again abuse me. And she went up to him and spoke to him and they got into a fight. And that night they happened to not sleep in the same bed. So we went to the living room and she had like a little couch bed and she had a mattress for me on the floor. My stepfather came in in the middle of the night, laid with my mom, was whispering to her, and then started touching her and then had sex with her while I was on the bottom on the mattress.

And I said something to my mom, like I wanted to tell her I was up or something, like, just for her, because I started to hear her moan and she hit me because I was trying to tell her, like, I don’t want to be here. This is what the f* is going on. You know, I was just 11 years old and I don’t understand. I don’t understand till today. How can she think that was normal?

You know, there were many times I was sleeping at night and he would come in the middle of the night in my room, and my mom knowing this, having this man still in the house. And he would come, he would touch me and I would just be frozen there, like staring at the ceiling or at the wall, waiting for him to finish doing what he was doing.

The Impact of Abuse

I think my stepfather’s abuse was one of the worst abuse that I’ve had. And I think that’s why I wasn’t a normal teenager. I think that’s why I normalize sex in such a young age. You know, like, I started to. I had sex for the first time with a boy at 12 years old, which is insane. You know, it’s my daughter’s age. I could never imagine that. That’s something that. I obviously talk to her about it, but it’s always up to her. What? You know, it’s not up to her. I can’t stop her. You know, it’s not something that I can control. I can only guide her.

But at 12 years old, I had my first sexual encounter with another 12 year old boy. And we did not use condoms. And after that, I think my sex life was just open to the world. I was craving attention where I wasn’t getting at home from my mom, and I was getting too much attention from my stepfather, which I did not want. And I wanted to feel secure. I wanted to feel wanted. I wanted to feel that I was just more than an object that my stepfather was using. And I thought I could use that with these boys. And I thought they were going to like me or love me. And that didn’t work out so great for me because I ended up just hooking up with whatever boy I wanted, right?

Going to the Police

And my mom would let me do whatever I wanted. Well, when we had rented out these other two rooms, there was a roommate who got abused by my stepfather. And she came up to me and she was like, I was in Burger King after school. At that point, I was running away from home. I was going after school. I was doing ballet, jazz tap. After school, I would go to my best friend’s house, which was around the corner. I would beg her for me not to go home and sleep in the house. Her parents felt so bad for me.

And it goes back to me saying, all these people knew all these things, but yet they never told the police. Never. My neighbor downstairs, my best friend’s family, the girls that were coming to my house, their parents.

And she comes up to me in Burger King, and she goes, “Marina, I want to talk to you.” I was 12 years old at the time. And she said, “I know what your stepfather is doing to you, and he’s actually doing it to me, too. And I think we should go to the police.” And I literally didn’t think about the consequences. And I said, “Let’s go.”

And we drove to the 114 precinct, which is in Astoria Boulevard. And when I got there, I was like, wow, okay, here I am. Don’t care if I’m an immigrant. Don’t care. I just want this to stop. And I ended up telling the police some of the things that my stepfather was doing.

But they started to question me in a way where they thought I was lying because my sister was born. So they said that I was jealous of my sister. And then they started to say, “Hey, listen, you know that when you say all of this, if you’re making this up, these are serious allegations. Your stepfather is going to go away for a really long time.” So they started to scare me. Now I’m starting to feel bad for my stepfather, which I had always sat there in the middle of the night and was plotting of ways how to kill this man because I just wanted to kill him. But obviously I never had the courage to do it.

And I think the only thing that I did that I thought would piss. Would get him and my mom to fight is I would steal money from him while he was sleeping. And they would fight about it because he would think my mom was taking the money. But all reality was me and I would just, you know, sat there and said everything to the police. And they questioned me so hard that I started to minimize the abuse. I was like, “Well, he’s only done it for two years. Well, he only touched me here.” I started to get scared.

My mom comes in finally, and her first question to me was, “What did you tell the police? And why did you come here?” And I was like, “Well, so and so asked me. She’s getting abused by my stepfather. And this is what I told them.” I did not tell the police that my mom knew because I knew that they would have taken my mom away from me. I would have been taken away from my mom.

And she was like, “Okay, all right.” So the police comes in. She’s like, “You know, your daughter said this and this and that.” And she’s like, “Yep, yep, yep. It’s true, it’s true.” So we sat there for a little bit longer. They’re like, “We’re going to go get your stepfather. We’re going to go put him in jail.” And they did.

We came back home, all his stuff was thrown on the floor. And right after that, my mom’s relationship and I just went right downhill. She was in tears. She was so upset that he wasn’t there, and she didn’t speak to me for a little while.

Meeting Jeffrey Epstein

And that’s when my world started to go upside down with this girl that I met. She started to lead me this way with meeting these men that were going to give me money if I did things for them. And in my head, I was like, well, if I can make money more than what I’m making. I was working in a real estate office. I would only work it after school. I was just a secretary. And it’s actually still there. It’s Capital Real Estate. It’s on Broadway. And I would just work there, and I would make a little bit of money, and it wasn’t enough for the house. My mom was not really working. She started to later work in a catering hall, which I started to work with her.

But that’s how I met Jeffrey. This girl would introduce me to different men that would like young girls to do things with them. And when she said to me, “You know, I have this guy that is, you know, a little bit different than the guys that I’ve introduced to you. And this guy is very well connected, he’s very rich, he’s very powerful, and he likes to get massages by young girls.”

And I had questioned her, I was like, “We’ve done other stuff. So I’m very confused, you know, that this guy just likes to get massages.” And she said to me, “Well, he just wants to get a massage by a young girl. He doesn’t. He doesn’t want anything. He just wants you to take your top off. It’s just like being in a bikini, you know, you’ve been with your stepfather. We’ve done some other things.”

I said, “We’ve done some other things. But however, I had not, you know, let another man for any money.” So I really wanted to clarify things. I’ve done things to men, but they haven’t done to me, you know, and if we had done things, it was her and I. So I was like, “Okay, well, that doesn’t seem so bad.” And she’s like, “And girl, he’s going to give you $300 for the half an hour.” And I was like, “Okay.”

So we went there and coming, you know, riding in the cab, first of all, going into Manhattan was already a privilege because coming from Astoria, getting in a cab was already a privilege as well, because we used to take the subway and the train everywhere. So when we get into the cab, it was a black cab.

And when we get to the front door right there and then was very different than what other, you know, other people’s houses that we’ve been. That have asked us to do things. It was a very different dynamic, right? So I walk in. I don’t even think that it’s a mansion. I think it looks like an apartment, like a place where it looks like it has many apartments.

And I see the gate in the front. I see the wooden doors, huge doors. She rings the doorbell. She says who she is. You know, the maid opens up the door. I see a maid in the front. I look just the opening of the house. These huge ceilings. I mean, there’s marble floors. I’m just like, “Whoa, where the f* am I?” Like, she was definitely right.

We walk into his office, which is also his waiting room, where we have, you know, President Trump, we have Bill Clinton, we have many, you know, different princes at the time, which I didn’t know who it was until now. I look at the pictures, I’m like, “Oh, that’s who that was.”

First Meeting with Jeffrey Epstein

MARK LAITA: Photographs of them?

MARINA LACERDA: Yeah, a lot of pictures. And he had pictures with Ghislaine, who later on, I was like, I wonder if that’s his wife. You know, he always had a picture, too, with a certain girl. I would say she was about 8, 9 years old. And we later questioned Jeffrey if he had a family. He said no, but he had a lot of pictures with this eight, nine year old. And we always wondered who it was. We just thought it was his niece. We just thought it was somebody in his family. Till today, we don’t know who it is.

And I sat there and I was so intimidated about being in this house, right? I’ve never been in, like a rich person’s house, you know, a mansion. I’m sitting there and I’m like, whispering to my friend the whole time. She’s like, “Why are you whispering?” I’m like, “I don’t even know how to act. Like, I don’t even know what to say at this point.” And she’s like, “You can just talk normally. Like, this is like a normal setting.” Like I said, it’s not a normal setting.

So the maid comes back, she gets us, she brings us to the elevator. I’m already even more amazed. I’m like, this man has an elevator in his house. Like, what the right? We get an elevator. She hits the third floor. Third floor doors open. There’s a hallway where he has all these sketches with, like, naked women and their bodies, and some of them, their faces weren’t finished. And we walk into the massage room.

And when I walked into the massage room, the first thing that caught my eye was his ceiling. He had these clouds. It’s like a fake sky. And I was like, “Oh, my God.” I’m like, “This is like the best way to get a massage, like, to feel like you’re just in heaven.” And he had this, you know, huge bureau with, like, all these lotions. At the time, Victoria’s Secret was like, definitely the thing. I was very obsessed with Victoria’s Secret, did not have the money for Victoria’s Secret lotions. It was like $30 a lotion. And I was just like, going in there, like, smelling everything. And I was like, “Wow.”

And obviously there were other expensive creams that I did not know the name at the time, from Paris, from Italy, which were probably more expensive than the Victoria’s Secret. And in the middle, there was his massage table. And then there was a little table where he had his personal oil that he used. He never used any of those lotions. He had his own oil. And he always had a towel next to this table.

And in the where the windows were, he had blocked off the windows, and he put out these heavy curtains. And obviously later on, I peeked behind the curtain and there’s just a wall. But then I later realized that there were windows on the outside and he had blocked them.

So he walks into the room, and he turns around and he says, “Hi, my name is Jeffrey.” And I said, “Hi, my name is Marina.” He goes, “I’ve heard some pretty cool things about you.” And I looked at her like, you’ve already, like, told this guy that I’m, like, in need of help. Like, I’m going through st in the house, you know.

MARK LAITA: How old are you now?

The First Encounter with Epstein

MARINA LACERDA: I was 14. And he laid down. He put his chest down. You know, we started massaging him. We took off our. Everything was fine. He asked me about my life. He asked how old I was. I did not tell him about my stepfather. I was very embarrassed by that. But I did tell him the struggles that I was going through. I told him that I was a ballerina and, you know, I wanted to make it in America, and I was willing to do anything just to be that person that came from Brazil as an immigrant and made it big and was able to just buy a house for my mom and my sister, for them to live in and never have to worry about. I told them a lot about myself.

And he seemed interested. At the time, I thought, this guy is going to help me. Like, he has a lot of power, and he has the money for it. And he got on a phone call, which Jeffrey did a lot. He called a lot of people in front of us. He called a lot of prominent people. He called a lot of celebrities. And he would put us on the phone, and that was later on, obviously. He would put us on the phone with these people, and he would brag about how he’s getting a massage by a young girl. And people would say hi to us. Celebrities would say hi to us. And we’d feel like, oh, my God, we’re important.

And he was on the phone, he had a business talk, and I didn’t hear it. I wasn’t paying attention. And then he turned around, and when he turned around, the towel came off, and his was exposed. And I was like, this is a little weird. Because me and her have a very clear communication. And this is not what. It was part of what was going to happen.

And he turned around, he was laying down. And I never, ever can forget Jeffrey. He was laying down and he just put his head up. And you know when someone is like. When they want to carry, like, they’re trying so hard to do something. It was like he leaned in and he goes, “Can you take off your—” And I was like. I looked at her and I was like, no. And then he came in to reach for my boobs, and I put his hand down. I was like, I’m not comfortable now.

Frozen in Shock

This put me in a position where I did not know what was happening. Usually she has given. We have met men where they have asked for specific things where I’m not okay with it. And I was clear with her about it. Like, the guy that liked to. He never touched me. He never did anything to me. I was basically him. It wasn’t him, me. He was not touching me. He did not like any of that. So most of the things that I did, I did not want men to touch me. I did not want to be touched. I just wanted to do things to them.

And I think that came in a lot with mistreating men. A lot of men like that. And if that was the deal, I was willing to do it because I think I had such big resentment on men because of my stepfather that I was willing to hurt men.

And I told them I was uncomfortable. And she looked at me very confused, like, “What the f*? Why not?” And I just froze because now I feel like I’m in a position where this man can take advantage of me, just like my stepfather did. And I did not want that. And I had really nowhere to go. I was on the third floor of a mansion that I’ve never been before.

And he said to me, “It’s okay. It’ll take some time, but you will get comfortable with me.” And I didn’t think anything of it. I really thought, no, you’re not. Because I’ve been abused before, and my stepfather has done all these things, and you’re definitely not going to do it. I wanted to turn around to him. However, if you want me to beat the shit out of you, I can. But that was not the case.

So she comes around and she moves me out the way. She’s like, kind of like, you know, she’s like, you’re being such a prude. But she said it in Portuguese. And she goes in and Jeffrey Epstein already had his neck up from laying down. And he goes and he spits on his hand and he grabs. At this point, she had taken off her. She is. I like, when I tell you, pinching his nipples as hard as she can. I was just in total shock because I thought I had seen it all by 14 years old. And I was like, this is brand new.

And he was. He had his head up and he just kept. But so aggressively, like, it was like, hard for him to. It was like, so hard. It was like he’s. He was like, please. You could tell in his face. And I was just standing there, and he would look at me, and I guess he was kind of to me. And I was just standing there with my arms down in complete shock because I was not expecting this.

And he used to make the weirdest noise ever. Like, it was like he was trying so hard, and then it was like finally. I feel like when men have that time to masturbate, they know what they want and they’re going to go for it. It usually doesn’t take more than five minutes. It looked like he was struggling, and he finished. He grabbed the white towel that he had. He wiped it off. And I was just in shock. And I put my shirt back on. She put her clothes back on. We left there.

The Aftermath — Pressure and Guilt

She was very angry with me. And she was like, “What the f*? Why didn’t you just do what he asked?” I was like, because you didn’t tell me this. If you would have told me, I would have came in with a different mindset. And you and I both know that I am not okay with men touching me. That’s just not in the cards.

She’s like, “Marina, you’ve been through way worse with your stepfather. Like, this should be easy peasy for you. You’re making $300. You and your mom are going through shit right now. You guys can hardly pay rent.”

And I was like, I understand. But you still didn’t tell me what was going to happen. She gave me the $300. She’s like, “You should be thankful I brought you here because a lot of the girls that I know would love to meet Jeffrey Epstein. And you should be thankful I hooked you up with him, and he’s going to want to see you again, and you’re going to go back to him.”

And I said, I’m not. I’m not going to let a man abuse me the way my stepfather did. I said, and you, out of all people, you know how I feel about this. You know what my limits are. And this is my limit. Like, I do not let men touch me.

And she was like, “You’ll see. You’re not going to meet anybody in Astoria. You said you wanted to make it. This is the guy that’s going to make it for you. He’s the guy that’s going to help you out. He’s going to introduce you to people.”

And I left there. We talked a lot. And next thing you know, my mom is bashing on me and telling me that I will never become anything, that I’ll just be a better version of her in America and that she wasted her time bringing me to America and that things are like this because I went to the cops because of my stepfather. And why didn’t I just leave it alone? Constantly, constantly just bashing me about me going to the police with my stepfather.

And I felt guilty. I felt like it was my fault that my mom and my sister weren’t having a good life because of me. We had rented out all the rooms. We were living in one bedroom. We had no money to eat. We were eating cups of noodles, whatever it’s called. I think it was 50 cents at the time. We really were broke. Like, we had no money. We were paying rent late. I was working two jobs. I was working at the catering with her when there were weddings and at the real estate. And I really was vulnerable.

And I was like, well, I guess I’m going to have to do what I’m going to have to do because I need to survive. I need to take care of what I did here because I f*ed up by going to the police. And now I have to reconstruct my mom’s relationship, our relationship together. And I really thought that if I would go and just make the money and pay the bills, that things would go back to normal with my mom and I.

Going Back — The Manipulation Deepens

And I did go back. I went back and he was very nice. He didn’t right away ask me to do things. He gained my confidence. He manipulated me. And day by day, as it went on, it was like, “Take off your. Take off your. And now we’re going to try a toy. And now it’s going to be a finger. And now I’m going to. Now you play with my nipples and you squeeze them as hard as you can. And now we’re going to use this oil and now I bought this for you.”

It was like, every time I went there, it was something new. And every time I went there, I was like, okay, well, today is going to be the day where he’s going to tell me that I can go work for him in his office, or I can even be his cleaning lady and help out. I just wanted to do anything but that. And I was willing to continue going there to make the money because I was seeing him two, three times a week, and obviously he never offered it to me.

The only other thing that he did ask was, “Do you have any friends?” And I told him, I said, “Jeffrey, I’m really embarrassed about seeing you. Like, I don’t want any of my friends to know.” And he was like, “Marina, I’m the type of guy that always needs something different and something new in their life. And if you want to continue seeing me and being a part of my world, this is just how it goes. You got to bring me someone.”

My Stepfather Returns — A New Roommate

And I went back, and at that time, I must have been almost 15 already. My stepfather had came back home. My mom decided to move him back in. He got out of jail seven months later, and he had probation. And my mom was like, “Your stepfather’s moving back in.”

I was like, “What the f?” I had a boyfriend at the time. And I told my boyfriend, “Hey, you’re not going to believe it, my stepfather’s moving back in.” And he was like, “Are you fing kidding me?” And I’m like, no, I’m not. She’s really bringing him back in the house. And he was like, “Well, you know what? We’re going to get an apartment.” I was like, how are we going to get an apartment? He’s like, “My mom is going to put it under her name.”

And he started to sell drugs. And at the time I started to work, if I’m not mistaken, it was a Greek nightclub. I was selling flowers. He didn’t know I was going to Jeffrey’s. And he was like, “Well, just. We’re going to make it, me and you.” He’s like, “You’re going to move back.” This kid did not need to sell drugs and move out of his house. He had a great family. He really did.

And we lived in that apartment. And I met this girl on the block. She was crushing weed. And my dog went up to her, and she joked around. She was like, “Oh, your dog seems to like what I like.” And we started to talk and we would talk all the time. And she started to tell me about what was going on in her life and how she was getting abused at home and her mom had passed away and her brother was being very abusive and his girlfriend wanted to kick her out. And next thing you know, she’s living with me and my boyfriend.

Introducing a Friend to Epstein

And that was the first person that I told about Jeffrey Epstein. I said, “Hey, I have something to tell you. And I don’t know if you’re going to want to come with me the next time I go, but I just want to tell you about—” and I broke everything down to her. And I was very honest with her because I did not want her to walk into something like I did.

And when she heard about it, she was like, “Yeah, I want to go. Like, I don’t want to live with you and your boyfriend forever. I want to venture off and go and get my own apartment.”

Well, let me tell you, I think that introducing Jeffrey Epstein to this girl only made it worse because then he made us his. The girls that would go out and get girls for him because that’s all he wanted. And it got to a point where he didn’t like some of the girls that we brought him. So he would ask beforehand, “What does she look like? How old is she? Where is she from? What’s her body type?” Because he wasn’t going to waste his time seeing girls that he did not like.

Because we had brought him a couple girls and he would automatically get mad at us, like, “Why are you bringing me this girl? She looks like she’s f*ing 23 years old. Why are you bringing me a black girl? I don’t like Amazonian looking girls.” And we were like, whoa, shit. Like, we don’t know the specifics here. We just thought that you wanted us to bring girls.

Repressed Memories — The Truth Surfaces

And I think our friendship really died because Jeffrey Epstein started to put us against one another. And it got to the point where I had forgotten this. And in my 2019 deposition, I never had said that Jeffrey Epstein raped me.

When I went to Virginia Giuffre’s memorial, I had seen all these women and met all these girls and they were talking about how Jeffrey Epstein had raped them. And I was very confused. I was like, wow, what the f*? Like, I can’t believe Jeffrey did all this. Because in my head all there was was memories of him using toys and all this. And I didn’t remember that he had me.

But I came back home and I called Jane Doe and I said, “Girl, you’re not even going to believe it. Like, Jeffrey Epstein, all these girls. I just don’t know why he didn’t do that to us.” And she was in complete silence. And she turned around and she was like, “Are you okay?”

And I was like, yeah, I’m okay. I’m just sharing with you this experience that the girls went through, which I find it really, really crazy.

And she was like, “No, Marina, not only were you rude, but Jeffrey Epstein used to line us up in the room, three or four of us, and he used to pick you up and put you on top of him. And you guys would be doing all these things.”

And I’m like, what things?

She’s like, “I don’t want to get really into detail. Because I’m scared that it’s going to trigger you in a way. But he used to tell us, like, ‘This is what you’re supposed to be doing. This is what a good girl does. This is how you get me happy. Whatever Marina’s doing, you girls need to start doing.'” And that kind of put everybody against me right there and then.

The Assault with Ghislaine Maxwell

MARK LAITA: you don’t even remember doing it.

MARINA LACERDA: I did not remember it until a year and a half ago. My 2019 deposition does not say that Jeffrey Epstein raped me. It also does not say that I had an encounter with Ghislaine. Because when I had an encounter with Ghislaine, when her and Jeffrey Epstein raped me and another girl…

He had asked me. He never. He liked this girl very much. This Brazilian girl who was 18 at the time. She was a model, and she never wanted to go there alone. She always wanted me there. And when I went there, Jeffrey Epstein did not want me in the room. So he would let me venture off to his house. So I would be in his kitchen, I’d be in his piano room, I’d be in his library. I would just try to figure out the house on my own because now I’m curious, right?

And one day he says to me, “No, Marina, stay. I want you to stay with us today.” And I thought it was weird. And I was like, okay. And I stayed in the room. And he goes, “We’re going to go into my bedroom.” Which he never did. He never asked us to go into his bedroom.

Only when he showered, he would walk around, and we would walk around after him, and he would talk about, like, “Hey, did you meet any friends?” Like, that was his main interest. That was his main goal. And in his bathroom, he had, like, torsos, like, bodies of, like, the top of the torso, like, fake boobs. And then he would have, like, the bottom torso. He would have it everywhere in the bathroom. And I would, like, walk in and be like, “What the f* is he doing? Like, does he not have enough of me and my friends?”

Thinking, okay, up until I met other victims, because I did not follow through with the Jeffrey Epstein case, thinking that me and my friends were the only ones going to Jeffrey Epstein. I did not know there was a whole pyramid going on. Had no idea.

Okay, so we go into his bedroom. I’ll never forget. He had white sheets, white pillows, comfortable bed. I was like, “Wow, this is like heaven,” right? Coming from where I was struggling and not having the most comfortable bed. And Ghislaine walks in and he says, “A friend will be joining us today,” and never introduced us to who this girl was, who this woman was. And she came in, and we all went to town with each other. Details I cannot remember. They both raped me and this girl.

MARK LAITA: You, and the model, and Jeffrey and Ghislaine.

MARINA LACERDA: Yep. And I can’t remember detail for details, but I always want to reach out to this Jane Doe, but she’s super traumatized about this. She has never spoken about Jeffrey Epstein. It does not even exist in her world. And she’s scared that her husband will leave her because of this. So I respect her, but I always want to call her and be like, “What are the details that happened in that bedroom? I know that we got raped, but what else happened?” And every time I even bring it up to her, she’s like, “I don’t want to talk.” She has a son who doesn’t have much time living. And I respect that. I respect that she wants to be private about this.

So I only got to know that it was Ghislaine in 2020 when I seen her in the news. When the FBI came to me in 2008, I never went to search who Jeffrey Epstein was. Even when the FBI came again to me in 2019, I never went on Google to see who Jeffrey Epstein was. It was just not something that I wanted to know, if that makes sense.

Breaking Away from Epstein

MARK LAITA: This went on for how long?

MARINA LACERDA: So I was seeing Jeffrey Epstein until I was 17 years old, and I started working in a coffee shop. At the time I got out of the train station, and I was walking home, and there was a coffee shop. The name of the coffee shop is Flo. And it said, “Help Wanted.” So I was like, let me go inside.

I don’t have a Social Security. So really, when I would get jobs, it was just word of mouth, or somebody would tell me like, “Hey, they’re looking for somebody to work.” And that’s how I really got to work in Astoria. At that point, I had already worked in a factory. I worked in many restaurants as a dessert girl, as a waitress, bus girl. I went through so many jobs. I worked for an advertising company in Manhattan. I worked for a DJ. I was doing anything that anybody would tell me, and I was able to earn money.

Walking home, I come in, I talked to, at the time, who was Chris, and I said, “Hey, I need a job. I’m willing to learn, I’m willing to work. I’ve already waitressed. I’ve been a bus girl, I’ve been a hostess.” He’s like, “Do you know how to work a POS system?” Which is like the system that now everybody uses, a computer. And I’m like, “No, I don’t know. But give me two weeks, I can learn it.” And he was like, “Done, come back tomorrow.”

So I started to work there. But I did lie about my age. I was only 17. I wasn’t allowed to serve alcohol. So I told them I was 18. They never asked me for ID. They just believed me. So I started to work there and I started to meet all these people who were working, making legit money, mature — girls were in their 20s, men in their 30s — and my maturity level was just totally different. I started to put on makeup, I started to act more like a young lady, I guess I could say, or a 17-year-old.

Drugs and Epstein’s Reaction

And I was going to Jeffrey’s and I was no longer enjoying it — as he would say, I was no more faking it. A lot of the times, I was smoking weed, right? And then at 15 or 16, my mom brought me to a therapist. They started to prescribe me Xanax. So I started to take Xanax. And the next thing you know, cocaine was introduced to me. And then it was alcohol, Xanax, and then Percocets got introduced to me. I was just doing a whole bunch of different drugs.

And when I was going to Jeffrey Epstein’s, I remember being a little bit off, not really there, because I was always messed up. And one time, me and my girlfriend took a bump in his room, in the massage room, and he wasn’t there. He came in, he did his massage, but when we came back, he came up to both of us. We were so out of it. I don’t know how we didn’t catch on. He came right to our faces and he was like, “Are you girls doing drugs?” And we’re like, “No.” He was like, “Let me tell you something. If I find out you’re fing doing drugs, you’re done. I’m going to give you a week to get yourself together, because in two weeks from now, I’m going to take a piece of your hair and I’m going to send it to the lab. And if I find out you guys are doing drugs, it’s fing done for you.”

And we were like, “How the f* does he know?” Last week, we just took a bump in his room. That’s why he knows — because he had cameras everywhere. But we were just so young. We didn’t think about it. So we really stopped doing drugs for, like, two weeks. And then we started again. We’re like, “All right, he forgot about it.”

We started to be sober and started to be present and feeling things. And I think that was Jeffrey Epstein’s whole thing. When we were on drugs, we were just like, whatever, trying to be in the mood. But when we were able not to be numb, we had to feel those things, and then we had to fake it. And I think the drugs kind of covered it. He didn’t like that. He wanted us to be present. So when girls do say, “Oh, he drugged us,” I don’t know — he didn’t like any of that with us, with the New York girls.

The End of the Arrangement

So anyway, I started working in this coffee shop, and I started to be around mature people. At that point, I was making a good amount of money. I was working at a coffee shop that had a really good daytime, had a good nighttime. It was like the place to be before you went out. They expanded, they made it into a bigger shop. It really blew up — this coffee shop in Astoria. It was like everyone was going there. If it wasn’t for a coffee, it was for a drink, it was for lunch. We got really popular.

And I was just going to Jeffrey Epstein’s, and I was not able to bring him girls that he wanted. I was meeting girls my age. I was meeting girls at 18, 19. I was not meeting girls at 13. And he had asked me, “What about your sister?” And I’m like, “Never. Absolutely not.” My sister was eight years younger than me at the time. My sister was living with me. My sister came back to America — she had gone off to Brazil — she came back to live with me at 10 years old. So I was taking care of my sister. She must have been about 11 years old at the time. And he had asked me, and I said, “I’m not bringing my sister here. You’re out of your mind.”

And he was just telling me, kind of joking, that I was boring and old now. He’s like, “You’re wearing makeup. You’re all mature on me.” And I said to him, “That’s what happens when people age. They mature, they grow, Jeffrey. That’s what happens.” He was like, “You’re no fun anymore. And you don’t bring me girls that I like anymore.”

I got to the point where I was bringing him girls that were over the age of 18, and I would lie to him and say that they were young. And he was like, “That’s enough. I’ve had enough of your s*. You keep bringing me all these old women. I need you to bring me IDs.” He wanted to make sure that they were underage. And I couldn’t do anything because I just wasn’t meeting that type of girls. And I wasn’t thinking it was appropriate for me to bring a 13 or 14-year-old when I was 17 myself. And we just disconnected. We just went our separate ways.

But then I had to call him again in 2008.

MARK LAITA: For what?

The FBI Visit

MARINA LACERDA: Because the FBI came knocking on my door. And I was still in contact with him. I was still kind of seeing him. I would bring him some girls that were the age of 18 but looked young, which was that model, which he was very much in love with.

And the FBI comes knocking on my door, and I’m like, I had no idea who it was. I open up the door, and they’re like, “Hi, we’re so and so. We’re so and so. And we’re here to ask you questions about Jeffrey Epstein.”

I was like, automatically in my head, I was like, “Oh, my God, me and my friends are going to get in trouble,” not thinking that there’s women all over the world that are involved with this man. And I was like, “I’m not going to talk to you about him.” And I went to go close the door on the woman, and she put her foot on the door, and she was like, “You’re going to talk to me whether you like it or not.” She’s like, “I’ll give you the chance to call me.” And she dropped her card on the floor, and I close the door.

There is a Jane Doe with me in the house. And I look at her, and I just, like, slide all the way down, like, what the f*. Now I’m still an immigrant in this country at 19 years. I’m sorry. It was 17. I was 18 at the time. I was 18 years old. I was still an immigrant. And I was like, what do I do? I have the FBI searching for me.

The Lawyer and the Sweetheart Deal

I call up Jeffrey’s secretary. I’m like, “I need to speak to Jeffrey. The FBI is looking for me and asking me questions about him.” And she was like, “I’ll get Jeffrey on the phone right now.” He calls me within minutes. He’s like, “Marina, what’s going on?” And I’m like, “Jeffrey, I have the FBI looking for me. Why?” He goes, “Don’t call me. Don’t call the office. A lawyer will call you.” Hangs up the phone.

And next thing you know, I have a lawyer calling me. I go to his office. My first question was, “Should I be completely honest about everything?” They’re like, “You have to be very honest about everything.” And I told them everything that I knew.

But then I started to see that they were not protecting me. So then I started to say less because I was scared that they were going to know too much about — they were going to know that I knew too much about Jeffrey Epstein’s world. And I was like, this is not the people that are going to protect me.

And they ended up really scaring me, telling me that I was going to go to jail, that what I did was very wrong, and that I should be scared and that I might have a possibility, I might have a chance, that I’ll be doing time. And I was like, “Well, that’s great.” I’m like, “How the f* am I doing time when this man is asking young girls to do massages for him and basically forcing us to bring other underage girls to him?”

And I don’t know what happened. One day they call me and they’re like, “You don’t have to ever call us again.” I had gotten subpoenaed at the time. They were like, “You don’t have to go to West Palm. You don’t have to do anything. It’s over.” And I was like, “Thank God.” Because the last thing I wanted to do was go against Jeffrey Epstein and tell them what I knew about Jeffrey Epstein when he was paying for my lawyers. But I had to be honest.

MARK LAITA: How much time passed between the FBI visit and when they told you it was done?

MARINA LACERDA: I know it was close to my birthday. I can’t remember when, because when I look at the files, I’m like, damn, man. I turned 19 years old. They had me on my birthday, going through this s. I know it was my birthday because I seen one of the days was like, June 30th, and my birthday is June 29th. I was like, what the f? I was going through this, my birthday.

And that’s when Jeffrey Epstein got the sweetheart deal. But he knew to keep me out of the stand, because if I would have went on stand, it would have started a whole other thing in New York. And he knew to take that sweetheart deal. He took that plea deal, and he knew it was the best thing, because if I would have went out to West Palm, it would have been a mess for Jeffrey Epstein.

Three Years With Epstein

MARK LAITA: But for how many years were you with him?

MARINA LACERDA: With Jeffrey Epstein?

MARK LAITA: Yeah.

MARINA LACERDA: 14 until 17. So was that three? Three years? Yep.

MARK LAITA: And visiting him two, three times a week?

MARINA LACERDA: Yeah. I mean, it slowed down when I got close to 17, because I wasn’t bringing him the type of girls that he wanted. The age that satisfied him was not — it wasn’t just what I was. I didn’t have those kind of — and I knew it was wrong. Like, at that time, I was like, I can’t bring him a 13, 14 year old. I’m f*ing 17. It’s like I had a little sister who I was protecting from my stepfather. And he just really wanted young girls. That’s all he wanted.

MARK LAITA: He had the same problem your stepfather did. He just had a lot more money.

Why She Kept Going Back

MARINA LACERDA: Yep. And I feel like with my stepfather, I got trapped into a place where I didn’t want to be. There with Jeffrey Epstein — a lot of people ask me, like, “Why did you go back? Why did you go back?” I’m like, “Have you ever been in a place where you don’t know how — you don’t have — ” I didn’t have no education. I had no papers. I had no Social Security. I needed to f*ing live.

I felt guilty that I went to the cops about my stepfather. I was willing to do anything to reconstruct my friendship and my relationship with my mom. And a lot of people don’t understand that. That’s why I said in the beginning, I’ll do anything not to put my daughter in charge of being the head of household. That’s just not how it works.

And that’s why I say, if my mom was the kind of person who was like, “Where are you getting this money from? Where are you going?” — when I dropped out of high school, I was cutting class because I was tired and I wanted to sleep.

Caught by Her Mother

And one day I went to a friend’s house. I went to sleep, and it was with this girl. This girl always brought me to the wrong places. I swear to God. She’s like, “All right, let’s go to Beach Bomb. I need a tan.” And I’m sitting in the front, talking to the guy in the front. She’s getting her tan. My back is towards the door, and my mother walks in. I turn around, and I’m like, “What are you doing here?”

First of all, I didn’t know my mom was tanning. I wanted to be like, “Are you fing kidding me? The money that I’m bringing in, you’re fing tanning?” That was my first thought. But then I was like, “F*, I’m caught.” And she’s like, “I should be asking you that. What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” And I was like, “Yeah, but, you know.” And she’s like, “Don’t worry. We’ll talk when you get home.”

So when I got home, my mom turns around to me. She’s like, “So you’ve been cutting school?” And I was like, “Yeah, I’m tired. I’m working at night, going to school, I come home four or five o’clock in the morning.” And the times that I’ve walked home, the six blocks that I lived from that job — many times I almost got kidnapped, I almost got raped. I’ve gone through numerous things working in that place. Older men hitting on me, trying to buy flowers, but they really wanted to buy me.

The Russian Club Owner

One of the men that had came in there was a Russian guy. He completely fell in love with me. And he literally turned around, he was like, “Sit here. I’m buying all your flowers tonight. You’re going to hang out with me the whole night.” And I was with him the whole night.

The following week, he bought the club. And he was like, “You are not going to be a flower girl. You’re going to work as a hostess and I’m going to give you $5,000 a week.” And I was like, “What the f*?” And he had never asked me for anything. He never asked me to do anything with him. He was so in love with me.

And then one day he kissed me and I got out of there and I was crying and I was like, “Holy — like, what the f*. This old man just kissed me.” I was like 14 at the time. But he bought the whole club. And then I felt guilty that he bought the whole club and I should be kissing him and I should be fine.

MARK LAITA: 14. He was paying you $5,000 a week.

Desperate Women and the Cycle of Abuse

MARINA LACERDA: $5,000 a week. But he had to flee. He was Russian and he had to flee back. He had a Brazilian wife and that club did not last very long because he was Russian and it was a Greek nightclub and he had to go back to Brazil because he was involved with the mafia. So one day we come into work and there’s no more work because he has fled to Brazil because the Russian mafia was looking for him.

But you know, I think that people don’t understand until you are in that position. I don’t think they understand what it’s like to be an immigrant woman, being young. You know, how many girls that came to my house, my apartment, because at one point my boyfriend ended up cheating on me. So he left, you know, and obviously I don’t blame him for it because he was 16, 17 at the time. Like, he’s not going to take me serious. He was just trying to help me until today. I talked to him. He’s married, he’s very successful. I’ll never stop talking to him. He’s done everything for me. He was a savior for me.

And people just don’t understand. You know, how many women came to live in my house and their parents had sent them off from Brazil with, like, $2,000 and was like, “Figure it out. You’re lucky you’re even going to America.” These women come to New York, come to Florida, come to wherever. They have no documents. They don’t speak English. They don’t know anybody. They’re just coming into a place hoping to find, to rent a room and finding that Brazilian community. Because I met a lot of Brazilian and Latin women.

And then a lot of the women knew that I had Jeffrey. And they would be like, “Hey, you want to make money? You want to live somewhere? This girl’s got an apartment. She can rent you a room. And she also has connections.” And a lot of the times a lot of women had asked me, “Hey, we know that you, you know, you have this connection with this guy. Is that true?” And I’m like, “Yeah, that is true.” They’re like, “Well, I’m interested.”

And a lot of people are like, “But how can you be interested? You were 16, you were 15, you were 17.” People will do anything when they’re desperate. And it wasn’t because these girls were filling themselves up with drugs, you know? Yes, I done drugs myself, but let me tell you, I didn’t have the opportunity to be like, “I’m going to go away. I’m going to do drugs. I’m going to buy a Louis Vuitton bag.” I was just like, I have enough money to buy my weed, to buy whatever I can. If somebody’s giving it to me, great. But I will not spend more than that. All my money went to my mom.

And then after I moved out, I had a rent that was $1,250, okay. A lot of my roommates that were these women did not pay their rent because they did not give a okay. And I had electricity. I had the cable bill, because we all had cable at the time.

You know, it got to a point where I turned around to Jeffrey, and Jeffrey had said to me, he goes, “You know, I’m renovating my” — one of his living rooms, it was his fort yard, I can’t remember what it was — and he’s like, “I don’t even know what I’m going to do with all this old stuff.” And I was like, “I’ll take it.” And he’s like, “You want to take it? All right, I’ll have my driver take it for you.” And my whole apartment, which was definitely not in up to shape, let me tell you, everything was a complete mess. And it was just like I just didn’t have the money to furnish the apartment. And he furnished my whole apartment with his old furniture.

You know, it was things like that. And I think that people don’t understand when women are desperate, they sometimes use the wrong tools. And it’s not their fault. It’s where we wonder, where are the parents in this? Why aren’t the parents involved? These women were sending back money home to Brazil or to other countries. Their parents didn’t ask, “Where are they getting this money? Where are they working?” You know, parents sometimes often feel like, “Well, things are getting paid, things are good for me. So, you know, it doesn’t really matter.”

The Nature of Marina’s Interactions with Jeffrey Epstein

MARK LAITA: Your interactions with Jeffrey, what kind of things were you doing?

MARINA LACERDA: You know, so it really started out with nothing, right? Like I just got there. When I went back, he wanted me. We talked and then next thing you know, it was my — that was coming off. And then he would use a lot of — was a lot of — a lot of different on me. He really liked to get his nipples pinched as hard as possible. And he would lay down and, I tell you, he would struggle. It was like such a struggle for him to, like, he had this face where he was like, wanting me, you know, and he would sometimes get me close to him and he would press me on him, you know, that was before he — he me and he would press me on me and he would rub every part of my body and he would touch my — my, very aggressively and he would have these — and you know, he had introduced me to a whole new world of — because I was like, I did not know this was such a great feeling of this thing, you know. And he started to then use — and then long after that, he was just like, “Get on top of me.” And I’m like, “What?” You know, at that point, it’s like —

MARK LAITA: So that took a while.

MARINA LACERDA: It took a little while. I don’t think it took very long. You know, I think that it was a very quick thing. I think it was within six months he was able to — to me and get me to do — I was able to do whatever Jeffrey wanted, you know.

And I don’t know if it comes in with wanting validation from a man, which I never got, you know, wanting to feel loved. Remember I said to you, I had my first with a boy at 12 years old. And then I just started to kind of be this girl who was just like, “Yeah, she’s hooking up with everybody,” you know, it wasn’t like that. I wanted to, and I just wanted somebody to love me. I wanted somebody to — I don’t know, I just wanted to feel wanted, you know.

The Impact of an Absent Father

MARK LAITA: And not having a father that was just a good, loving father was probably a big factor in all this.

MARINA LACERDA: I think it’s a huge factor in women’s life and I think we all miss it. And I think a lot of the survivors, sometimes, most of them don’t have their father around, I think. And most of them, if their mothers are around, you know, they’re like, “Well, you know, I’ve come from a broken home.”

When I read my comments, I’ve come from a broken home, like, divorce — like I’m getting a divorce with my ex husband right now. My daughter does not have a broken home. She just has parents that do not get along. That’s it. You know, and we co-parent pretty great. You know, as much as he’s also a narcissist and also abused the out of me, I think the cycle for me went on to get abused up until seven months ago.

Yep. My ex husband, I met him at 21, he is eight years older than me. And I thought I was in love. I was like, “I’m in love. I’m in love, I’m in love, in love, in love.” And the abuse that went on in the beginning of our marriage was insane. This man had already pulled out a gun to my head. And people are like, “Why didn’t you leave?” I’m like, it’s a cycle of abuse. You think it’s normal when it’s not normal.

He trashed, he talked — he just treated me like I was a piece of — like I would — I was working in the strip club at that time. And he’s like, “You’re nothing but a stripper.” Meanwhile, I’m like paying for the bills as much as he is. You know, he’s taking the money in pretty well. And next thing you know, the abuse is going on and I’m taking it. I’m getting body slammed. I’m getting taken to the hospital. I’m calling the ambulance.

You know, I had smashed my arms into the mirror. I had to go to the hospital because I had gotten cut and I had to get, you know, whatever that shot is called. And you know, I never told anybody. I just kept it quiet. My sister, who lived with us, went to school and told one of the teachers that, you know, my sister’s boy — because he was still my boyfriend at the time — boyfriend put a gun to her head. And then I had an ACS case open, and I still lied to them. And I told them that it was just — what do they call those guns with the pellets? Like, oh my God, I’m blanking right now.

MARK LAITA: I told them it was a pellet gun, BB gun.

Raising Her Sister, Dropping Out, and the Strip Club

MARINA LACERDA: A BB gun. And they investigated for a little while, but then they left it alone.

And then also, growing up with my sister wasn’t that easy. My sister became epileptic while she was living with me. And that was really hard because I had no idea about epilepsy. And when she found out that she really couldn’t have a normal life, that turned into a whole thing. She didn’t want to go to school anymore. And it was just very tough raising her. She started to drink. It was very tough. Tough to raise her. And it was something that I was not prepared to do, but I had to do it because my mom had sent her back to Brazil at one point because she wanted to go live with my stepfather.

My mom never told my sister that my stepfather was a pedophile. So my mom turns around to me one day and says, “I’m going to send your sister to Brazil.” And I said, “Why would you do that? This man likes little girls.” And she’s like, “No, he will never do that to her daughter.” And I said, “He definitely will.”

Now, my mom knew that if she sent my sister back, she wouldn’t be able to go back because she was an immigrant at the time. And she told my sister — my sister was like seven years old — she was like, “You sure you want to go and see your father? You know that I can’t go to Brazil with you.” And my sister’s like, “Yeah, I want to see my dad. I want to see my dad.”

There goes my sister on a plane at 7 years old. My mom sends her off, and my sister’s calling me from Brazil. And I’m like, “He’s f*ing abusing her.” “No, she’s not. No, he’s not.” And then my sister finally asked my mom, “Hey, can you come to Brazil? I really miss you, and I want you and dad to be together.” My mom was like, “I think I’m going to have to go to Brazil. And if I go to Brazil, I can’t come back to America.”

And I’m like, “You should have never sent her. I told you not to send her.”

So my mom goes back to Brazil and finds out what was happening. And my sister comes to visit me for the summer. And I was like, “I’m not sending her back.” She’s like, “What do you mean?” I’m like, “I’m not sending her back. You f*ed up again. She’s living with me.”

So when my sister came, she was 10 years old. She started getting seizures at 11 and a half. And it became really tough because my sister was really great in school. She was trying. She did the ROTC, which is a program to be a cop. And then once she found out she was epileptic and she wasn’t going to have a normal life, it just went downhill from there. She went to high school, and she didn’t want to graduate. And I was like, “You’re going to graduate high school.”

Which kind of probably reflects on me, because of what I was saying to you — when my mom turned around and was like, “Are you cutting school?” — which I didn’t finish that story. And I was like, “Yeah, I’m tired. I don’t want to go to school. I’m paying for the bills. I don’t know why I’m going to school.” And she’s like, “It’s okay. You don’t want to go? You don’t have to cut anymore. I’ll take you off of school.” And I just was like, wow. Like, it was that easy. I just told her I didn’t want to go to school.

You know how many times my daughter wakes up and tells me she doesn’t want to go to school? Imagine if I said, “Yeah, you don’t want to go to school? No problem. Just stay home and go work.” So yeah, my mom dropped me out of high school. And the whole point was, when you dropped out of high school at that point, you had to take the GED. And I did take it, but I didn’t pass because I was just in the beginning of ninth grade. I didn’t know anything about anything. So I never kept on with the GED. And up until today, my daughter asks me, “Are you going to take your GED?” I was like, “I am, but life is a little bit crazy right now.” So I think it’s one of the things that I still have to do.

Did Epstein Improve Her Life?

MARK LAITA: Do you feel like your years with Jeffrey Epstein improved the quality or the trajectory of your life? Because he was saving you from — you were making good money with him.

MARINA LACERDA: Yeah, I don’t think it was a good thing, because I learned how to make money quickly. And then right after that, that’s all I wanted to do. And that’s when I turned 18, close to 19. My mom had come back. She was still living with me. She hadn’t gone back to Brazil.

MARK LAITA: You may have finished high school if it wasn’t for him.

MARINA LACERDA: Yeah, I would have finished high school. I told my mom, “I want to go work at a strip club.” And my mom was like, “You want to work at a strip club? I don’t think that’s the right move.” I was like, “I’m tired of working all these jobs and having to pay my bills — and your bills.” Because now I was living by myself, and my mom was not living with me. She was living in her own apartment.

And she was like, “Okay, where do you want to go dance?” And I was like, “I’m going to go to New Jersey.” I swear to you. If I tell you this part of New Jersey, I can’t even say the name of this place. It’s like Kapatanga. I can’t even say it. It’s so far off in New Jersey, because I didn’t want anybody to see me. And I started to dance there. But once I started, I was like, “I can’t work here. I’m driving an hour and 30 minutes to get to this place.” She had taken me there, and I got tired of driving. And I was like, “I’m just going to work downtown Manhattan.” And then from downtown Manhattan, I was like, “Okay, I’ll work in midtown Manhattan.” And then from midtown Manhattan, I was like, “You know what? I’m just going to work wherever the f I want, because nobody’s paying my fing bills.”

And I went from being an entertainer to a massage girl in the strip club. And then they asked me to become a VIP host, which was a management job.

Learning of Epstein’s Death — and a Xanax Addiction

MARK LAITA: How did you feel when you learned that Jeffrey Epstein died?

MARINA LACERDA: When I go back, I see that I had a hard time. And I think the reason why I had a hard time is because I didn’t believe that he was dead. And I was scared that he was going to somehow come after me — because being minor victim one, and understanding that I was leading some of the things—

MARK LAITA: You were the first minor victim, right?

MARINA LACERDA: I was a little bit scared. So I was having a hard time being comfortable with whether he was dead — which today I don’t believe he’s dead. But then I was like, “Oh, thank God.” Because the depositions, and the way the FBI was, and the way everything was going, I was like, “Oh my God, I can’t do this anymore.”

I was so overwhelmed, and I had started to really have a bad addiction to Xanax. I was popping it like Skittles. I swear to God. Now I’m sober, and I call myself a functional junkie, because literally I would go do my depositions, and right after that I would go to work, and I would be closing out tabs for $10,000, $50,000. And the next day, my boss would ask me, “Who spent this money? What was his name, who was he with, and what camera did he sign out?” And I would remember everything — and I was popping like 10 Xanax a day. They were 2 milligram bars.

I almost died. And thank God I almost died, because that’s what made me get clean.

I was moving to Florida, and I had bought like 400 bars of Xanax off the street — so obviously not even real Xanax. I moved them in the truck to Florida from New York. And our moving date got pushed. And I’m sitting at home like, “I don’t have Xanax now.”

If anybody takes Xanax — if you don’t take it for one day, you’re fine. But the second day, you are definitely a hot mess. And especially if you’re taking 10 to 15 bars a day. I was literally putting them in my hands and just taking them like it was nothing.

Our moving date got pushed, and I just remember thinking, “Holy s*, what am I going to do?” And I started to feel withdrawals. I would get up and pace around because my heart would start beating really fast, and I would just get up and start moving and trying to breathe. And I didn’t tell my husband at the time. Didn’t tell anybody. I was highly addicted to it. Nobody knew I was addicted to Xanax.

Five days into it, I was having diarrhea, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t function correctly. I was on the edge. And about the fifth or sixth day, I’m laying down in bed with my ex-husband and my daughter, and I fall over and I start seizing. Now everybody’s confused. I wake up, I’m getting dragged into an ambulance. I have my little Adidas sneakers on, these orange pants on — they just threw anything on me. And I look down and I’m being carried, and I’m like, “What?” I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no.” They’re trying to drag me into the ambulance, and I didn’t know what had happened. And they’re like, “Ma’am, you had a seizure. You need to get in the ambulance.”

And in my head I was like, “Oh, I know why I had a seizure.”

So I get to the hospital, they hook me up with an IV, and they’re like, “We’re going to do an MRI on your brain to figure out why you had a seizure.” I was like, “It’s okay. I need to be honest here with everybody.” And I think it was about time, because I really wanted to stop, but the addiction is so hard — you’re like, “Just one more day, one more day.” And really, with Xanax, you can’t just come off of it on your own. You have to gradually come out of it, and you have to go to rehab.

And I turned around and said, “I have to tell everybody something.” The doctors were there, everybody’s trying to figure it out, my ex-husband’s there. And I was like, “I’m highly addicted to Xanax.” And they’re like — and I was like, “No, no, like really bad. Like 10, 15 bars a day.” You should have seen their faces. They’re like, “Holy s*.” Like, almost like, “How are you still alive taking 10, 15 green bars a day?”

And I told them, and I came straight to Florida. My ex-husband didn’t even want me to be in New York because he was scared I was going to get more illegal Xanax. And I came to Florida and I was like, “No more weed, no more cigarettes, no more alcohol.” I was done with everything.

Let me tell you, it was the worst 18 months of my life. Because once you do drugs — Amy Winehouse said it once in her documentary. She stopped doing drugs and got sober, and she was like, “It’s just not fun without drugs.” And you feel that void when you’re done doing drugs. You’re like, “Holy s*. Nothing is fun. Life is not fun.” You’re not high anymore, so it’s not fun anymore. You have to get over that time before you realize that there is more to life than drugs. You have to get over that first year.

And reality is, it took about three years for my body to get back to normal and for my mind to understand that I need to set goals in order to start enjoying life. There’s more to life than just drugs.

It’s about to be seven years, actually — my seven-year anniversary just passed in February. Yeah, seven years sober.

MARK LAITA: That’s great.

MARINA LACERDA: Yep. Thank God.

The Epstein Files and No Prosecutions

MARK LAITA: How do you feel about the current situation with the Epstein files and no prosecutions, no nothing?

Life After Epstein: Justice, America, and Moving Forward

MARINA LACERDA: It’s a joke. I feel like I was talking to somebody yesterday. I was like, why do I feel like we live in a third world country? Corruption is normalized in America and it’s something that people that live in third world countries don’t ever expect that from us. They only see it in their country.

I think that we’re lacking justice, transparency, we’re lacking a lot of things. And unfortunately it has become very political. This whole thing. It’s not something that we wanted. We wanted to sit here and tell our stories for people to believe us, for us to change this culture, to change, to help the generation to make different laws to allow women and men to talk about their abuse.

And you know, to see the files where you get to see these rich and powerful men who are getting away with crazy, crazy crimes. And you know, look at my stepfather. I went there, I told on him. He went to jail right away and got probation. And the last day of his probation, you know what they did to him? They sent him right in the back and they were like, “Guess what, you’re getting deported. You’re going back to your country.”

So it’s so crazy. We have ICE out trying to stop illegal immigrants that are not illegal immigrants so far that we have stopped. And I got to tell you, these illegal immigrants that have committed any crimes, they’re not driving home from work at 6 o’clock in the afternoon, they’re committing more crimes.

And the FBI and the Federales, whatever they’re called, they have this database where these illegal immigrants have caused these crimes. We do not need to stop people in the street. Americans don’t understand how immigration works and illegal aliens work. They know where they are. They know the crimes they’ve committed. They have a database explaining everything. They do not have to stop people in the street.

That is just a way of the Trump administration trying to intimidate and saying that they’re putting in the work. They’re not putting in the work. They’re only trying to intimidate Americans and silencing them in every way possible. And it’s not only with the Epstein files, it’s with everything.

This is becoming a country where I’m starting to question. I don’t even want to be in the United States of America anymore. And I fought so hard to get my papers here to become a citizen, to do everything right, to work and pay my taxes and all that. And I’m like, man, America’s going downhill. I need to go to Europe. That’s where it is right now.

So I think it’s a complete mess where we’re going through. I really don’t see any justice being brought. I don’t see any of these men getting arrested. I just see us really putting up a long fight here.

Marina’s Life Today: Advocacy, Boundaries, and Moving On

MARK LAITA: What does your life look like today? What are you doing now?

MARINA LACERDA: So I was a stay-at-home mom. Fortunately I could do that. I had opened up a restaurant, I invested some money in my restaurant. Didn’t work out. After I broke my silence, two weeks later, I asked my ex-husband for a divorce. And I seen how much my peace was being damaged and was being taken from me. And I needed to gain that back because all I wanted was peace.

This man did not leave me the f* alone. I mean, we have a pretty good life. We have a house, we have a beautiful daughter, we have our health, we have food, we have dogs. We don’t have much in our life for us to complain about. And this person was complaining about everything and just sucking my energy.

And after I got my divorce, I really thought my calling was for animals. I was like, I want to open up a dog shelter. I want to do this. I want to do everything for animals. And then I was like, damn, I really need to start making more money because if I’m starting to save these animals, then I need to create an organization or a foundation or something like that.

And then I broke my silence. And I was like, well, let me start a platform. And then I started a platform where people can share their experience about their abuse. People started to DM me and started to tell me about their abuse and I was like, this is great, but I can’t start giving advice to everybody. I’m not a licensed therapist, and God forbid I give somebody advice and it doesn’t go the way that they want it to go. I can get in a lot of trouble for that.

A lot of people are like, “I texted you, you need to answer me back.” I’m like, it’s because I’m not a licensed therapist. The whole point is for you to share your story out in the open so that other people can give you their advice. Me personally giving you advice — I’m not a licensed therapist.

So I did that and then it became really something big. People wanted to hear my story. And I think now my main job is I love to go on different podcasts, I love to talk about my story, but I also, in a lot of these podcasts, I do talk about red flags. I talk about awareness, I talk about limits, and I talk about boundaries and how early you should be teaching your kids these things because it prevents them from being in an abusive situation.

And not only sexual abuse — physical abuse, emotional abuse, financial abuse, friendship and relationship. These are something that it’s not only women, men should have boundaries too. Teaching moms that have sons how to teach them not to be an abuser, not to teach them to be a groomer. I see my daughter, 12 years old, she gets groomed by another 12-year-old boy. Moms have to be aware of this.

We have to keep up with the phones. The phones are the most important thing right now. It’s what’s corrupting our kids — these stupid phones, the stupid social media. These are the things that I like to talk about.

And I have other things coming but I don’t like to talk about it because if it doesn’t happen — I’m the type of person that when it happens I talk about it. So I have some things coming out, it’s in the works. I just pray every day that it’s going to work out.

Closing Words

MARK LAITA: Cool. Thank you for the interesting talk. It’s so nice for you to be able to share your story with everyone anytime.

MARINA LACERDA: I always like to share my story. And I always like to leave with a little note. Don’t forget, the only thing that’s important is you. And never forget to protect your peace. Thank you.

MARK LAITA: Beautiful. Thank you, Marina.

MARINA LACERDA: Thank you.

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