Lisa Phillips’ alarm bells started ringing when she saw a much older man frolicking in the pool with two teenage girls.
She told the Toronto Sun, the man in the pool was Prince Andrew.
On that day in 1999, Phillips, now 46 and a former top model, would meet the man who would shape her life for better or worse.
“I was in the Bahamas for a photo shoot, and we had a day off,” Phillips told the Sun. “A boat was sent for us, and I saw it as a chance to relax and hang out with the other models.
“When we got there, there was an older man in the pool with young girls, he was dark-haired. I thought it was kinda weird,” she said, adding the models were escorted to their rooms to rest, with dinner being served three hours later.
That was when she met their host — billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein.
“Jeffrey asked a lot of questions about me. I had never had a man that sophisticated pay that kind of attention to me. It felt really good,” Phillips said.
“He then asked us, ‘Do you want to meet a real prince?’ and we all nodded yes. Prince Andrew walked in. It was a pleasant evening.”
“Jeffrey was so awesome and brilliant.”
That viewpoint was about to change.
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Today, Phillips is a divorced mother of two living in Los Angeles and a scout for Select Models. She has become an anti-human trafficking advocate and uses her podcast From Now On to “tell her story and amplify the voices of other survivors.”
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The young mannequins retired to their rooms for the night. Then came the fateful knock on the door.
“One of his employees said that Jeffrey was ready for his massage. ‘What massage?’ I said I didn’t know how to,” Phillips recalled.
When Phillips and another young model entered, Epstein was lying naked on the table.
“It was really weird. He was being kind of playful, giggling, and asking us more personal questions. Then he started playing with himself. He did a 360 becoming a Jekyll and Hyde … he told us, ‘You’re going to do something for me’,” Phillips said.
She had never been with another woman in a threesome. As the sexual assault unfolded, Phillips said nothing. She was “frozen.” Happily, there was no penetration.
And she was trapped on Epstein’s island. There was no escape. She went through the motions, stayed in her room and waited for the boat.
“I was really scared he was going to come for me,” she said, adding she was only 21 at the time. She had not heard the last of Jeffrey Epstein.
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Back in the Big Apple, Epstein’s secretary began calling every week. Eventually, the billionaire contacted Phillips.
“He called four months later and told me ‘I want to make it up to you. What do you want to do?’ I told him I wanted to be a Ford model. He got me into Ford Models, he was a friend of Katie Ford,” she said.
But now she felt obligated to meet up with Epstein and go to parties and events with him.
“I had been doing well in modelling, but now I was at the next level. Epstein could make things happen for girls,” she said, adding Epstein would pay for the college educations of some of the young women or help them with their careers.
With Epstein, though, nothing was a one-way street. There were the sexual favours for his coterie of like-minded pals.
“One girlfriend said she had to have sex with Prince Andrew. I saw him on the island and some girls said they had bad dealings with some of the men,” Phillips said.
Prince Andrew has denied any wrongdoing.
Jeffrey Epstein told the young model “he liked to have things on people.”
“He was videotaping everything. I was shocked and literally had a breakdown,” she said.
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Epstein’s former gal pal and second banana in the sex trafficking sweepstakes, Ghislaine Maxwell, was now largely out of the picture. Phillips said she met the disgraced socialite on a number of occasions, including once with Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger.
“She was like Epstein, obsessed with sex and a real smooth talker,” Phillips said.
Finally, in July 2019, the 66-year-old financier was arrested at a private airport in New Jersey and hammered with a slew of sex trafficking charges.
Phillips said she believes that until the moment Epstein topped himself (or maybe not) in his Manhattan jail cell, the hedge fund manager probably believed he was going to skate on the charges.
“I think he thought he’d get away with it,” she said. “That’s why he recorded everything: To make himself untouchable. Jeffrey thought he was smarter than everyone else.”
Epstein was not the brainiac he believed himself to be as he came to his sordid end.
Lisa Phillips’ podcast, From Now On is available here.
@HunterTOSun