Leon Black accused of raping girl at Jeffrey Epstein’s New York dwelling

A lady who says she was raped at convicted intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein’s New York dwelling by Leon Black, the co-founder of US funding group Apollo International Administration, has sued the previous govt and Epstein’s property in a Manhattan courtroom.

Attorneys for Cheri Pierson allege she was recruited by Epstein’s pal Ghislaine Maxwell whereas working as a receptionist a while in 2000 and initially employed as a masseuse, earlier than being assaulted by Epstein’s pal Black in 2002. Maxwell was sentenced in June to twenty years in jail for serving to Epstein abuse minors.

In a 30-page criticism filed in a New York state courtroom in Manhattan, Pierson’s legal professionals stated she sustained “extreme and debilitating ache”, and as she “had no medical insurance coverage, was left to take care of the bodily aftermath of what [Black] had finished”. They allege Black consequently organized to satisfy Pierson, then a single mom, at a New York resort and paid her $5,000 in money.

A lawyer for Black, Susan Estrich, stated the most recent allegations in opposition to her shopper “are categorically false and a part of a scheme to . . . destroy his status”.

The lawsuit opens a brand new entrance in a long-running authorized battle between Black and the Wigdor agency, which represents Pierson within the motion filed on Monday, and can be suing Black on behalf of his ex-mistress Guzel Ganieva.

Black has accused Wigdor of abusing the authorized course of to publicise false allegations of sexual assault in an effort to extort cash and destroy his status. In a defamation motion filed in opposition to the legislation agency final month, Black’s legal professionals wrote: “This case is the epitome of how the #MeToo motion may be hijacked and abused.”

“This serial abuse of the judicial course of can not stand,” Estrich stated on Monday. “We intend to defeat these baseless claims, and to pursue all of our cures to carry the Wigdor agency legally accountable for his or her abusive conduct and misuse of the courts.”

Black stood down from his function at Apollo in 2021, after an investigation commissioned by the corporate revealed he had made far bigger funds than beforehand recognized to Epstein.

Attorneys at Dechert, which performed the probe, concluded that Black had paid $158mn to Epstein for tax recommendation and different skilled companies after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting intercourse with a minor. Epstein was indicted on federal sex-trafficking expenses in 2019, and died by suicide in his New York cell a couple of weeks later.

The lawsuit by Pierson is among the many first to be filed below New York state’s Grownup Survivors Act, which permits folks to file sexual assault claims even when the statute of limitations has expired. Final week, a former journalist sued Donald Trump below the brand new legislation, alleging the previous president raped her within the mid-Nineteen Nineties. He has denied the allegations.

“Due to the passage of the Grownup Survivors Act, survivors of sexual violence like our shopper Ms Pierson can search the justice they deserve irrespective of what number of years in the past their trauma was suffered,” stated Jeanne Christensen, a lawyer at Wigdor who’s representing her.

“We sit up for holding Black and Epstein’s property accountable for his or her appalling illegal conduct as alleged within the criticism by our shopper,” Christensen added.