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The most euphemistic description of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual proclivities would be ‘weird’.

You could also call him a convicted paedophile, and you wouldn’t be wrong.

The horrors of what went on at his private islands in the US Virgin Islands have been well documented, but there is always more information waiting to come to light.

In the case of former New York art student Ursula Ruedenberg, she recently recounted a 1995 encounter with Epstein and his alleged mistress-turned-madam Ghislaine Maxwell (pictured above with Epstein), that took place at Epstein’s New Mexico ranch.

Ruedenberg says that, along with a number of students from an art school, she was invited to the ranch on the basis that Epstein promised he’d commission one of them to make works for a new mansion.

Her account has been backed up by Maria Farmer, and a third student who wished to remain anonymous.

They spoke with Artnet about what happened on their visit, so let’s start with some basics:

“It was a huge scary ranch [pictured below] on this big, ugly, dry desert,” Farmer recalled in a recent conversation with Artnet News. When Epstein gave them a tour of the grounds, he kept pointing out how many deadly rattlesnakes lived on the land. After they returned to the house, Maxwell instructed the students to put their coats in the closet. When they opened the door, they found a skeleton hanging inside…

For the rest of the day, “they proceeded to pull pranks on us all the time, to make us feel unstable,” Ruedenberg recalled.

At supper, the students were told to close their eyes and pass around a bag of unknown objects, with each person pulling out an object.

“One was what felt like pockets of jelly; it turned out to be falsies, like you put in your bra,” Ruedenberg said. “Then they demanded that we put them on.”

Ruedenberg refused and immediately felt shunned for not playing along. “I knew the commission was out the window at that very moment,” she said. “I could see it was a question of ‘how far will they go? Does this person have boundaries?’”

“It was the weirdest dinner party I’ve ever been to all my life,” she added. “I’ve been around a lot of rich people in New York and many are misbehaved, but this was another level.”

Farmer, who later went on to work for Epstein in New York, says that this was a party trick he often liked to play with sexual objects such as condoms. Maxwell’s role was to “normalize” it, Farmer said. “She had a light-hearted delivery so you never felt like—dun dun dun—you’re going to be kidnapped and raped. You just thought they were quirky and they love art.”

Farmer had further encounters with Epstein, and alleges that she was sexually assaulted by Epstein and Maxwell during a trip to Ohio shortly after the New Mexico getaway.

She also alleges that her 16-year-old sister, Annie, was assaulted by Epstein and Maxwell:

Farmer says that Epstein and Maxwell threatened to ruin her career if she spoke out about what happened. Instead, she moved away from New York and, for a long time, stopped painting.

Ruedenberg, too, says that although she didn’t experience anything like what Farmer went through, the experience with Epstein soured her on the art world. “I was so fed up with that whole scene, and [Epstein] was part of it,” she said. “I left New York. I just thought, I don’t want to paint for these people, and I stepped out of that whole world.”

Epstein will never truly be held to account for his crimes, having been found dead in his cell in August of last year.

Here’s hoping that those who willingly associated with him in the years following his conviction are, though, like a certain Prince Andrew and some high-profile politicians.

You can read the full account of the three students here.

[source:artnet]