Rina Oh was 21 years old. She dreamed of being an artist. Instead, she was pulled into Jeffrey Epstein’s dark world. That was 25 years ago.
Now, she is watching the release of thousands of secret documents. The US Department of Justice is making them public. Last week, 11,000 new pages were posted online.
For a long time, Virginia Giuffre was the most well-known person accusing Epstein. Her story shaped how people saw his crimes.
Rina Oh says that hurt her. She also knew Epstein and Giuffre in the early 2000s.
“Oh told The Sun, “Unfortunately for me, I didn’t have a choice because Virginia Giuffre wrote an entire chapter about me in her unpublished memoir.”
She claims Giuffre’s story was false. “She falsely portrayed me, made up a lot of stories. The entire chapter was actually fabricated minus like one shopping trip.”
Oh says this false portrayal, plus online bullying, forced her to speak up. “I was robbed of telling my truthful story,” she said.
She has been fighting the false claims for six years. “I ended up filing two lawsuits against her to have to prove that I’m a victim.”
Oh admits she introduced Epstein to three women. But she denies taking part in any abuse.
Court records show she sued Giuffre for defamation in 2021. Giuffre countersued, accusing Oh of assault. The legal fight continued until Giuffre’s death. Oh is now taking action against Giuffre’s estate.
She wants to clear her name for her two children. She wants a court to say she was Epstein’s victim, not part of his network.
“Now I’m ready to finally tell my story the way I want it to be heard,” Oh said. She plans to release a book in 2026.
How She Met Epstein
Her story of meeting Epstein follows a sad pattern. A powerful man offered help to a young, vulnerable woman.
“I kept going in and out of school. I was a troubled teenager,” Oh explained.
She was a star student at a top New York arts high school. But her South Korean immigrant parents did not support her art dreams. They sent her to a community college instead.
When she met Epstein, she felt lost. “I was just really unhappy,” she recalled.
Epstein offered her a lifeline. “He offered me a scholarship to obtain a Bachelor of Fine Arts,” she said.
“He said, ‘I’m a philanthropist. I’m going to pay for your school…’ And that’s how he lured me.”
She was over 18, but felt very young and naive. “I had just turned 21,” she said.
Inside Epstein’s world, there was a “protocol.” Oh explained that most people who visited him ended up in his massage room. “That’s just what he did,” she said.
As an artist, Oh says she observed details others might miss. She watched his books, his phone calls, his expressions.
From Helper to Punisher
Oh says it took her years to understand what happened. “It took me a long time to realise that what happened to me was sexual abuse. I blamed myself for years,” she admitted.
At first, she just felt something was wrong. “It started feeling sketchy,” she said.
The promised scholarship quickly became a tool for control. “He took the scholarship away immediately when I didn’t volunteer to go see him,” Oh stated.
She insists she never asked him for money or favors. “I never, not even once, picked up the phone and called his people,” she said.
When she pulled away, Epstein tried new tactics. He asked her to paint for him. He offered her a strange job where he would pay her salary through a charity.
“I’d never heard of anything like that before,” she said. It made her feel owned.
This was the opposite of his first promise. “He told me in the beginning, ‘I’m offering you a scholarship with no strings attached,’” Oh recalled. But he kept demanding to see her.
She eventually found her own job in fashion. This was her chance to break free. But, she says, Epstein still tried to be part of her new life. He asked for invites to fashion shows. She never invited him.
The Fight to Tell Her Truth
Oh knows people will ask why she went back. “I didn’t have a choice for what I wanted. I wanted help with my art career, and my parents were not helping me,” she explained.
Epstein seemed legitimate. He had a private jet, an island, and expensive art. “I immediately associated that with a serious art patron,” she said.
She says he used her ambition against her. He would ask about her art, then take her into a room. “I was so young that I didn’t realize this was wrong,” Oh said.
In 2018 and 2019, as pressure grew on Epstein, Oh began speaking online. She wanted him arrested. “Unfortunately for me, I sacrificed my own safety. I sacrificed my own anonymity,” she said.
She did it to help other victims. “I waived my anonymity back then because I wanted to give those girls a push.”
Now, with the release of the Epstein files, she hopes for more answers. “I think it will help explain what really happened,” she said.
The government is releasing a huge amount of information—over 300 gigabytes. It includes FBI files, photos from Epstein’s homes and island, and financial records.
The law requires that almost everything be made public. Only victims’ names or classified details can be hidden.
Oh believes the government is overwhelmed by the amount of material. She also says people should not expect a simple “client list.”
“No one ever made a client list. These people were working covertly,” she said.
She believes the truth will come from victims’ stories. “Every plaintiff has a story, and in each story there’s a clue, a piece of the puzzle.”
Rina Oh is now ready to share her piece of that puzzle.