New court filings in a New York civil case against billionaire investor Leon Black alleged that the day after a woman filed her lawsuit against Black, a white car parked in front of her house and wouldn’t leave until local police were called.
Black, the former CEO of a private equity firm, has long been accused of having deep ties to deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. The suit involves an alleged rape Epstein helped facilitate.
The filing says Black also sent private investigators to the woman’s parents’ house, where they gained entry by bringing over a cheesecake and showing her parents a picture of the woman’s minor child.
According to one of the filings, in the first incident a person stayed in the car the entire time and never came out. A picture of the car, which is a white GMC Yukon XL with a Virginia license plate, was attached to one filing.
In the woman’s complaint, which she filed anonymously as a Jane Doe, she alleged that Epstein executed a “hand-off” to Black in 2002 at his Manhattan townhouse at 9 East 71st Street.
The complaint says she was just 16 at the time, and that Black violently raped her and left her bleeding on the ground. The complaint also alleges that Epstein knew she “would never disobey” him because she had autism and was developmentally around 12 years old.
The recent filing says a car came and sat outside of her house on July 27, 2023. Then, on Aug. 7, Doe’s parents returned home around 2:00pm with Doe’s minor child, the filing says. There they found two men waiting for them who claimed to be investigating a complaint filed in court by their daughter.
According to the filing, they also had photos of Doe’s child, who lives with her parents, “specifically photos when the child was very young.”
“Undoubtedly,” the filing alleged, “showing baby photos [of Doe’s child] in their possession to Ms. Doe’s parents is a blatant attempt to send a strong and disgusting message to Ms. Doe that should she proceed to assert her claims against Black, that she was placing the safety of her immediate family, including her minor child, in jeopardy.”
The investigators, the filing says, brought cheesecake over “as a ploy to be invited in for coffee.” This “blindsid[ed]” Doe’s parents and let the investigators accomplish their goal, the filing says. As a result of the ploy, they were invited in. There they inquired about Doe’s childhood, asked “pressing and intimate questions” about her medical history, requested to see photos of her when she was a child, and even had a conversation with her child, the filing alleges.
The next morning, the filing says, two men “showed up unannounced” at Doe’s aunt’s house. A friend of the aunt, the filing says, told her they’d been waiting outside of her house during the day. They left business cards with the aunt showing they worked with SIC, Inc, a Miami-based private investigation firm, the filing says.
The filing, part of a motion arguing that Doe’s name be kept private, says that Black intention is to “frighten and intimidate a sexual assault victim.” Doe’s attorneys cited another case filed against Black in New York Supreme Court by Cheri Pierson, where they say Black’s private investigators “spent weeks drudging [sic] up information about Pierson that any reasonable person would be humiliated and horrified to learn was publicly filed on a court docket … Black’s intent was pure unadulterated victim shaming.”
A lawyer for Black didn’t respond to a request confirming whether or not they had hired SIC, Inc.
Filings by Black lawyers on the evening of Aug. 14 challenged Doe’s narrative. According to Black’s filing, the narrative Doe laid out was “replete with falsehoods.” Black’s lawyers denied that the white SUV had anything to do with them, asserting that the first time “any investigator working on Mr. Black’s behalf on this matter approached anyone to interview them was August 7th.”
Black’s lawyers also denied that his private investigators acted in an intimidating way, or waited outside for Doe’s parents. Instead, they said they’d scheduled a meeting with Doe’s father at 12:30pm on Aug. 7, then came back later at 2:30pm to talk with her mother.
Black’s lawyers also sought to refute the claims in Doe’s complaint by undermining her credibility. In their filing, they claim that Doe didn’t begin displaying autism symptoms until she was in her twenties.
“According to her family, Plaintiff has a history of seeking attention through any means available to her,” the filing claimed.
A man answering the number for SIC Florida refused to discuss any of the company’s work.
“I’m not at liberty to speak to the press,” he said.
