Johanna Sjoberg

Johanna Sjoberg is an American woman who, as a student at Palm Beach Atlantic College in Florida, was approached by Ghislaine Maxwell early in 2001 about a job as a home helper and was then drawn into giving sexual massages to Jeffrey Epstein. Her sworn deposition in Giuffre v. Maxwell, the defamation suit Virginia Giuffre brought against Maxwell in 2015, includes her account of an incident with Prince Andrew at Epstein's Manhattan house around Easter 2001, when she was 21. The deposition was among the records unsealed by Judge Loretta Preska in January 2024.¹²

Recruitment

Sjoberg testified that she was recruited for sex acts with Epstein and was reprimanded when she did not bring him to orgasm. In a 2007 interview with the Mail on Sunday she said, "I was groomed for it," described herself as a hard-up student, and called the arrangement a "pact with the devil."¹

The Andrew Account

Sjoberg testified that she did not at first know who the British visitor was until Maxwell took her to fetch a caricature puppet of him from the satirical television program Spitting Image: "Then it clicked. I'm like, that's who it is." She testified that the group sat on a couch, Giuffre with the puppet on her lap, and that "I sat on Andrew's lap, and I believe on my own volition, and they took the puppet's hands and put it on Virginia's breast, and so Andrew put his on mine," in what she described as a joking manner. She described Andrew as "charming." The group was photographed.¹²

Maxwell, asked about the incident in her own deposition, said, "I never gave him a gift of a puppet," and "I recollect the puppet, but I don't recollect anything around the puppet." Buckingham Palace had earlier called Sjoberg's allegations "categorically untrue." After the January 2024 release the Metropolitan Police stated that "No investigation has been launched."¹²

Unsealing

Sjoberg's deposition was part of the discovery record sealed under Judge Robert W. Sweet's March 2016 protective order in Giuffre v. Maxwell and kept sealed after the case settled in May 2017. It was released in the tranche that followed Preska's December 18, 2023 findings on the remaining sealed material.³