NEW YORK, Sept 19 — A woman yesterday sued the estate of Jeffrey Epstein, saying the financier sexually abused her for years when she was a teenager.

The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan federal court under the pseudonym Jane Doe, is at least the sixth filed against the estate since Epstein’s suicide in jail last month.

Doe was one of three minor girls Epstein had been criminally charged with abusing in a July indictment by federal prosecutors, according to her lawsuit.

A lawyer for Epstein’s estate could not immediately be reached for comment.

The woman alleges that she met Epstein when she was 14 or younger, around 2002, and that he "routinely abused and exploited” her in his New York City home.

She stopped attending school and spent "almost all her time” at Epstein’s home, and was made to recruit other girls for Epstein to abuse, according to the lawsuit.

"Not surprisingly, Epstein’s abuse of Doe has forever scarred her and altered her life,” the lawsuit said, adding that the woman never received a high school education and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression and panic attacks.

Epstein was arrested on July 6 and pleaded not guilty to charges of sex trafficking involving dozens of underage girls as young as 14. He died on Aug. 10 in his jail cell at age 66, and an autopsy report concluded he hanged himself.

Two days earlier, Epstein had signed a will placing all of his property, worth more than US$577 million (RM2.4 billion), in a trust called The 1953 Trust after the year of his birth. — Reuters