Johanna Sjoberg's Deposition In The Maxwell/Virginia Roberts Suit (Part 7) (8/8/25)

When small rooms hold larger truths: a witness remembers

The memory of a massage table can be an unlikely anchor for a legal and moral reckoning. In a calm, clipped deposition voice, Johanna Schoberg reconstructs moments that feel ordinary on the surface — dinner, a movie, a paid massage — and yet sit at the edge of a much darker public drama. Her testimony resists sensational flourish; it is quiet, concrete, and in the gaps between recollections reveals how intimacy and power were normalized in certain circles.

Daily rituals and the economy of small favors

Schoberg describes being paid about $200 for a massage, and that additional sexual contact, when it occurred, came with an unspoken extra payment of roughly $100. The details are transactional and straightforward — rates, tips, guest requests — but they mark a system in which boundaries shifted depending on context and convenience. She stresses that most interactions were professional and consensual, and that she regularly provided massages to visitors, not only to the host at the center of the controversy.

Pressure and its slow escalation

Conversations in the transcript reveal an escalation in behavior that Schoberg felt as pressure rather than an abrupt violation. She recalls Jeffrey Epstein becoming more insistent over time, pressuring her to do things beyond a typical massage. That pressure, she says, contributed to her decision to step away — not a single breaking point but an accumulation of uncomfortable moments and the eventual public exposure of her own involvement.

Objects, images, and the liminal spaces of a house

Homes collect stories as much as they collect objects. Schoberg repeatedly notes photographs and paintings around multiple properties: staged, model-like images, topless portraits, and a few personal photographs she recognized, including one of herself. She draws a careful line between what she saw and what she did not — she never identified images she would consider child pornography, and repeatedly denies witnessing sexual activity in public spaces at the houses.

• Topless photos remembered; full-frontal images not recalled.
• One personal photograph was taken with her awareness and consent.
• She did not observe sexual conduct openly in shared living spaces.

The credibility of what is remembered

Memory is partial, and Schoberg emphasizes what she cannot recall: specific faces, precise layouts, or particular photos beyond a few she names. That partiality matters legally and journalistically. It reveals the difference between what someone is sure of and what registers as rumor, hearsay, or offhand comment. In practice, it also reveals how a milieu can be both highly curated and yet opaque: photographs “everywhere,” name-dropping during phone calls, and a steady stream of guests whose identities blurred together in the cleaner light of memory.

Confessions and denials spoken in private

A short exchange stands out for its tangled simplicity. When asked if Epstein acknowledged the allegations against him, Schoberg reports that he responded that the accusers had lied about their ages. It was a single line, not an explanation, but it carried a defensive frame that tried to reconfigure criminal allegations into a misrepresentation of facts. That matter-of-fact admission, filtered through a witness who was not a confidante but a service provider, is one of those quiet moments that complicate a public narrative.

Names and the theater of fame

Schoberg repeatedly denies close contact with several high-profile figures rumored to frequent the properties, and attributes references to celebrities to conversational name-dropping — often while she was giving a massage and the subject was on the phone. The practice of invoking famous names becomes another form of gloss: a way to add luster to a room, to obfuscate the true scale of social networks, or simply to flirt with authority.

Boundaries, exit, and the cost of publicity

Her departure from the scene was not described as dramatic but rather as an inevitable consequence of exposure. After filing a police report, Schoberg did not expect the account to become public and to invite journalists to her door. The turning point, she says, was the revelation itself — once the private became public, the cost of continuing in that environment rose beyond what she could tolerate.

What the ordinary details reveal about systems

Taken together, the testimony reads less like a catalogue of transgression and more like a case study in how intimate services, hospitality, and celebrity can be braided into a network that encourages plausible deniability. Small payments, staged images, offhanded admissions, and the absence of eyewitness accounts of certain alleged crimes do not cancel the larger questions; they complicate them, forcing investigators and readers alike to reckon with fragments rather than neat narratives.

Concluding reflection

There is a peculiarly American paradox in Schoberg’s recollections: the coexistence of ordinary labor and extraordinary privilege within the same rooms. When a massage table becomes a site for both care and coercion, the ordinary acts of daily life are transformed into evidence. That transformation is not dramatic in the cinematic sense; it is slow and brittle, revealing how power operates not always through spectacle but through the less glamorous, whispered adjustments of expectation, payment, and the economy of favors.