Who were the 'bikini women' next to Hawking? Controversy over the Epstein files

[Financial News] Controversy is growing after the recent release of the "Epstein files," which include images of late physicist Stephen William Hawking alongside women in bikinis.

According to Yonhap News Agency, The Times and The Daily Telegraph reported on the 25th (local time) that the documents on Jeffrey Edward Epstein recently released by the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) are said to contain a photo of Hawking standing next to two women.

In the photo, Hawking is lying on a sunbed, while women in bikinis on either side of him pose holding cocktails.
The photo was reportedly taken around March 2006, about five months before Epstein was indicted on charges of procuring minors for sex. At that time, a Scientific Symposium was being held on Saint Thomas Island in the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean.
The symposium was reportedly sponsored by Jeffrey Edward Epstein and was attended by 21 scientists, including Hawking. He gave a lecture there on Quantum cosmology.
After the photo became public, some claimed that the women next to Hawking were victims who had been sexually exploited by Epstein.
James Peebles, who attended the event and later won the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics, said he had been told that a wealthy benefactor seeking to establish the Virgin Islands Institute for Advanced Studies was funding the gathering, and recalled that the event itself "was fine."
However, he added, "At some point, pretty young women appeared and stood there silently," noting that he could not be sure of their exact ages but that they seemed quite young.
Peebles said that after Epstein's sexual exploitation of minors came to light, he was reminded of that occasion and "came to think that those young women were people who had suffered because of him."
Stephen Hawking's family, however, countered that the women in the photo were his caregivers and that they accompanied him wherever he went.
A spokesperson for Stephen Hawking's family explained that he "had to rely on a ventilator, a voice synthesizer, a wheelchair, and round-the-clock medical care due to motor neuron disease (NMD)." The spokesperson stressed, "Any suggestion that he engaged in inappropriate behavior is wrong and extremely unconvincing."
Hawking lived with motor neuron disease for more than 50 years before passing away in 2018 at the age of 76. Meanwhile, his name is said to appear more than 250 times in the Epstein files released by the DOJ.


hsg@fnnews.com Han Seung-gon Reporter