Brian Lewis, 71, was asked whether the family knew of his daughter’s relationship with Epstein.

“It is a difficult question to answer,” the dad told the Daily Mail from his Cheshire home in the UK.

“As a young girl, we knew she was seeing someone in New York. So yes we did.”

News that the dead pervert had a secret girlfriend emerged in newly unsealed court papers in his alleged madam Ghislaine Maxwell’s court case in New York.

Maxwell at the time begged Epstein to get “Shelley” to publicly declare in the 2000s that she — not Maxwell — was his ex-girlfriend in an effort to take some of the media focus off her.

The mystery woman was identified as Shelley Anne Lewis, 43, a British-born children’s book author and “spiritual entrepreneur.”

One neighbor told the Mail that it was “shocking” that she was involved with Epstein, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to prostitution charges in Florida and registered as a sex offender.

“The family are very nice and will be horrified to be linked to that man,” the neighbor said.

Shelley Anne Lewis is believed to have dated Epstein while he was allegedly sexually abusing young women and girls, including Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who said she served as his “sex slave” from 1999 to 2002.

Epstein, 66, died by suicide last August while locked up on federal sex-trafficking charges. Maxwell is in custody on charges alleging that she helped groom his victims and took part in some of the abuse herself.