Jeffrey Epstein's Sex Trafficking Arrest Means His Victims Might Finally Get Justice
Little of what Jeffrey Epstein did was a secret before today, when federal prosecutors in New York indicted the financier for running an elaborate child sex trafficking ring out of his Upper East Side townhouse and West Palm Beach mansion. For years, one of New York City’s most connected men—his Rolodex included, among many others, former president Bill Clinton and current president Donald Trump—coerced girls as young as 14 to undress and provide him with “massages” that often gave way to sex acts, the indictment alleges. Epstein paid them in cash after each encounter, and paid them more if they could successfully recruit friends to participate.
FBI officials knew about this operation as early as 2007, when they prepared a 53-page indictment accusing Epstein of crimes that, if convicted, could have landed him in prison for decades. Instead, he avoided prosecution altogether thanks to the efforts of then-U.S. attorney Alex Acosta, now Trump’s Secretary of Labor, who offered a sweeping, secret “non-prosecution” agreement that the Miami Herald dubbed “the deal of a lifetime.” In exchange for a guilty plea to a single state law count of soliciting a minor, Acosta extended immunity for related federal charges not only to Epstein, but also to unnamed “potential co-conspirators.” It was, in effect, a get-out-of-jail free card written for people who weren’t even parties to the agreement. Epstein, meanwhile, spent 13 months in a private wing of a Florida county jail, from which he was released six days a week to conduct business from a nearby office.
Since then, Acosta has publicly defended the deal, noting that it obligated Epstein to register as a sex offender. But the choice to extend immunity to unnamed co-conspirators invited obvious questions about whether anyone within Epstein’s circle of famous friends might have escaped scrutiny in the process. Although prosecutors have never named any of these people in Epstein charging documents, in related civil lawsuits, Epstein’s victims have alleged abuse at the hands of former Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, who would later serve on Epstein’s legal team; Prince Andrew, the Duke of York; and Trump himself.
“Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with,” the president told New York magazine in 2002, recounting their then-fifteen-year relationship. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” (Epstein was a member of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, but received a ban for sexually assaulting an underage girl, according to court documents filed by some of Epstein’s accusers.) In early November 2016, a woman who went by the pseudonym of Katie Johnson sued the then-Republican nominee, alleging that he raped her at an Epstein house party in 1994 when she was 13 years old. Trump, as he is wont to do, denied the allegations, and Johnson dropped the case after receiving death threats. Trump won the White House four days later.
This new indictment, which details a pyramid-scheme-like design Epstein employed to maintain a “steady supply” of underage girls, is the product of a decade-long fight waged by some of his victims to open up his plea agreement so they can have their day in court. Since his release from jail, Epstein has been able to leverage his money and power to avoid facing any other meaningful extrajudicial consequences for his actions. He reached undisclosed out-of-court settlements with nearly every one of his accusers who sued. Meanwhile, writing for the Daily Beast, journalist Vicky Ward claims that then-Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter excised aspects of a 2002 profile she wrote of Epstein relating to specific allegations that he had preyed on two underage sisters. The subject matter of today’s indictment occurred between 2002 and 2005, raising the possibility that some of his abuse could have been prevented if those claims had been published.
Last year, however, thanks in large part to the Herald’s reporting—and to renewed interest in Secretary Acosta’s career since his appointment to the Trump Cabinet—the case began to re-enter the public consciousness in earnest. In December, a bipartisan contingent of senators asked the Department of Justice to re-examine the circumstances under which the deal was struck. And in February, a Florida judge presiding over a long-running lawsuit brought by two of Epstein’s victims ruled that the plea agreement violated the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act, since Acosta failed to inform survivors of the terms of the deal before agreeing to it.
Over the weekend, agents executing search warrants at Epstein’s home found “thousands” of images of nude and partially nude girls, many of whom, according to court documents, appear to be underage. And during a press conference on Monday, prosecutors hinted that they aren’t done. “We want to hear from you,” said William Sweeney Jr., assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, urging survivors to contact the FBI as soon as possible.
Epstein is the only person actually named in Monday’s indictment. But in an unusual step, the U.S. attorney’s office has assigned the case to its public corruption unit, not to its sex crimes team, which suggests that the subject matter of this indictment might directly implicate people who occupy positions of power. Last time, they found a way to keep their names out of it. This time, without Acosta in charge, they might not be as fortunate.
Originally Appeared on GQ
