Dozens of victims... a long term continual pattern of pedophile behavior. This is not about a single incident with "a hooker who happened to be under age".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein#Solicitation_of_prostitution
In March 2005, a woman contacted
Palm Beach police and alleged her 14-year-old daughter had been taken to Jeffrey Epstein's mansion by an older girl and paid $300 after stripping and massaging him.
[11] She had undressed, but left on her underwear.
[20]
Police started an 11-month undercover investigation of Epstein, followed by a search of his home. Subsequently, they alleged that Epstein had paid several escorts to perform sexual acts on him.
Interviews with five alleged victims and seventeen witnesses under oath, a high-school transcript and other items they found in Epstein's trash and home allegedly showed that some girls were under 18.
[21] A search of Epstein's home found large numbers of photos of girls throughout the house, some of whom had been interviewed earlier by the police.[20] Papers filed in 2006 state that Epstein installed concealed cameras in numerous places in his property to record the rape of sexually trafficked minors by prominent people for criminal purposes such as
blackmail.
[22]
Epstein had set up a system of young women recruiting other women for his massage services.
[11] Two housekeepers stated to the police that Epstein would receive "massages" every day whenever he stayed in Palm Beach.
[20] In May 2006, Palm Beach police filed a probable cause affidavit saying that Epstein should be charged with four counts of unlawful sex with minors and one molestation count.
[20] His team of lawyers included
Gerald Lefcourt,
Alan Dershowitz and later
Ken Starr.
[11] Epstein passed a
lie detector test in which he was asked whether he knew of the underage status of the girls—although lie detector tests are generally not admissible in a court of law.
[23][24]
Instead of following police recommendation, the prosecutors considered the evidence weak
[23] and presented it to a
grand jury. Former chief of Palm Beach police Michael Reiter later wrote to State Attorney Barry Krischer to complain of the state's "highly unusual" conduct and asked him to remove himself from the case.
[11] The grand jury returned only a single charge of felony solicitation of prostitution,
[25] to which Epstein pleaded not guilty in August 2006.
[26]
In June 2008, after pleading guilty to a single state charge of soliciting prostitution from
girls as young as 14,
[27] Epstein began serving an 18-month sentence. He served 13 months, and upon release became a registered sex offender.
[3][28] There is widespread controversy and suspicion that Epstein got off lightly.
[29]
After the accusations became public, several parties returned donations they had received from Epstein, including
Eliot Spitzer,
Bill Richardson,
[12] and the Palm Beach Police Department.
[21] Harvard announced that it would not return any money.
[12] A range of charitable donations Epstein had made financing children's education were also brought into question.
[27]
On June 18, 2010, Epstein's former butler, Alfredo Rodriguez, was sentenced to 18 months in jail for trying to sell a journal that he said recorded Epstein's activities. FBI Special Agent Christina Pryor reviewed the material and agreed it was information "that would have been extremely useful in investigating and prosecuting the case, including names and contact information of material witnesses and additional victims."
[30][31] Epstein allegedly lent girls to powerful people to ingratiate himself with them and also to get possible blackmail information.
[29]
In January 2015, a 31-year-old American woman, Virginia Roberts, alleged in a sworn affidavit that at the age of 17, she had been employed by Epstein as a sex slave and he
trafficked her to several people, including
Prince Andrew and Harvard Law Professor
Alan Dershowitz. She claimed that Epstein and others had physically and sexually abused her.
[32]
She alleged that the
FBI may have been involved in a cover-up.
[33] Roberts said she served as Epstein's sex slave from 1999 to 2002, recruiting other girls.
[34] Prince Andrew, Epstein and Dershowitz all deny having sex with Roberts, and Dershowitz is taking legal action over the allegations.
[35][36][37] A diary purported to belong to Roberts was published online.
[38][39]
The
BBC television series
Panorama planned an investigation of the scandal.
[40] As of early 2015 no law court had tested these claims.
[41]
On April 7, 2015, Judge
Kenneth Marra ruled that the allegations made by Roberts against Prince Andrew had no bearing on the aim of the lawsuit to reopen Epstein's non-prosecution agreement and should be struck from the record.
[42] Judge Marra made no ruling as to whether claims by Roberts are true or false.
[43] Marra specifically stated that Roberts may later give evidence when the case comes to court.
[44]
Civil lawsuits
On February 6, 2008, an anonymous Virginia woman filed a $50 million civil lawsuit
[45] in federal court against Epstein, alleging that when she was a 16-year-old minor in 2004–2005, she was "recruited to give Epstein a massage." She claims she was taken to his mansion, where he exposed himself and had sexual intercourse with her, and paid her $200 immediately afterward.
[25] A similar $50 million suit was filed by a different woman in March 2008, who was represented by the same lawyer.
[46] Several of these lawsuits were dismissed, and all other lawsuits were settled out of court.
[47] Epstein has so far made 17 out-of-court settlements, and some cases are ongoing.[48] A December 30, 2014 federal civil suit was filed in Florida against the United States for violations of the
Crime Victims' Rights Act in agreeing to the 2008 plea; it accuses Dershowitz of sexually abusing a minor provided by Epstein.
[49] (See
Two Jane Does v. United States.) The allegations against Dershowitz were stricken by the judge and eliminated from the case however, after Dershowitz's attorney argued that they were baseless.
[50] A court document alleges that Epstein ran a “sexual abuse ring”, and lent underage girls to “prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known prime minister, and other world leaders.”
[51]
