Billionaire Connected to Trump, Professor Dershowitz, Bill Clinton Etc Arrested 2nd Time for Girls Sex Ring
By Ali Watkins
Investigators seized nude photographs of underage girls from the Manhattan townhouse of Jeffrey Epstein as part of a new investigation into allegations he exploited dozens of minors for sex, prosecutors revealed on Monday.
That detail was mentioned by federal prosecutors in on Monday as they unsealed an indictment charging Mr. Epstein with sex trafficking and made an appeal to other women who may have been abused by him as girls to come forward.
“They deserve their day in court and we are proud to stand up for them by bringing this indictment,” the United States attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, said.
Mr. Epstein, 66, is accused of engaging in sex acts with dozens of vulnerable minors, some as young as 14, during naked massage sessions, then paying them hundreds of dollars in cash. He also asked some of the girls to recruit other underage girls, the indictment said.
“In this way, Epstein created a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit in locations including New York and Palm Beach,” the indictment said.
Prosecutors said that from 2002 to 2005 Mr. Epstein and his employees engaged in sex trafficking, bringing underage girls to his Upper East Side mansion and his palatial compound in Palm Beach, Fla.
The indictment said Mr. Epstein used employees and assistants to arrange sexual rendezvous with at least one girl at his New York residence and two in Palm Beach. Mr. Epstein is accused of having them perform nude massages, at which point he would masturbate and touch their genitals with his hands or with sex toys.
The girls were paid hundreds of dollars in cash for each encounter and, once recruited, were asked to return to the mansion several times, where they were abused again, the indictment said. Mr. Epstein, the court documents read, “created a similar network of minor girls to victimize” in Florida.
“This conduct, as alleged, went on for years and involved dozens of young girls, some as young as 14,” Mr. Berman said. “The alleged behavior shocks the conscience.”
The charges unsealed Monday by the Southern District of New York signal a prosecution that some of his accusers have been waiting for years.
Accusations of pedophilia and sexual predation have dogged Mr. Epstein for decades. And now, in the #MeToo era, his case has been held up as a prime example of insulated, powerful men avoiding accountability.
For more than a decade, Mr. Epstein, a 66-year-old hedge fund manager, has avoided a lengthy prison sentence, largely because of a controversial plea agreement his lawyers struck with prosecutors in 2008. That deal shielded Mr. Epstein from federal charges in Florida.
Under the agreement, Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty to state prostitution charges and spent about a year in a Palm Beach jail. He was permitted to leave the facility six days a week for 12 hours a day to work.
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The agreement was negotiated in part by Alexander Acosta, a former federal prosecutor who is now President Trump’s secretary of labor.
Mr. Epstein’s social circle is filled with other high-profile connections, including former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew of Britain and a host of others.
In 2002, Mr. Trump described Mr. Epstein as “a terrific guy.”
“He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Mr. Trump told New York Magazine. “It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Mr. Epstein is accused of operating a sex trafficking scheme between 2002 and 2005 that, prosecutors say, involved dozens of underage girls, who were shuttled between his Upper East Side mansion and his palatial compound in Palm Beach, Fla.
Mr. Epstein’s mansion on the Upper East Side.CreditYana Paskova for The New York Times
Using employees and associates, prosecutors say, the financier preyed on vulnerable teenagers, luring them to his homes and then asking them to give him massages.
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| A COMPOSITE PHOTO OF FOUR UNDERAGE GIRLS ALLEGEDLY ABUSED BY JEFFREY EPSTEIN. (TWITTER/THE MIAMI HERALD |
The encounters would quickly escalate into sex acts, prosecutors say, with Mr. Epstein paying the girls hundreds of dollars in cash and encouraging them to recruit other girls.
The charges unsealed Monday mirror charges that federal prosecutors had prepared in Miami against Mr. Epstein more than a decade ago. In 2005, law enforcement officials there investigated Mr. Epstein after the parents of one of his underage accusers reported an incident to the police.
As first reported in The Miami Herald last year, prosecutors had prepared a 53-page indictment accusing Mr. Epstein of being a sexual predator. But those charges were shelved in 2008 after an eleventh-hour deal was reached between the United States attorney’s office in Miami and Mr. Epstein’s lawyers.
The plea agreement granted Mr. Epstein immunity from federal prosecution and let him plead guilty to two prostitution charges in state court. Federal prosecutors arranged for the plea deal to be kept a secret from Mr. Epstein’s accusers until it was finalized in court.
In April, a federal judge ruled that prosecutors had violated the law in offering the plea agreement without informing Mr. Epstein’s accusers. The Justice Department also opened a probe into the incident in February.
Ali Watkins is a reporter on the Metro Desk, covering courts and social services. Previously, she covered national security in Washington for The Times, BuzzFeed and McClatchy Newspapers. @AliWatkins
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