I could happily live the rest of my life without being reminded of Jeffrey Epstein, his years-long exploitation of young women or the many famous male moths who were drawn to the billionaire’s flame. I’m sure his emotionally scarred victims wish they could, too.
Recent news developments, unfortunately, make the sordid Epstein saga impossible to avoid. And maybe that’s as it should be, because the lives of so many young women were tarnished by a vile, lecherous creep and his partner who delighted in not just abusing underage girls but using them to lure high-profile figures into his orbit.
Last week, two more sets of documents related to Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 defamation lawsuit against Epstein’s longtime girlfriend and procurer Ghislaine Maxwell were released on the order of U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska. The case was settled in 2017, but many of the documents remained under seal until now.
Indeed, dozens of names appear in the files: Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Ron Burkle, David Copperfield, Richard Branson, Stephen Hawking, Noam Chomsky, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
One explosive allegation in the new documents concerns Epstein’s mentor and chief investor, the retail magnate Leslie Wexner. In a 2016 deposition, Giuffre alleged that she was trafficked to Wexner. Wexner has not been charged with a crime, and he has not responded to Tuesday’s revelations.
We’ve already heard bits and pieces of most of what’s in the documents about the predatory Epstein, who was smitten with intellectuals and scientists, collected rich and powerful people as acquaintances, and apparently liked to drop names.
In testimony, one of his victims described this predilection: During sexual massages, “he would be on the phone a lot at that time, and one time he said, ‘Oh, that was Leonardo’ or ‘That was Cate Blanchett’ or ‘Bruce Willis.’ That kind of thing.”
Meanwhile, Maxwell — who was convicted in December 2021 of felonies including the sex trafficking of a minor and sentenced to 20 years — resides in a Florida low-security prison. According to a recent report by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, her accommodations are far less pleasant than Epstein’s New York brownstone, his private Caribbean island, his sprawling New Mexico ranch or the lavish home in New Hampshire where she hid until her arrest in July 2020.
The report said inmates at the Federal Correctional Institution Tallahassee were served moldy bread, and inspectors found spoiled vegetables and bug-infested cereal in the storeroom.
That is probably cold comfort to Epstein’s victims, including Giuffre, who was recruited by Maxwell in 2000, when she was a 16-year-old locker-room attendant at Mar-a-Lago. For three years, Giuffre has testified, she was kept as a “sex slave,” flown around the world and “lent out” to high-profile men for sex.
“Epstein’s purposes in ‘lending’ Jane Doe (along with other young girls) to such powerful people were to ingratiate himself with them … as well as to obtain potential blackmail information,” her attorneys claimed.
After Epstein killed himself in August 2019 in a New York federal jail cell while awaiting trial, his estate created a victim compensation fund. Its administrator reported in 2021 that the fund had paid more than $121 million to at least 135 of the 225 or so people who made claims.
While Epstein’s and Maxwell’s names will eventually fade — blessedly — from the public discourse, we should never forget the courage it took for Giuffre and others to bring them to justice.
“The pain you have caused me is almost indescribable,” Giuffre wrote in the victim impact statement at Maxwell’s sentencing. “Nightmares wake me at all hours. In those dreams, I relive the awful things you and others did to me and the things you forced me to do.”
But she added, “Despite you, I have grown into a woman who tries to do good in the world — a woman who, on her best days, feels like she is making a difference.”
Robin Abcarian is an opinion columnist at the Los Angeles Times.
