The big Epstein stink
The decline of the internet has had one positive result, however, as I’ve turned back to an older technology: books. When the Jeffrey Epstein case became news again earlier this summer, I bought a copy of Julie Brown’s Perversion of Justice. Brown, a reporter at the Miami Herald, tells the story of Epstein’s offending, which was relentless and repetitive. A teenage girl would hear from a schoolfriend that she could make a few hundred dollars by “giving an older guy a massage”. She would be taken to Epstein’s house, where the massage would culminate in her sexual assault. Full of shame, she wouldn’t tell her parents but would instead be groomed by Epstein, with money and gifts and other support, to recruit more girls. Like many sex offenders, Epstein was obsessive: he liked white, blonde 14-year-olds, and would sometimes have three different girls visit him in a single day.
In the late 2000s, the local Florida cops were sure they had enough evidence to prosecute Epstein for rape, but the prosecutors offered him an extremely lenient plea deal instead, with minimal jail time. Brown makes a good case that Epstein even had teenagers visit him at his office when he was on “work release” from prison. He hired private investigators to intimidate both his victims and anyone who represented them. The passport details of guests flown to his private island are held by the US government (Donald Trump said on 28 July that he never had the “privilege” of visiting Little Saint James), but have never been released
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