Epstein on child sex ring charges

IN A startling reversal of fortune, billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein was charged yesterday with sexually abusing dozens of underage girls in a case brought more than a decade after he secretly cut a deal with federal prosecutors to dispose of nearly identical allegations.

The 66-year-old hedge fund manager who once socialised with some of the world’s most powerful people was charged in a newly unsealed federal indictment with sex trafficking and conspiracy during the early 2000s. He could get up to 45 years in prison if convicted.

The case sets the stage for another #MeToo-era trial fraught with questions of wealth and influence.

Epstein’s powerful friends have included US President Donald Trump, former US president Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew.

Prosecutors said the evidence against Epstein included a “vast trove” of lewd photographs of young women or girls found in a weekend search of his New York mansion.

Authorities also found papers and phone records corroborating the alleged crimes, and a massage room set up the way accusers said it appeared, prosecutors said.

Epstein, who was arrested on Saturday, yesterday pleaded not guilty. He was jailed for a bail hearing next Monday.

His lawyers argued that the sex-crime allegations had been settled in 2008 with a plea agreement in Florida that was overseen by Alexander Acosta, who was the US attorney in Miami at the time and is now Mr Trump’s labour secretary.

“This is ancient stuff,” Epstein attorney Reid Weingarten said, calling the case a “redo” by the government.

But US Attorney Geoffrey Berman of New York said the non-prosecution agreement that spared Epstein a heavy prison sentence a decade ago was binding only on federal prosecutors in Florida.

The alleged victims “deserve their day in court,” Mr Berman said. “We are proud to be standing up for them by bringing this indictment.”

Epstein was accused of paying underage girls for massages and then molesting them at his homes in Palm Beach, Florida and New York from 2002 to 2005.

He “intentionally sought out minors”, prosecutors said, and paid victims to recruit additional girls, creating “a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit”.

(THE ALLEGED VICTIMS) DESERVE THEIR DAY IN COURT. WE ARE PROUD TO BE STANDING UP FOR THEM US ATTORNEY GEOFFREY BERMAN