Epstein victims sue FBI for ‘failing to do job’

A DOZEN victims of Jeffrey Epstein have sued the FBI, accusing the agency of failing adequately to investigate allegations against the accused sex offender.

The 12 complainants, all anonymised as “Jane Doe”, claim the United States’s l eading national l aw enforcement agency “failed to adequately investigate the abuse” and ignored the financier’s sexual interest in under-age girls.

The lawsuit filed in a New York federal court said: “For over two decades, the Federal Bureau of Investigation permitted Jeffrey Epstein to sex-traffic and sexually abuse scores of children and young women by failing to do the job the American people expected of it.

“As a result of the continued failures of the FBI, Jane Does 1-12 bring this lawsuit to get to the bottom – once and for all – of the FBI’S role in Epstein’s criminal sex-trafficking ring.”

The lawsuit follows the unsealing last month of court documents containing the i dentities of people l i nked to Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, his lover.

Included in the documents, which contained almost 1,000 pages of depositions and statements, were Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, the former US presidents, who have not been accused of any wrongdoing in the case.

The disclosure was part of a defamation proceeding between Maxwell, jailed in 2022 for 20 years, and Virginia Giuffre, a plaintiff against the duo.

Maxwell and Epstein were a couple in the early 1990s before becoming professional collaborators and accomplices in sex crimes for almost three decades.

Epstein, a financier with a powerful network in the US and abroad, was accused of raping girls, but his 2019 suicide by hanging in a New York prison halted his prosecution.

The suit claims that between 1996 and 2006, the FBI continued to receive reports, complaints and tips concerning the illegal sex trafficking of women and under-age minors, sex abuse and human rights violations committed by Epstein and his associates.

“In March of 2005, the FBI was alerted by the Palm Beach Police Department of child prostitution. In fact, there was a 14-year-old girl who was solicited to Epstein’s mansion for sex,” it read.

The agency, the suit claims, didn’t open an investigation until a year later.

The suit said: “The gross negligence committed by the FBI resulted in the continued sexual abuse of Jane Does 1-12 at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein.”

The FBI has not responded to the lawsuit as yet.

‘For over two decades, the FBI permitted Epstein to sex-traffic and sexually abuse scores of children’