Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Suit: Epstein abused girls until 2018
Virgin Islands AG says financier kept database of victims
The attorney general of the Virgin Islands says the financier kept a database of his victims in the Caribbean.
New evidence shows Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused and trafficked hundreds of young women and girls on his private Caribbean island as recently as 2018, significantly expanding the scope of his alleged conduct, a top law enforcement official said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
Epstein, a wealthy financier who died by suicide in a Manhattan jail last year, was bringing girls as young as 11 and 12 to his secluded estate in the Virgin Islands, known as Little St. James, and kept a computerized database to track the availability and movements of women and girls, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit, which was filed by Denise George, attorney general of the Virgin Islands, broadened the dimensions of the wrongdoing in which Epstein was said to have engaged. He had been charged by Manhattan prosecutors in July with sexually exploiting dozens of women and girls in New York and Florida, but they did not point to any actions beyond 2005.
In August, Epstein hanged himself at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he was being held awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges. The circumstances surrounding his death are now the subject of at least three federal investigations.
In the weeks before Epstein killed himself, he and his lawyers vigorously denied the criminal charges. His lawyers had previously said he had been law-abiding since his 2008 conviction in Florida for solicitation.
The new accusations argue that Epstein ran a decadeslong sex trafficking scheme that had a primary nexus in the Virgin Islands.
Epstein used a ring of associates to rotate the women and girls in and out of sexual servitude, using fraudulent modeling visas to transport them across state lines and international borders, the lawsuit said. He tracked their availability and proximity using the database, court documents said.
In one instance, according to the lawsuit, one young girl attempted to swim off Epstein’s island and escape after she was forced to engage in sex acts with one of his co-conspirators.
The girl was found and held hostage on Epstein’s island after he confiscated her passport, the suit said.