USA TODAY International Edition
Epstein plea deal wasn’t out of line
Acosta acted like other prosecutors
In the mid-2000s, a 53-page indictment was drafted, but never filed, against American financier Jeffrey Epstein. At the time, police in Palm Beach, Florida, had identified more than a dozen girls, as young as 14, who alleged sexual contact with him. One of the girls, Haley Robson, told police that she was paid to bring other girls to Epstein’s mansion for massages, before being pressured and paid to remove their clothes and submit to fondling and other invasive sexual contact.
Instead of prosecuting the case, the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Florida at the time — Alexander Acosta — offered a plea deal for two prostitution offenses, which carried a penalty of 13 months of incarceration with work release and a requirement to register as a sex offender. Epstein and his attorneys took the deal.
Acosta is now the Labor secretary for the Trump administration, while Epstein faces new sex trafficking of minors charges in New York. Top Democrats in Congress have publicly criticized Acosta’s plea deal, accusing him of mishandling the prosecution with an “unconscionable agreement” and demanding his resignation.
While the number of alleged victims and failure of Acosta to confer with them before the plea agreement are certainly causes for concern, the unfortunate reality is that the outcome of Epstein’s original indictment is not necessarily out of the ordinary for these types of cases.
The case of ‘Spyder’ man
For example, take the case of James Joseph, aka “Spyder.” He was arrested in 2009 in Missouri, after a woman in his company told police that he had taken her identification, that she was unable to leave, and that she and other women were told by him to engage in prostitution. Despite the allegations of sex trafficking, as part of a plea deal a federal judge in Missouri sentenced him to 10 months in jail for possessing a fake ID.
After Joseph took the plea deal, a probation officer realized he had an active warrant out of New York for assault against a woman named Natasha. Natasha alleged that in 2001, she was kidnapped, assaulted, raped and told that if she ever wanted to see her family again, she’d have to start having sex for money. She made her escape in New York, after being told she was going to be taken to China to be sold for sex.
New York authorities were notified that Joseph was in custody in Missouri, but they declined to extradite him. He was placed on federal probation and moved to Southern California, until “America’s Most Wanted” featured Natasha’s story. After being contacted by the show’s producers, U.S. marshals took Joseph into custody for the alleged crimes in New York, while cameras rolled. Again, despite the violence and severity of the sex trafficking allegations, he took a plea deal and was sentenced to less than 18 months in jail.
Five years later, Joseph finally faced charges for sex trafficking more than a half-dozen women in Contra Costa County, California. I testified as a sex trafficking expert witness in both his grand jury hearing and at his trial. Last year, Joseph was found guilty and sentenced to 174 years to life.
The reality is that sex trafficking laws are applied differently across jurisdictions and circumstances, while sex trafficking crimes are notoriously difficult to prove in a court of law. Victims are often erroneously perceived as consenting participants and have credibility gaps exploited during trial. As a result, prosecutors typically use a variety of tactics to obtain convictions without litigation, including charge bargaining and plea bargaining.
Similar to the Epstein outcome in the mid-2000s, convictions of sex traffickers are often secured through guilty pleas for tangentially related offenses.
Policing sex trafficking
More important, although the concept of sex trafficking has been recognized in the United States for over 100 years, our efforts to combat it have seen considerable change concentrated over the past two decades. Although the Trafficking Victims Protection Act was passed in 2000, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report — the single most authoritative source for empirical crime data in America — didn’t even publish data on sex trafficking until 2013.
Although some want to believe that Epstein’s affluence, prominence and political connections heavily influenced how the allegations against him were handled by Acosta in the mid-2000s, the reality is that the result of his first indictment is not necessarily out of the norm. This is not to say Epstein’s wealth and stature did not affect the outcome of his previous case or will not affect the outcome of his current case, but it isn’t as much of a gulf as people are being led to believe.
Evidence-based reform is needed to better protect victims, prevent sex trafficking crimes and facilitate the prosecution of offenders.
No matter where they fall on the socioeconomic spectrum or how powerful they may be, persons who consume commercial sex services with juveniles are unlikely to be convicted of sex trafficking. In fact, given the level of legal impunity they typically enjoy, they have become emboldened. Regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, I think we can all agree this needs to change.
Instead of playing partisan politics, legislators must invest the time and resources needed to combat sex trafficking in a more meaningful way, first by analyzing and addressing the barriers to successful prosecution.