New information about the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking criminal case was revealed this week when court documents from a previous civil defamation lawsuit involving one of his victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, was unsealed. The nearly 2,000 pages of court documents were released just days before authorities confirmed that Epstein died by suicide in Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.
Giuffre filed the defamation suit specifically against Epstein’s long-time partner, British socialite Guislane Maxwell, who allegedly called Giuffre a liar and denied all the accusations made against her and Epstein. In addition, Giuffre said that she was sexually abused by “numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister and other world leaders,” starting in 2000 when she was 16-years-old. Maxwell eventually settled the case, but the terms of the settlement are currently unknown, CNBC reports.
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Among the new details are new accusations of abuse against several powerful and influential men, including former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, 71, former Maine Senator George Mitchell, 85, Hyatt hotels magnate Tom Pritzker, 69, prominent hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, 62, late scientist Marvin Minsky, and modeling scout Jean-Luc Brunel. All the men who were accused have issued statements denying the allegations.
Virginia Giuffre’s lawyer, David Boies, explained that the purpose of the civil lawsuit was to make up for the criminal justice system’s failure to prosecute Epstein and others when previously provided the opportunity.
“What the lawsuit was about is this massive sex trafficking operation which went on for years, right in front of everybody — and the way in which every institution in our society failed these girls. The courts failed them, the prosecutors failed them, the lawyers failed them, the media failed them — everyone in our system failed them,” said Boies.
The unsealing of the civil court case documents came about due to ongoing investigative work from journalist Julie K. Brown and The Miami Herald, who had previously published an exhaustive piece in November 2018 outlining the sinister world of Epstein’s sex trafficking that led to a shockingly lenient 13 month jail sentence in 2008.
The Miami Herald also reports that among the new testimony revealed in the documents is that of a 15-year-old Swedish victim who was taken to Epstein’s private island and orderd to have sex with him and others under the threat of physical violence from Epstein and alleged madam Guislaine Maxwell. The pair of men also apparently seized the victim’s passport to keep her on the island, according to a sworn statement from one Epstein’s butlers. The butler, Rinaldo Rizzo, also worked for Dubin and his wife.
While nearly 2,000 documents were unsealed on Friday, according to Bloomberg the appeals panel has also ordered a lower court judge to analyze other documents before making them public, suggesting that more details about the case are still to come.