A federal judge issued an order to publicly release dozens of documents naming disgraced financier's victims and associates in 2024.
New York Judge Loretta A. Preska issued the order on Monday, which is the latest filing in a settled case by Virginia Roberts Giuffre. She is an American woman who claimed that Epstein sexually abused her when she was a minor and that Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's former girlfriend and longtime accomplice, aided in the abuse.
Jeffrey Eptein's Victims and Associates
In 2019, Epstein was indicted on federal charges of operating a sex trafficking ring in which he allegedly sexually abused dozens of underage girls. The disgraced financier later died by suicide while he was in jail awaiting trial.
New York prosecutors indicted Maxwell on sex trafficking charges involving multiple victims and she was convicted last year. While Giuffre's 2015 defamation lawsuit was settled in 2017 and placed under a protective order, parts have been unsealed since then.
The development came as Giuffre, Maxwell, and several third-party figures have argued about what should and should not be released to the public. The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in August 2019 unsealed hundreds of pages of documents a day before Epstein died in prison, as per CNN.
The appeals court later remanded the case back to the district court to review the documents individually and determine what could be unsealed. In July 2020, Judge Preska ruled for the unsealing of more documents, including Maxwell's 2016 deposition related to the lawsuit and emails and depositions by others.
Many of the alleged victims gave public interviews and have already been identified by the media. Additionally, Preska's Monday order noted that others "did not raise an objection" to the unsealing of the documents.
The judge also gives Jane and John Does 14 days to appeal before the parties confer and publicly release the documents. On the other hand, it is unclear how many of Epstein's associates have been investigated for alleged wrongdoing or will face such probes.
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Public Release of Documents
The judge in the case set the release of the documents for Jan. 1. However, the documents did not clarify why a certain individual became associated with Giuffre's lawsuit, but it is expected that more than 150 people will be identified, according to ABC News.
Prosecutors said that Epstein and Maxwell worked together from 1994 to 2004 to identify girls, groom them, and entice them to travel and transport them to the former's properties in New York, Florida, New Mexico, and elsewhere.
With the release of the documents, the public is expected to learn more about Johanna Sjoberg, who claimed that Britain's Prince Andrew groped her when she sat on his knee at a party at Epstein's New York mansion.
On the other hand, records mentioning victim Haley Robson and Giuffre's father, Sky Roberts, will also be included in the document release. The judge noted that additional parties in the soon-to-be-unveiled documents had testified at Maxwell's trial in 2021 or saw portions of their depositions released previously, said the Daily Beast.
