Secret Epstein documents reveal how prosecutors shamed teenage victims as ‘prostitutes’ and ‘drug addicts’
One 14-year-old girl who testified that she was forced to strip and massage the sex offender was chastised for sporting ‘skimpy’ outifts
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Two teenage girls who were allegedly subjected to sexual abuse by pedophile Jeffrey Epstein were separately branded as prostitutes and drug addicts by a prosecutor, newly unsealed documents reveal.
Approximately 175 pages of transcripts related to a 2006 grand jury investigation into allegations against Epstein were released to the public on Monday afternoon. The surprise unsealing comes months after Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, signed a bill in February allowing circuit judge Luis Delgado to execute the order.
Delgado noted that the details documented will be “outrageous to decent people.”
The jury heard evidence that Epstein, who took his own life while incarcerated in 2019, had raped girls as young as 14 years old at his mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, as per the transcripts.
Now, Palm Beach County prosecutors face a wall of disdain for grilling two of Epstein’s alleged young female victims, which saw the girls belittled and treated like criminals.
“It was just atrocious the way they handled it,” Spencer Kuvin, an attorney who represented one of the alleged underage girls who testified, told CBS as he read the transcripts.
Prosecutors called on an alleged Epstein victim, who was aged just 14 at the time her stepmother reported the teenager had received $300 to massage an older man on Palm Beach Island.
The girl said that the disgraced financier’s assistant asked her to strip to her underwear before entering the room and massaging Epstein. She then said she agreed to allow him to use a vibrator on her for an additional $100, documents reveal.
Prosecutors continued to probe the girl, who had turned 15 years old by the time of her testimony, and suggested that she “had a problem with drugs.”
They also asked the girl about her body piercing and a social media post where she lied about her age, and income and bragged about shoplifting. The teen testified that the post was “a joke.”
“You aware that you committed a crime?,” one of the prosecutors, Lanna Belohlavek, then asked the witness.
The girl responded: “Now I am. I didn’t know it was a crime when I was doing it. Now, I guess it’s prostitution or something like that.”
Another witness, an investigator, was asked whether the 14-year-old’s social media account included pictures of “her in skimpy attire, drinking alcohol and sexually provocative photos.”
“Yes, ma’am,” they responded.
The second of the two girls to testify before the grand jury said she was just 16 years old the first time she went to Epstein’s mansion. “He was well aware of my age from the very beginning,” she said.
Her 10th and final encounter occurred the day before her 18th birthday when Epstein initiated intercourse, she testified, adding she didn’t want to engage in the act, but neither asked him to stop.
“You understand that you in effect were committing prostitution yourself,” a prosecutor asked. “Yes,” the witness replied.
Epstein was arrested, booked and released on bond following the grand jury’s indictment on one charge of solicitation of prostitution.
In 2008, Epstein cut a deal with federal prosecutors to escape federal sex trafficking and rape charges. He instead pleaded guilty to the original, less serious state charges in the grand jury indictment.
He served 13 months in prison in a private wing of the Palm Beach County stockade and was granted daily work release.