The Liars Behind The Epstein Client List (Part 1)
Next month, Jeffrey Epstein will have been dead for six years, but his ghost continues to haunt the wealthy and the powerful, especially Donald Trump. Epstein was, unquestionably, a prolific sex offender, but the claim that he facilitated the sexual abuse of underage girls by the high and mighty has no basis in fact. So what is the truth?
On June 30, 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to procuring an underage girl for prostitution. Although he was given an eighteen month sentence and required to register as a sex offender, this sentence has been attacked as extraordinarily lenient, especially when it was revealed that he was in effect at liberty most of the time, being granted “work release” and sleeping in a private wing of the Palm Beach County Stockade.
Epstein had in fact procured many, many girls through third parties to give him massages. These third parties included Ghislaine Maxwell and the teenage Viriginia Roberts. There was no suggestion at the time of his conviction that he had ever engaged in actual sex with these girls although he was massaged naked, and some of them said they had been required to go topless. His youngest victims - and yes, we may call them that - were fourteen. The age of consent in Florida is a hefty eighteen, but most people find the idea of any kind of consensual sexual relationship of girls that age with men in their fifties to be creepy if not repulsive.
Epstein was arrested only after a very lengthy investigation which had been prompted by a complaint in March 2005 from a woman who found her 14 year old stepdaughter in possession of a large sum of money.
It would later come to light that a far more serious allegation had been made against Epstein as long ago as 1996; the complainant was a young fine artist named Maria Farmer; she reported him to both the police in New York and the FBI. She claimed that she and her younger sister had been propositioned by both Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. By their very nature, Farmer’s allegations roped in other, extremely wealthy people. Somewhat surprisingly, no action was taken although a contemporaneous record was made, so unlike some of Epstein’s later accusers, there can be no doubt that she actually met Epstein and something happened between them - whatever that was.
On February 27, 2011, the London Daily Mail (Sunday edition) published an in-depth interview with a woman said to be Virginia Roberts. She had actually married Robert Giuffre in 2002 after a whirlwind romance, but although her married name is not given in this interview, it is made clear she had married so on this point at least, there is no deception. The same cannot be said of anything she would claim later.
In this interview, she would claim to have met Prince Andrew at the London home of Ghislaine Maxwell and to have asked Epstein to take a photograph of her with him “to show my Mom”. There are several edits of this now notorious photograph. Some people - including two highly intelligent titled ladies - claim it is a fake. Here, we will assume it is genuine.
Virginia Giuffre said further that Ghislaine Maxwell bought her a £5,000 bag and lots of other things. Then, suddenly, she realised she was a victim. Some victim. Having been a faithful servant of Jeffrey Epstein, she would break his trust on a solo visit to Thailand where she met Robert Giuffre.
Her later claims include a television interview in which she said she had been sexually abused by Prince Andrew. No one in the mainstream media sought to undermine or even to question this absurd claim, though they must have been aware of the February 2011 interview which totally contradicts it.
Andrew would go on to give what has been called a car crash interview with the BBC in which he claimed he had never met - or could not remember meeting - her. It was almost as if his handlers had set out to sabotage him.
Giuffre went on to sue him, and again his behaviour was suspect before settling out-of-court for a substantial sum though apparently far less than the reputed $12 million.
This was far from the only lawsuit an Epstein accuser would file against a public person, but when Giuffre sued Alan Dershowitz, she came unstuck.
She had accused him of having sex with her (as a trafficking victim) on several occasions. This allegation was first made in civil litigation, the pleadings of which were leaked deliberately. Documents of this nature are privileged and such allegations are not infrequently leaked (especially in sexual abuse claims) in order to tarnish the name of the defendant and hasten a financial settlement.
Suing Dershowitz was a big mistake. Although he had at one stage been Epstein’s lawyer, the claim that he had abused underage girls at any time was easily debunked because like the falsely accused Brett Kavanaugh, he appears to have documented every day of his existance from an early age, something that is not entirely unexpected of a man who has such a busy life as an appellate lawyer, lecturer, TV pundit, occasional newspaper columnist and prolific author.
Having made the allegation, Giuffre then had to disclose documents that supported her case; she had none, so what did she do? She claimed that due to the turmoil in her teen years she may or might or quite possibly did, confuse him with someone else, then withdrew the allegation.
Dershowitz had previously said he wanted to see her in prison but now accepted her apology magnanimously.
(To Part 2)