‘John Doe’ Wants to Keep Documents Sealed in Epstein Suit
‘John Doe’ Asks Judge To Keep Documents Sealed In Epstein Suit
(Bloomberg) -- The Jeffrey Epstein saga has a “John Doe” now.
An anonymous man on Tuesday urged a New York judge to permanently keep secret many of the remaining sealed documents in a defamation lawsuit filed by one of Epstein’s alleged victims, Virginia Giuffre, against the late money manager’s confidante, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.
The man doesn’t explain why he believes his name may appear in the documents, or in what context, but he fears his reputation may be damaged by “unproven allegations of impropriety.”
Hundreds of pages of sealed documents in the 2015 case were already made public by an appeals court on Aug. 9, revealing for the first time unsubstantiated claims that Epstein had sent Giuffre to have sex with well-known people when she was a girl, including former U.S. Senator George Mitchell and asset manager Glenn Dubin. The men denied the allegations.
Now, two subsets of additional sealed documents are due to be analyzed by a judge who’ll decide if they should also be made public. Doe said he hadn’t been notified that his name appears in the sealed documents. A hearing on the matter is set for Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan.
“As a non-party to these proceedings, Doe lacks specific knowledge about the contents of the sealed materials,” his lawyers wrote. “But it is clear that these materials implicate the privacy and reputational interests of many persons other than the two primary parties to this action, Giuffre and Maxwell.”
In her 2015 lawsuit, Giuffre claimed that Maxwell, daughter of the late British publisher Robert Maxwell, defamed her by publicly calling her a liar. She claims that Epstein sexually abused her for two years starting in 2000, when she was 16, and that Maxwell had recruited her and joined in the abuse.
Maxwell has long denied the allegations and settled the defamation case. She also fought unsuccessfully to stop any of the sealed documents from being made public. Less than 24 hours after the first set of documents was unsealed, Epstein killed himself in jail while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
While some women have publicly detailed their stories of sexual abuse and trafficking, others have remained anonymous as “Jane Does.”
Doe claims if the papers are unsealed, the judge should order the redaction of names and other identifying information of the non-parties to avoid sensationalist reporting by the media, who generally can’t be sued for printing what appears in court documents.
“Providing the media more unsubstantiated allegations, never leveled outside of the cloak of the litigation privilege, only serves to continue this cycle of irresponsible, sensationalist reporting,” Doe’s filing said.
The case is Giuffre v. Maxwell, 15-cv-07433, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
To contact the reporter on this story: Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider
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