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The Pressure on Epstein’s Prosecutors to Charge Others Just Got Higher

Pressure on Epstein Prosecutors to Charge Others Just Got Higher

(Bloomberg) -- The women who stood up in court on Tuesday, one after another, to tell their stories of sexual assault by Jeffrey Epstein faced the judge, but their real audience may have been the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, seated behind them in the front row.

If U.S. District Judge Richard Berman meant to increase the already intense pressure on him to bring charges against those suspected of conspiring with Epstein to traffic in children for sex, he could scarcely have done better than to invite the women to testify.

Many of them expressed shock and bitterness at being twice deprived of the chance to confront Epstein in court, most recently after the disgraced financier hanged himself in his jail cell this month. And more than one condemned the first occasion, when he cut a sweetheart deal with the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami a decade ago and escaped federal prosecution by pleading guilty to lesser state charges. He spent a little over a year in prison, released daily to run money for his wealthy clients.

The Pressure on Epstein’s Prosecutors to Charge Others Just Got Higher

“The government is in the hot seat, and this just turned up the temperature,” said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles and a professor at Loyola Law School. “That’s exactly why these women were in court. They didn’t think justice had been done in the first place.”

Now, Levenson said, “everyone is trying to figure out how do we get justice from a dead man and everyone who was associated with him.”

Prosecutors said in court on Tuesday that their investigation is continuing and that Epstein’s death wouldn’t stop them from bringing additional charges. A spokesman for U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman (no relation to the judge) declined to comment further.

The formal purpose of the hearing was to drop the charges against Epstein, standard procedure when a defendant dies during a prosecution. But the forum Judge Berman gave the accusers transformed the proceedings, as the women approached a podium in the packed courtroom, far bigger than his usual venue.

There they described how Epstein and his alleged enablers recruited and scheduled “massage” sessions with a series of underage, unsuspecting victims. They spoke of assaults that made them abandon careers, struggle with intimate relationships and even contemplate suicide.

“I have suffered and he has won,” said Chauntae Davies, referring to Epstein’s escape from his accusers by suicide.

And they called out by name two people they said had played key roles in the alleged predation, pleading with prosecutors to continue pursuing Epstein’s associates. One they cited was his longtime friend Ghislaine Maxwell, the other a former employee named Sarah Kellen.

Several said Maxwell introduced them to a world of international travel, education they wouldn’t have attained and a sense of family they longed for. Davies said Kellen knocked on her door late one night when she was staying on Epstein’s private island and told her Epstein was ready for another massage. A rape followed, she said.

Jeffrey Pagliuca, a lawyer who has represented Maxwell in civil proceedings over allegations of sexual abuse, didn’t respond to a message seeking comment. Kellen, who now goes by a different name, couldn’t be reached at any of the telephone numbers listed for her.

Legal experts say such a detailed public airing practically demands that someone be held accountable, particularly after the Florida deal, when victims weren’t told of the agreement in advance and had no opportunity to confront Epstein in court -- an arrangement later determined to have violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act.

The case against Epstein was revived after a series of stories in the Miami Herald late last year raised questions about the Florida deal. Epstein, 66, was arrested in July, denied bail as a flight risk and a threat to the community and, a few days later, found unconscious in his jail cell with marks on his neck and placed on suicide watch. Later removed from suicide watch, he was found dead in his cell on Aug. 10.

Epstein pleaded not guilty last month, and in court on Tuesday his lawyers fought on. Reid Weingarten asked the judge to investigate his client’s death -- already the subject of several Justice Department probes.

Adding to the pressure on prosecutors is a palisade of high-powered lawyers representing accusers, including Gloria Allred, David Boies and Brad Edwards, all seated in the courtroom Tuesday. Allred, who represents at least five women who say Epstein sexually assaulted them as teenagers, said Tuesday after court that several of her clients have recently been interviewed by investigators and provided new evidence.

The U.S. attorney’s office in New York “doesn’t feel any need to own or acknowledge what happened in the Florida case,” said Dan Richman, a veteran of the New York office who now teaches at Columbia Law School. “But what happened there, along with everything that transpired in this case, helps power the government’s commitment to go forward.”

Prosecutors have already “gone out of their way to make clear” they will aggressively pursue the case, including any accomplices and the possibility of civil forfeiture to unlock money for victims, said Mimi Rocah, a former federal prosecutor in New York who is now a criminal-justice fellow at Pace University’s law school. “That has been, and is, their intention all along.”

Even so, the hearing ratcheted up expectations of prosecutor Berman’s office, in the Southern District of New York.

“The pressure really comes from public opinion at this point, and the hearing certainly added to that,” said Rebecca Roiphe, a former prosecutor who is now a professor at New York Law School. “That pressure is enormous, and I’d be really surprised if the Southern District didn’t bring an indictment relatively soon.”

--With assistance from Chris Dolmetsch, Gerald Porter Jr. and David Voreacos.

To contact the reporters on this story: Christian Berthelsen in New York at cberthelsen1@bloomberg.net;Patricia Hurtado in Federal Court in Manhattan at pathurtado@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter Jeffrey

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