By Servet Gunerigok
WASHINGTON (AA) – A second set of court documents related to the disgraced US financier Jeffery Epstein’s sexual abuse were made public on Thursday.
Nineteen unsealed documents totaling more than 300 pages are parts of a civil defamation suit filed by Virginia Giuffre, a US woman who alleged Epstein sexually abused her as a minor. She also accused Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's former girlfriend, of playing a role in facilitating the abuse.
Unsealed on Wednesday, the first set of court documents in Epstein's case, involving allegations of sex trafficking of minors, and pedophilia, revealed names like former US presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, and other celebrities.
Thursday's documents released by a Manhattan federal court, in particular, include a deposition from Palm Beach Detective Joseph Recarey, which details the process through which Epstein and Maxwell find and recruit girls “to perform massages and work at Epstein’s home.”
Recarey had reportedly spoken to some 30-33 girls recruited by Maxwell.
Separately, Giuffre also claimed in an email that former President Bill Clinton threatened Vanity Fair magazine not to publish “sex-trafficking” articles related to Epstein.
- Figures mentioned in Epstein's documents
In the documents released on Wednesday, in addition to Andrew, Clinton, and Trump, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, former US Vice President Al Gore, actor Kevin Spacey, singer Michael Jackson, magician David Copperfield, lawyer Alan Dershowitz, and former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson were also mentioned.
The files also reveal Johanna Sjoberg's testimony, in which she claims that she was harassed by Prince Andrew at Epstein's Manhattan apartment in 2001. Prince Andrew denies the harassment allegation.
According to the documents, Sjoberg accused Bill Clinton of having an interest in "likes them young, referring to girls," and communicated with Trump before going to Epstein's locations in New Jersey.
- Jeffrey Epstein Case
Epstein committed suicide in his cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
He was being held in a federal lock-up in Manhattan while facing one count of sex trafficking minors, which carries a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, and another count of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minors, which carries a maximum sentence of five years.
Epstein allegedly committed the crimes at his Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida properties, where he abused dozens of underage girls, some as young as 14, and conspired to commit sex trafficking, according to prosecutors.
Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's girlfriend, was found guilty in a trial where she was accused of aiding Epstein's illegal activities in luring underage girls into prostitution for some wealthy individuals, celebrities, and government officials.
Meanwhile, one of Epstein's victims, Virginia Giuffre, filed a lawsuit in New York in 2021, alleging that Prince Andrew sexually abused her when she was 17 in New York and London. Giuffre claimed that the prince, knowing she was underage, sexually harassed her without her consent.