A 15-year-old victim of Jeffrey Epstein was summoned one day to his Palm Beach mansion, she said, introduced to one of his “special” friends and instructed to get naked and give the mysterious bald man a massage.
“Make sure our friend has a really good time,” Epstein’s criminal accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly told her.
The man then raped her, said the victim, who never learned his name. Afterward, she received about $1,000 in cash and Maxwell suggested she’d be introduced to other Epstein associates in the future.
Her disturbing account is one of more than a dozen potentially credible FBI interviews CNN reviewed in the Department of Justice’s Epstein files release in which victims told authorities the financier or Maxwell facilitated sexual encounters with his rich and powerful friends. They named more than a half dozen other men, including Wall Street executives, a former senator, a wealthy psychiatrist and a film producer.
To date, only Epstein and Maxwell have been charged in the US with sex trafficking in his case, and FBI Director Kash Patel hassaidthere’s “no credible information” that Epstein trafficked his victims to others.
But CNN found that the victims’ allegations are also echoed in the files by witnesses who described seeing men at Epstein’s properties with minors. One former staffersaidhe observed an unnamed man on Epstein’s Caribbean island with naked girls who looked under 18, while a woman who had traveled with Epstein described how his associate Jean Luc Brunel – a French modeling agent laterarrestedon sex crime charges – brought a “really young girl” to the island.
Despite these vivid accounts of abuse by other men, the voluminous Epstein files lack clarity on how investigators pursued those leads. FBI interview memos redact victims’ names and don’t include corroborating information or any details of how federal agents followed up – making it difficult to assess the veracity of the claims.
To some experts, the dearth of investigative reports in the files raises doubts about the steps law enforcement took to look into them.
“I don’t see that that led to writing search warrant affidavits to obtain somebody’s computer, somebody’s personnel file, going to different places to get flight records, hotel records,” said Moses Castillo, a former detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, who listed the investigative efforts he would expect to see documented in the files. “I don’t see that any of that was done.”
A DOJ spokesperson declined to detail the efforts taken to investigate the allegations beyond a broad statement that every tip was properly looked into.
“The allegations contained in them were thoroughly investigated,” the spokesperson said. “Prosecutors at the time did not feel that the evidence was sufficient to prosecute.”
The DOJ also faced accusations of covering up some cases by initiallyfailingto release one victim’s claims that President Donald Trump abused her, allegations the White House calls baseless and which the DOJ says were not intentionally withheld. An FBI email last year stated a victim who claimed abuse by Trump “ultimately refused to cooperate.”
Critics say the Epstein files show how Republican and Democratic administrations alike fumbled the Epstein investigation over two decades, leaving potential coconspirators uncharged.
“The fact that there were all these powerful men, many billionaires, some from other parts of the world, that were involved in the rape and abuse of children and women, and that there has been little to no accountability, especially in our country — every single American should be outraged by that,” said Rep. Robert Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.
Epstein’s sex trafficking has been well documented. After several underage girls accused him of paying them for sex acts in the mid-2000s, hestrucka controversial deal to serve about a year in prison and avoid federal charges.
