Two women are suing Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, seeking an accounting of sexual abuse images and a process to identify and notify victims who may have been depicted as children.
Two women are suing Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, seeking an accounting of sexual abuse images and a process to identify and notify victims who may have been depicted as children.
A new federal lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein’s estate is raising new questions about child sexual abuse images allegedly collected by the convicted sex offender and what happened to potentially critical electronic evidence missing when Palm Beach police searched his mansion two decades ago.
Two women are suing Epstein’s estate, alleging child sexual abuse material connected to Epstein has never been fully accounted for and that some victims depicted in the images may never have been identified or notified.
The lawsuit reaches back to the original Palm Beach investigation of Epstein.
Investigative Reporter Terri Parkerwas the first reporter in 2019 to broadcast video of Palm Beach police searching Epstein’s mansion on El Brillo Way during the investigation that began in 2005.
The search video shows detectives moving through the sprawling home, where they found erotic photographs, a massage table and a dentist’s chair.
But investigators did not find Epstein’s computers.
According to the new lawsuit, wires were left hanging where electronic equipment had been removed. Investigators believed Epstein’s computers could contain evidence of his sexual abuse of minors, including child pornography.
Law enforcement was advised at the time that Epstein’s attorneys or other agents had possession of the computers, according to the complaint.
The lawsuit says investigators never obtained access to those computers before Epstein entered into his controversial federal non-prosecution agreement in South Florida.
Years later, after Epstein was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges in 2019, federal agents searching his properties seized computers, hard drives and other electronic media.
The new lawsuit says that seized electronic evidence remains in federal government custody.
The women are now asking a federal judge to establish a court-supervised process to account for relevant material and identify and notify victims depicted in Epstein’s collection.
The complaint seeks cooperation with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and its Child Victim Identification Program to help determine the identities of children depicted in the material.
