The prosecutor in Jeffrey Epstein’s 2006 grand jury trial may have subverted his own case by attacking two underage victims as prostitutes and criminals, newly released records show.
On Monday, Circuit Judge Luis Delgado unsealed about 150 pages of records produced during Epstein’s four-hour grand jury hearing in Palm Beach County in July 2006. Grand jury records are typically sealed indefinitely, but Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, has Signed into law earlier this year To ensure public access to grand jury records in certain cases, such as Epstein’s.
“Does her website also feature photographs of her in revealing clothing, drinking alcohol and being sexually provocative?”
Delgado seemed keen to release the records, suggesting they were necessary to maintain the court’s impartiality. “For almost two decades, the story of Jeffrey Epstein’s victimization of Palm Beach County’s most vulnerable has been the subject of much outrage and, at times, diminished public perception of our criminal justice system,” he wrote.
“The details on the record will be outrageous to any reasonable person. The testimony before the grand jury ranges from grossly unacceptable conduct to rape. All of the conduct in question is sexually deviant, abhorrent and criminal.”
Delgado wasn’t exaggerating. Records show former state attorneys Barry Krischer and Lanner Belohlavec portraying the two victims as a criminal and a prostitute.
The first victim testified that she was just 14 when she first went to Epstein’s mansion and gave him a massage in exchange for $300. At his request, she allegedly stripped down to her underwear and allowed him to use a vibrator for an additional $100.
The girl also admitted to lying to Epstein about being 18 years old. It is unclear how many times she met with Epstein. About a year after her first visit to Epstein’s residence, the girl stepmother The perpetrator found the money, learned why Epstein had given it to her, and reported the girl’s claims to local police.
Despite evidence that the girl was likely the victim of statutory rape and sexual solicitation, prosecutors charged her as a criminal.
“Do you realize that you have committed a crime?” prosecutor Belohlavek asked the girl during the grand jury hearing.
The girl responded that she didn’t think what she did was a crime at the time, but realized later that it was: “Now I think it was prostitution or something,” she said.
The jury also asked the girl whether she knew “deep down” when she went to Epstein’s house that what she was doing was “wrong” and that she was damaging her “reputation”. She said she did.
Another victim who testified at the grand jury hearing alleged that she visited Epstein’s mansion more than 100 times, during which he gradually convinced her to participate in sexual acts in exchange for $200. She also said he offered her money to bring other girls and even a rental car for her personal use.
“He told her, ‘The younger the better,'” Palm Beach police Detective Joe Lickary testified at the hearing.
The girl said Epstein knew she was 17 from the beginning of the visit. The day before her 18th birthday, Epstein allegedly escalated to having sex for the first time. “She yelled no,” Lickary testified, so Epstein stopped and reportedly paid the girl $1,000.
It appears that the prosecution has once again attacked the girl’s character.
“You must understand that you were essentially prostituting yourself,” one woman said.
At various points during the hearingKrisher and Belohlavek also repeatedly talked about the girls’ body piercings, their shoplifting adventures, their arrests on other charges, and how much money they made from Epstein. During one agent’s testimony, one prosecutor said, “She was a [MySpace page] Do they include photos of me in revealing clothing, drinking alcohol, or being sexually provocative?
“It’s truly saddening how many victims he was able to abuse because the state had the opportunity to put Epstein in jail but they carried water for him.”
Grand jury records do not reveal all of the charges the grand jury could have indicted Epstein on, but they ultimately indicted him on one count of soliciting prostitution.
Two years later, in a deal with federal prosecutors, Epstein pleaded guilty to the original solicitation charge, as well as one count of soliciting a minor for prostitution. He served 13 months of his 18-month sentence in a low-security prison that offered him nearly every day work release, allowing him to return to work periodically.
The newly released records have critics once again expressing stunned concern at the way prosecutors originally handled the case. Spencer Kubin, a lawyer for nine of Epstein’s alleged victims, including one of the girls who testified before the grand jury, called the prosecution’s approach “despicable” and “cruel.”
“They basically bungled their own case,” he said.
“It just reaffirms what we’ve always known, that state prosecutors were so afraid to indict him that they undermined their own case by attacking their own witnesses during grand jury proceedings,” he added.
“The grand jury proceedings appear to have been an attempt to indict the boys and ignore Epstein.”
Brad Edwards, a lawyer for Epstein’s alleged victims, made similar comments, arguing that prosecutors had asked the grand jury to return “minimal charges, if any” against Jeffrey Epstein.
“The small pieces of evidence were misleadingly presented and prosecutors portrayed the victims as criminals,” Edwards continued. “It is truly saddening how many victims Epstein was able to abuse because the state had the opportunity to put him behind bars but chose not to do so.”
Detective Lickary died in 2018. Epstein died the following year while awaiting federal trial in New York, reportedly by hanging himself in his jail cell.
Krisher did not respond to AP’s request for comment on the record, but he has previously defended his handling of the case: “Regardless of how my office resolved the state charges, the U.S. Attorney’s Office always had the authority to bring its own federal charges,” he said in a 2019 statement.
of Miami Herald Attempts to reach Belohlavek for comment were unsuccessful.
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