Florida prosecutors who cut a controversial plea deal with notorious financier Jeffrey Epstein in 2008 ruined themselves by treating their teenage victims like “prostitutes,” according to a lawyer for a 14-year-old girl involved in the case.
Spencer Quinn, who has represented many of Epstein’s victims, praised the recent unsealing of the records of the 2006 grand jury investigation into Epstein, which revealed that he was accused of raping a minor at his Palm Beach mansion.
“They certainly undermined this case before it even began,” Quinn told The Post. “The way the prosecutors handled it clearly demonstrated an intent to intimidate the victim and tilt the grand jury against them.”
Quinn, whose client was the youngest girl mentioned in the investigation, accused prosecutors in then-U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta’s office of being overly intimidated by Epstein, a billionaire with a notable list of associates that included former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.
Kubin said prosecutors were likely immediately frightened by concerns about Epstein’s enormous wealth and influence, as well as the team of powerful lawyers he quickly summoned to court.
The Florida team was equally worried that the William Kennedy Smith rape case might happen again, Kubin added.
That highly publicized 1991 trial led to Smith’s acquittal, sparking an outrage against Palm Beach prosecutors, and Mr. Quinn suggested prosecutors feared a similar outcome if they blundered in the Epstein case.
“There was a lot of fear in the department,” Kubin said, “and when you combine that with pre-#MeToo attitudes, it was clear that they had tainted their own cases.”
The attitude Quinn was referring to was the way prosecutors aggressively questioned underage clients and other victims, many of whom had been sexually assaulted and then recruited by Epstein, who was in his 40s at the time, to find other victims in exchange for payment.
According to records, prosecutor Lanner Belohlabek asked Kuvin’s client: “Are you aware that you have committed a crime?”
“That’s what I think now. I didn’t know it was a crime,” replied the girl, who has never publicly revealed her identity before.
Grand jurors also repeatedly asked inappropriate questions of young victims, but Quinn argued they did so because prosecutors wanted to set a precedent.
“You know what you’re thinking deep down? [sic] “Is what you’re doing wrong?” one of the jurors asked the girl.
“And you know very well what you’re doing to your own reputation,” another juror interjected.
The victims were also questioned about several social media posts they had made, including a MySpace post in which they allegedly joked about having an income of $250,000.
Mr Quinn described the way his client and other victims were treated as “horrible, devastating and despicable”.
“This was at a time when it was very common to shift the blame for sexual assault onto the victim,” Kubin said. “Prosecutors didn’t care about these girls.”
“The victim was made to feel shamed,” Kubin added. “And [the prosecutors] Our thinking was: Who else can we prosecute here?
Kubin said the clearest evidence of the prosecution’s failure was the fact that records show the grand jury heard from only two of Epstein’s victims and never followed up with any of the other 38 investigators.
“We knew there were many local victims in this case, but police only called two girls,” Kubin said.
“They brought in two victims just to say, ‘Well, we tried.’
The 150-page record was made public on July 1 and details the harrowing case against Epstein, which ended with the pedophile receiving a prison sentence of less than two years, almost all of which he served under house arrest, after accepting a plea deal that has always been criticized as too lenient.
The deal allowed Epstein to plead guilty to state charges of soliciting and procuring prostitution for persons under the age of 18, and avoid tougher federal prosecution.
In 2020, the Justice Department harshly criticized Florida prosecutors, finding that Acosta, Trump’s former labor secretary, made “errors in judgment” in handling the case.
After completing his prison sentence, Epstein continued to sexually abuse many more victims and was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges in New York in 2018.
Epstein, 66, was found dead in his New York City jail cell in August 2019. His death was ruled a suicide.
