With the July 2 arrest and indictment of Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime partner of Jeffrey Epstein, the victims of their child sex-trafficking ring are once again being led to believe that the truth about the network of high-profile abusers and protectors will finally be revealed.
One victim, Maria Farmer, first reported Epstein’s crimes to the FBI in the 1990s, but her reports were ignored. Maria is currently battling two forms of cancer. The arrest of Maxwell has given her renewed hope. “When you wait a quarter of a century for something, it’s pretty exciting when it happens,” she told the Daily Beast through happy tears. “I really feel hopeful that . . . maybe they’ll go down the list of coconspirators.” Another victim, Jennifer Araoz, said, “Maxwell was the center of that sex trafficking ring.” Her arrest “means some justice for survivors can exist.” Courtney Wild said that the arrest of Maxwell “gives me more confidence in our system.”
In a previous column, I described how the federal government has covered up for Epstein and Maxwell and their coconspirators. Back in 2005, more than 30 child victims, some as young as 14 when they were recruited to become sex slaves for Epstein and his guests, were tricked into cooperating with the FBI, based on the promise that the U.S. attorney’s office in south Florida intended to prosecute the Epstein-Maxwell child sex ring. Instead, the lead prosecutor on the case, Alexander Acosta, double-crossed the victims and entered into a secret and illegal deal to grant immunity to Epstein and all his “potential coconspirators.” Acosta later explained that he cut the nonprosecution deal with Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”
The problem for the victims is that a deep dive into the Epstein-Maxwell network would implicate not just powerful men like Bill Clinton, who took at least 26 trips on Epstein’s private jet—nicknamed the Lolita Express—but also untouchable U.S. intelligence officials like Michael Hayden, who was CIA director in 2007 when Acosta was told to “leave [Epstein] alone.”
Thus, the government has gone to great lengths to avoid any detailed investigations into the criminal enterprise. Then in November 2018, a reporter from the Miami Herald embarrassed the government by identifying about 80 victims of the sex ring and by telling the story of how the victims were double-crossed by Acosta’s office in 2007. In response to this series in the Herald, federal agents arrested Epstein last summer and charged him under the same indictment that had been drafted and shelved a decade before.
Hellbound and Down 