TUESDAY DECEMBER 4 2018 MIAMIHERALD.COM iliami Hcralti Perversion of Justice 7A Sunday: How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime. Monday: Police worked to put him in prison. Prosecutors worked to give him a break. Today: Even from jail, Jeffrey Epstein managed to manipulate the system. Read the entire series on MiamiHerald.com EMILY MICHOT emichotmiamiherald.com Virginia Roberts, holding a photo of herself when she was 16, groomed her at that age to sexually pleasure themselves and says Jeffrey Epstein and associate Ghislaine Maxwell others they designated.
Nadia Marcinkova, left, with Tatiana Litvin and Marc Hodosh, at a Hollywood, gala in 2017. She participated in the sexual abuse of Epstein's victims, some say. included all the laws governing registered sex offenders in Florida. Barbera refused to explain why Epstein was seemingly allowed to deviate from the agency's policies. She also would not respond to requests for an accounting of the amount of money that Epstein paid the sheriff's office for his private details.
Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, who has been in office since 2004 and is widely considered to be one of the most powerful people in the county did not respond to requests for comment. Epstein's registration requirements are somewhat confusing, even to those who are responsible for keeping his registration. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which keeps the online registry, and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, where Epstein has to register in person twice a year, gave conflicting explanations over the past six months about who is responsible for ensuring that he is complying with the law. On Nov. 14, the Herald asked the sheriff's office for a full accounting of Epstein's check-ins for 2018.
The record the office supplied two days later showed he registered in January and in July as required. But PBSO also inexplicably had him registering on Nov. 14 the very same day that the Herald asked for the records from the sheriff's office. When asked about this sudden registration, Barbera replied: "The information we provided you was a snapshot from the FDLE website. Perhaps, someone from FDLE can provide a reason for you." Said FDLE spokeswoman Gretl Plessinger in an email: "The screenshot is not on the public registry.
This is information inputted by the local agency when the offender comes into the local sheriff's office to register." Plessinger said Epstein is not covered by the state's new three-day rule, which requires sex offenders to re-register when they come to stay in Florida for three days or more. His town of Palm Beach home is already on file, as a temporary residence, she said. So it's not clear why he would have suddenly registered a third time on Nov. 14. State Sen.
Lauren Book, a child sex abuse survivor and vocal advocate for tough sex offender monitoring, called the case an appalling example of how those in the justice system allow wealthy people to skirt the law and bend the rules. "These prosecutors, and judges and sheriffs who are making these decisions and allowing things to fly we have to hold these people accountable. They are supposed to uphold the law regardless of who a person is and how much money they have in the bank or who they had on their airplane." PIECE BY PIECE Over the years, Courtney Wild, Virginia Roberts and more than a dozen other women who say they were victims of Epstein have been quietly challenging the traditional legal norms that have failed to punish Epstein and other men in positions of power for sexual abuse. Epstein has paid millions of dollars in civil compen- SEE EPSTEIN, 8A fenders. "We just decided that was the best way to accomplish what needed to be done here and the parties agreed that that sentence satisfied everyone's requirements," Goldberger replied.
Said Judge Pucillo: "The taxpayers of Palm Beach County are going to pay 18 months to house this guy instead of DOC the Department of Corrections?" Belohlavek: "Right." Pucillo did not respond to a request for comment on the case. Villafafia, the lead federal prosecutor in Epstein's case, was in the courtroom, but there's no indication she objected to Epstein's cozier jail accommodations. When he entered jail in July 2008, Epstein was arguably the most well-known inmate there. Records also show that Epstein hired Palm Beach sheriff's deputies for his security details, paving them for the hours they spent monitoring him on work release at his West Palm Beach office, where he often stayed until 10 p.m., jail logs show. The Herald reviewed their time sheets, showing that the deputies logged visitors coming and going to and from his office throughout the day.
A record log of his visitors was kept in a safe, but the log no longer exists, according to a spokeswoman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office. One deputy who often worked Epstein's detail said that his assignment was to stay in a front reception room of Epstein's office. Epstein was in a separate office with the door closed most of the day as he accepted visitors, both male and female, the deputies' logs show. "It was not our job to monitor what he was doing in that office," the deputy, now retired, told the Herald. In their early reports in July 2008, the deputies referred to Epstein as "inmate" but within a few weeks the language had changed and he was called a "client." He was occasionally allowed to take a break for lunch by sitting outside in a park, the records show, and they also gave him permission to scout for a new office.
While on work release, he was required to wear an ankle bracelet to monitor his whereabouts. The work release was approved by the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office, said spokeswoman Therese Barbera. "Jeffrey Epstein, while in custody, met the criteria for the Work Release Program," Barbera wrote in an email. "There was no factual basis to deny Mr. Epstein the same availability of this program that is offered to other inmates under similar circ*mstances.
Mr. Epstein was closely monitored and there were no problems encountered during his time in the program." But the sheriff's own work release policy a copy of which Barbera provided to the Herald specifically notes that sex offenders aren't eligible for work release. At first, Barbera questioned whether Epstein was a sex offender at all, noting that he didn't have to register officially until after his release from the jail in 2009. But his court papers clearly listed him as a sex offender. In fact, the papers Epstein signed obtained by the Herald EPSTEIN said he informed Roberts that they suspected she was a victim of Epstein's.
The agent said Roberts answered basic questions, but became uncomfortable and "asked that I not bother her again." Roberts said the agent didn't try too hard to convince her to talk, and she was surprised when he hung up after asking her a few graphic questions about her sex life. She said she was suspicious, but would have cooperated had the FBI talked to her in person and explained why they were asking about Epstein. "I was still scared to death," Roberts said. "Jeffrey used to tell me that he owned the entire Palm Beach Police Department. I just didn't want my family harmed." She nevertheless was listed by federal prosecutors as one of Epstein's Palm Beach victims.
As the years went by and Roberts had a daughter, she would be haunted by a fear that Epstein was still taking advantage of young girls. In 2011, she went public in a paid interview with a British tabloid, the Daily Mail, asserting that she had had sex with Prince Andrew, one of Epstein's friends, several times when she was a teen. In her 2015 affidavit, she discussed in detail some of her alleged sex encounters with the prince and Epstein's other friends, including lawyer Alan Der-showitz. Edwards included the affidavit in the court file as part of the Jane Does' Crime Victims' Rights Act case, at which time it became public. In the affidavit, Roberts claimed that Epstein and Maxwell directed her to have sex with Andrew and Dershowitz and others.
She had sex with Andrew three times, she alleged once in London, when she was 17, again in New York, when she was 17, and a third time, as part of an orgy on Epstein's island, when she was 18. By law, at 17, she would have been above the age of consent in New York and England, but not in Florida, where the age of consent is 18. As part of the affidavit, Roberts furnished a photograph of her with the prince and Maxwell, which she said was taken in London. Dershowitz, who was part of Epstein's criminal defense team, was often a guest at Epstein's homes, she said. "I had sexual intercourse with Dershowitz at least six times," Roberts wrote in the 2015 court affidavit.
"The first time was when I was about 16, early on in my servitude to Epstein and it continued until I was 19." She detailed some of those alleged trysts, which she said happened at Epstein's homes in Palm Beach, New Mexico and on Epstein's island. One of Epstein's housem*n, Juan Alessi, testified in a 2009 sworn deposition that Dershowitz visited Epstein's Palm Beach home four or five times a year. He said that Roberts was a frequent visitor as well, but he never placed Dershowitz and Roberts at the house at the same time. Alessi, who testified he worked for Epstein from 1999 to 2002, said there were often young girls who gave massages at the house, even in the middle of the night. But he said he never checked their ages, and only knew one girl for certain who was underage, because he had picked her up from high school.
That girl, who is now an actress, was not one of Epstein's masseuses, Alessi said. He also said he was Maxwell's driver, and he recalls waiting outside of Mar-a-Lago the day Maxwell met Roberts. He testified he saw Maxwell talking to Roberts and recalls Roberts coming to Epstein's mansion later that day. One of Alessi's jobs was to drive Maxwell to various spas in Palm Beach where she left business cards in order to "recruit" more masseuses, he said in the sworn deposition. Dershowitz, Prince Andrew and Maxwell have long denied Roberts' allegations.
In an interview with the Herald, Dershowitz reiterated that he had never met Roberts, and never saw Epstein with any underage girls. "The story was 100 percent flatly categorically made-up," he said, adding that Roberts and her attorneys fabricated the assertion in order to get money from other powerful, wealthy people she alleges she had sex with. "The only possible reason to accuse me in public and them in private is so she could get money," Dershowitz said. Edwards and his co-counsel in the Crime Victims' lawsuit, University of Utah law professor Paul Cassell, sued Dershowitz for defamation and Dershowitz countersued in 2015. The case was settled out of court, with Dershowitz saying he had been vindicated.
Dershowitz said he received a massage at Epstein's Palm Beach home only once but that it was just a regular, therapeutic massage by a masseuse not by Roberts or anyone JEROD HARRIS June 30, 2008. "There's several," replied assistant state prosecutor Lanna Belohlavek. "Are all the victims in both of these cases in agreement with the terms of this plea?" Pucillo later asked. "Yes," Belohlavek replied, telling the judge that she had spoken to "several" of Epstein's victims. Emails show that federal prosecutors didn't want the judge to know how many victims and accomplices there were.
Federal prosecutor A. Marie Villafafia in a September 2007 email to Epstein lawyer Jay Lef-kowitz said: "I will mention co-conspirators but I would prefer not to highlight for the judge all the other crimes and all the other persons that we could charge." Attorney Spencer Kuvin happened to be in court that day because he'd heard Epstein was to appear, but Kuvin didn't know why. He figured he'd use it as an opportunity to serve Epstein with civil court papers involving one of several victims he represented. Instead, he listened to what was happening and couldn't believe that no one had contacted him or his clients. "I was shocked to learn that the proceeding involved my client's case and there was nothing I could do except watch as they disposed of her case without ever telling her," Kuvin said.
At the hearing, Belohlavek and Epstein's attorney, Goldberger, were in sync, the court transcript shows. Epstein would be required to register as a sex offender, but his probation would not be served under the strict requirements of sex offender probation. The judge didn't question those provisions, but she did ask why Epstein was going to serve his sentence in the Palm Beach County stockade instead of in a Florida state prison, like most sex of underage. Dershowitz's wife was there at Epstein's house at the time, Dershowitz said in the deposition taken for the case in 2015. "I never had any knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein having any contact with any underage women ever," Dershowitz told the Herald.
Edwards and Cassell admitted making a "tactical mistake" in filing the accusations against Dershowitz as part of a lawsuit not involving him. But they emphasized that the settlement had no bearing on the veracity of Roberts' allegations. The judge for the Crime Victims' Rights Act lawsuit agreed that the affidavit was misplaced in that case, and it was dropped. Prince Andrew's spokesman at Buckingham Palace did not respond to an email requesting comment. Roberts, now 35, said it has taken her a long time to stand up to Epstein.
She and 20 other victims received settlements from Epstein, ranging from $50,000 to more than $1 million. The exact amounts have been kept confidential. "It takes so long until you are able to speak about it. It took me having a daughter and looking at this young, beautiful innocent baby to say I want to speak out about it now. I'm hoping that this will bring out more girls so that they say, Me Too." MORE THAN ONE The judge at Epstein's sentencing hearing at the Palm Beach County Courthouse knew very little about Epstein's crimes.
The sentencing paperwork was restricted to Epstein's specific charges: one count of solicitation of prostitution and one count of procuring a person under the age of 18 for prostitution. "Are there more than one victim?" Circuit Court Judge Deborah Dale Pucil-lo asked the prosecutor at Epstein's sentencing on.
