Epstein's files reveal 'rotten culture' in US
Release of 3 million FBI files has little consequence for rich and powerful
Sex-ring operation
Documents showed that Epstein started the sex operation as early as the mid-1990s. One survivor reported Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell to the FBI in 1996, but no investigation was conducted.
Maxwell, a former socialite, was Epstein's one-time girlfriend and longtime accomplice. She facilitated Epstein's crimes by luring and recruiting women and girls and was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022.
In March 2005, Palm Beach Police launched a formal investigation into Epstein after a 14-year-old girl's parents reported she had been molested at his home.
The FBI investigation identified 36 victims in Florida alone. Yet somehow a "secret" non-prosecution agreement was negotiated by US Attorney Alexander Acosta in 2008 that allowed Epstein to avoid federal sex-trafficking charges.
He pleaded guilty to two state solicitation charges and was sentenced to 18 months in jail. Epstein, however, was famously allowed to leave jail for up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, to work at his nearby office. He served only 13 months of the sentence.
Epstein was able to continue his crimes for another decade until the Miami Herald's investigative series "Perversion of Justice" led to his federal sex-trafficking charges in 2019.
About a month after his arrest, Epstein died by hanging in a New York prison in August 2019. The death was ruled a suicide.
More than 1,200 Epstein victims have been identified, with some as young as 11 years old. Many were forced and threatened into sex services for Epstein's circle of powerful men. The operation was conducted in New York, Florida and Little St. James, Epstein's private island in the US Virgin Islands.
