Behind Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's Sweetheart Dealby Conchita Sarnoff and Lee Aitken - DailyBeast
March 25th, 2011
<snip>
It is proving difficult for hedge fund manager and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to avoid the glare of media scrutiny – British tabloids most recently cried foul over the shabby royal comportment of Prince Andrew in agreeing to be the guest of an acknowledged pedophile. But the larger mystery surrounding Epstein, who completed a 13-month sentence for soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2010, has remained unsolved: How did the hedge fund mogul manage to finesse the kinds of sex-crime allegations typically associated with a hefty prison sentence?
For the first time, the U.S. attorney who oversaw the Epstein prosecution in Florida’s Southern District is commenting publicly on the case, in a letter released exclusively to The Daily Beast. This letter, along with other correspondence unearthed in our reporting, sheds new light on the no-holds-barred battle waged by Epstein’s lawyers to evade the full exercise of prosecutorial power.
Some of the most shocking allegations against Epstein surfaced only after the conclusion of an FBI probe, in civil suits brought by his victims: for example, the claim that three 12-year-old French girls were delivered to him as a birthday present. But the feds did identify roughly 40 young women, most of them underage at the time, who described being lured to Epstein’s Palm Beach home on the pretense of giving a “massage” for money, then pressured into various sex acts, as well as the “Balkan sex slave” Epstein allegedly boasted of purchasing from her family when she was just 14. More recently, a big cash payment from Mail on Sunday coaxed one of Epstein’s main accusers out of anonymity to describe what she claims were her years as a teenage sex toy. This victim, Virginia Roberts, produced a photo of herself with Prince Andrew in 2001 and reported that Epstein paid her $15,000 to meet the prince. Then 17 years old, she claims that she was abused by Epstein and “loaned” to his friends from the age of 15.
Sex crimes of the kind Roberts alleges took place typically carry a term of 10 to 20 years in federal prison. Yet when all was said and done, Epstein served his scant year-plus-one-month in a private wing of the Palm Beach jail and was granted a 16-hour-per-day free pass to leave the premises for work. A Daily Beast examination into the inner workings of the Epstein defense strategy reveals how the fear and intimidation experienced by victims during pre-trial proceedings, combined with a ferocious, protracted campaign to undermine the prosecution – summed up as “the best defense is an all-star offense” – culminated in a set of charges that became a virtual slap on the wrist for the globe-trotting financier.
<snip>
Link:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-03-25/jeffrey-epstein-how-the-billionaire-pedophile-got-off-easy/full/:mad:
:wtf:
:kick: