David Boies, the attorney for several of Jeffrey Epstein’s accusers who have filed lawsuits in 2015 and 2017 “alleging that Epstein and his associates had sexually trafficked underage girls, at his various homes. The suits were publicly available documents but received little attention in the press” according to NPR.org.
Boies told NPR “we count on the press to uncover problems, not merely to report on when problems have been prosecuted and when people have been indicted, but to uncover problems before they reach that stage.” However, in the case of Epstein, cries fell on deaf ears. “We spread them out in two public complaints. We would go to the media to try to explain what was going on.”
We learned now that there were instances where Epstein “scared off some accusers and struck confidential settlements with others, making it harder for reporters to get them to recount their experiences on the record.” Worse, some media outlets buckled under pressure and were bullied into not releasing interviews they had done with his victims.
Here are three specific cases, from NPR.org:
Vanity Fair:
Editor -in-Chief Graydon Carter arrived at his magazine’s offices to find an unexpected visitor…it was Jeffrey Epstein. In 2002, Carter…assigned a reporter to answer the pressing question: Who exactly was Epstein and why was he flying former President Bill Clinton and other celebrities around on his jets?…
Carter assigned the reporter Vicky Ward to write the story…Ward interviewed two sisters, Maria and Annie Farmer. They alleged Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, lured them into his orbit for sexual exploitation…Maria, an aspiring artist, alleged Epstein and Maxwell sexually assaulted her together in an Ohio apartment. Annie was just 15 years old, the sisters alleged, when Epstein sexually assaulted her at his vast New Mexico Ranch…
And so that morning when Epstein had materialized at the magazine’s offices, he was there to press Carter not to devote any attention to Epstein’s apparent interest in very young women…Epstein beseeched Carter and berated him…In March 2003, Vanity Fair did publish Ward’s piece. Titled “The Talented Mr. Epstein”…it did not report the Farmers’ accusations of abuse.
ABC News:
In 2001, a then 17-year old young woman Virginia Roberts Giuffre, was in a photograph with Prince Andrew. The photo was taken at Maxwell’s London home. Other pictures of Giuffre published by tabloids are from a party for the supermodel Naomi Campbell. Epstein and Maxwell stand just a few feet from Giuffre in pictures from that night…
Giuffree had become part of Epstein’s household. Her presence at Campbell’s party, Giuffree later testified, was part of a six-week trip Epstein took her on throughout Europe and the Mediterranean…After a later party she attended for Campbell, she said, Epstein told her to have sex with a businessman, and she said she performed a sexual act upon him. Epstein later procured her for sex with other associates as well, she said, Prince Andrew among them…
In May 2009 Giuffre sued Epstein and accused Maxwell of recruiting her to a life of being sexually trafficked while she was a minor. She alleged it took years to escape…
In 2015, ABC News team of Amy Robach and Jim Hill secured an interview with Giuffre…producers paid for Giuffre and her family to fly from Colorado, where they lived, to New York City and put them up at the Ritz-Carlton hotel on Central Park South. Robach and her news crew interviewed Giuffre on tape for more than an hour about Epstein and his entourage…
The story never aired. And Giuffre has said she was never directly told why. ABC News would ot detail its editorial choices. One ABC News staffer…says the network received a call from one of Epstein’s top lawyers…Alan Dershowitz…’I did not want to see Giuffre’s credibility enhanced by ABC,’ Dershowitz says.
In a December 2014 court filing in another accuser’s lawsuit, Giuffre had alleged Dershowitz was among the prominent men Epstein had instructed her to have sex with when she was a teenager.
Continue Reading: npr.org
