Episode Details

Jane Doe #3 and Jane Doe #4 sought to join the long-running Crime Victims’ Rights Act case brought by Jane Doe #1 and Jane Doe #2 against the federal government over the secret non-prosecution agreement given to Jeffrey Epstein. Their January 2015 motion argued that they had suffered essentially the same violation: Epstein had sexually abused them while they were minors, federal authorities either knew or should have known they were victims, and yet prosecutors negotiated an agreement that protected Epstein and potential co-conspirators without consulting them or even telling them what was happening. Jane Doe #3 alleged that Ghislaine Maxwell recruited her when she was 15 in 1999 and that Epstein and Maxwell subsequently sexually abused and trafficked her for years in Florida, New York, New Mexico, the Virgin Islands and elsewhere. Jane Doe #4 alleged that she was 16 when she was recruited in 2002 with the promise of $300 for giving Epstein a massage and that Epstein then sexually abused her repeatedly. Her lawyers argued that although federal investigators had identified dozens of underage victims, they made no serious effort to locate her before entering into the NPA.

The motion went considerably further than simply asking to add two names to the lawsuit. Lawyers for the women argued that their testimony would strengthen the claim that the government systematically kept Epstein’s victims in the dark while negotiating the deal and would help challenge the government’s defenses about how prosecutors had treated the victims. Jane Doe #3’s allegations also described Epstein as trafficking her to powerful men and claimed that he sought information that could potentially be used for blackmail, allegations that brought figures including Prince Andrew, Alan Dershowitz and Jean-Luc Brunel into the filing. The motion argued that her knowledge of Epstein’s powerful connections could also be relevant to discovery concerning whether those relationships helped him secure extraordinarily favorable treatment. Jane Doe #3 and Jane Doe #4 promised not to relitigate issues already decided, sought no significant additional discovery, and argued that allowing them to join under Rule 21 would be far more efficient than forcing them to file separate CVRA lawsuits. At its core, the filing was another direct challenge to the secrecy surrounding Epstein’s deal: two more alleged victims were asking the court to recognize that prosecutors had negotiated away federal charges affecting them without giving them the voice, notice or opportunity to confer that they believed federal law guaranteed.

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