Perversion of Justice summary

From the start, what Brown really wanted to do was to tell the stories of Epstein’s victims. This was something that other reporters had failed to do. But of course, it wasn’t going to be easy. Many of the women who came forward against Epstein didn’t want their names to be part of the public record. They were listed as Jane Doe 1, Jane Doe 2, and so on.

There was also the fact that many of the women who came forward in 2008 were now, understandably, looking to move on with their lives. So it would take a lot of time and effort for Brown to talk to lawyers and track down women willing to speak to her. In the meantime, she’d learn more about the mysterious financier with an unusual past.

In the late 80s, Epstein began to amass an untold fortune by working as a sort of financial fixer and advisor for some of the world’s wealthiest people. During that time, he began buying properties for himself in places like New York City, Paris, and Palm Beach, Florida. He even bought an island in the US Virgin Islands and built an imposing compound on it.

When he wasn’t traveling, though, he was often in his mansion in Palm Beach. And it was the Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter, and detective Joe Recarey, who conducted one of the most compelling police investigations against Epstein. It all started in 2005 when a 14-year-old girl had been lured to Epstein’s mansion.

Epstein and Maxwell knew how to target vulnerable girls, and Florida was full of families struggling to get by. With the promise of making more money, some girls returned to Epstein’s house only to find that he was intent on quickly escalating to rape.

Sometimes he’d force himself on the girls. Other times he’d tell them to have sex with Maxwell, or with other people who were visiting or attending his parties. Usually, the girls who were lured to Epstein’s mansion were also told they could recruit other underage girls. Since this was a way for them to make money without interacting with Epstein, it often worked, like a degrading Ponzi scheme. One girl claimed she’d brought at least 25 others to Epstein, and she wasn’t the only one to do so.

As negotiations between Epstein’s lawyers and the state prosecutor’s office continued, it became clear that many of the victims were being sidelined, which isn’t uncommon in such cases. Prosecutors debated the reliability of witnesses who’d likely be characterized as prostitutes by the defense. Some had turned to drugs and alcohol to dull the pain of what had happened to them, which may have caused the prosecution team to find these young women even less reliable.

But that wasn’t the only reason. As negotiations continued, the police were finding more evidence and more victims, yet the prosecutors kept turning them away. Reiter and Recarey were dumbfounded. Clearly, something else was going on. In fact, it was beginning to look like the state was going to torpedo its own case.

For all intents and purposes, Epstein was supposed to be behind bars at a state prison. But in reality, the door to his cell at the much more comfortable Palm Beach County jail was purposefully left unlocked. At first, Epstein had access to the attorney’s office in the jail, where he could watch TV. But then he was given permission to work from his office six days a week, from 10:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., as long as he was supervised by sheriff’s deputies. Epstein paid the sheriff’s office all of $128,000 for this privilege, as well as additional overtime fees for the deputies.

The key message here is: After the plea deal, Epstein strove to maintain his lifestyle.

Through diligence and resourcefulness, Brown did manage to track down and meet personally with some of the women Epstein had abused over the years. As part of her piece for the Miami Herald, she wanted to create a documentary that allowed people to hear from the victims themselves – the very thing that the Epstein plea deal denied them. This video would accompany an article entitled “Perversion of Justice,” which detailed the ways in which the 2008 criminal case was mishandled.

The article and the video went online on November 28, 2018. By the following day, the story had caught fire across social media and was getting picked up by news outlets around the world. Brown had been hoping it would make a difference, but she wasn’t exactly prepared for what followed.

Not long after Epstein’s arrest. Acosta resigned as the Trump administration’s Secretary of Labor. At first, he tried to explain away the plea deal and the violation of the Crime Victims' Rights Act, but the excuses were misleading at best and the press weren’t letting up. Trump accepted his resignation just before Epstein’s bail hearing.

The key message here is: Upon Epstein’s second arrest, a series of strange events unfolded.