For 16 years, the grand jury documents behind Jeffrey Epstein’s 2006 prosecution for sex trafficking have been sealed, but on Monday, a Palm Beach, Florida, judge unsealed the transcripts.
Epstein killed himself in 2019 while in federal custody awaiting trial for sex-trafficking, but a decade later he was given a sweetheart deal on similar allegations and served just 13 months in a work-release program after pleading guilty. That deal was reached in 2008, two years after a grand jury was assembled to determine whether Epstein would be indicted on charges he solicited and procured minors for prostitution.
The 176-page grand jury document released this week contains new information about Epstein’s crimes, Fox News reported, including specifics about how he paid teenagers who recruited other teens for his sex crimes, the testimony of his victims, and detailed allegations of his rapes.
Circuit Judge Luis Delgado, in his order releasing the grand jury documents, said the contents would be disturbing.
“It is widely accepted that Epstein is a notorious and serial pedophile,” the order says. “The testimony taken by the Grand Jury concerns activity ranging from grossly unacceptable to rape – all of the conduct at issue is sexually deviant, disgusting, and criminal. The details in the record will be outrageous to decent people.”
Palm Beach County court clerk and comptroller Joseph Abruzzo announced the release of the documents just before 3 p.m. Monday, noting that a new Florida law had just gone into effect that allows the release of grand jury documents in certain cases.
“It is our hope that the release of these records gives peace of mind to our community and gives Jeffrey Epstein’s victims the closure they deserve,” Abruzzo said in the statement, which also included a graphic content warning above the PDF file of the documents.
The documents were released in response to a motion from the Palm Beach Post and other news outlets seeking to unseal the grand jury testimony, ABC News reported. The documents are meant to provide answers to how a grand jury could return an indictment on just one count of solicitation of a minor, yet the documents don’t reveal what charging options were presented to the grand jury.
Epstein’s crimes began to unravel in the early part of the millennium when two girls at a local Palm Beach high school got into a fight after one called the other a prostitute, the documents revealed. A school official later found $300 in the accused girl’s purse, which was given to her by Epstein, according to the grand jury documents.
The girl, 14, testified before the grand jury that she had been told to lie about her life story and say she was 18 years old in order to get $200 after giving Epstein a massage. The girl described how, for the massage, she was asked to strip down to her underwear and was then sexually abused by Epstein.
Before long, more victims would be revealed.
Epstein’s suicide in 2019 has been the subject of questions and conspiracy theories, with some suggesting he couldn’t have killed himself and was possibly murdered.
