DailyBeast | But the Weinstein Effect seems to have spared one Jeffrey Epstein—a
65-year-old billionaire and convicted sex offender who’s palled around
with former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Kevin Spacey, Woody Allen, and other high-flying friends whose names were revealed in his “little black book”
and flight logs for his private jet. Many of them enjoyed jaunts to
Epstein’s private Caribbean island and mansions in Manhattan and Palm
Beach, Florida.
Even President Trump was among the deviant philanthropist’s admirers. “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York
in 2002. “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes
beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger
side. No doubt about it—Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
Jeffery’s
“social life,” according to police and a score of lawsuits, involved a
pedophile ring of dozens of underage girls, whom he groomed and then
loaned out to powerful friends. But aside from a minor conviction in
Florida—for which he served a mere 13 months—Epstein has emerged
remarkably unscathed. New York authorities have never charged him with
any crime, and he still drops into his Upper East Side mansion, where women have been photographed coming and going, according to tabloid reports. His sex offender registration lists his primary address as St. Thomas.
The
mysterious financier’s sick world was unmasked in March 2005, when the
stepmother of one 14-year-old victim phoned police and said a wealthy
man had molested her child. She’d received a call from a schoolmate’s
mom, who overheard her own daughter discussing “how [the victim] had met
with a 45-year-old man and had sex with him and was paid for it,” a
police report said. Around that time, a teacher found $300 in the girl’s
purse.
Palm Beach detectives would soon unearth five girls who claimed that
Epstein had lured them into a ring of sexual abuse. By the time Epstein
inked his plea agreement, the feds had identified 40 victims. Police
said Epstein was enlisting his employees and other young women to
recruit underage girls—many of them underprivileged or from broken homes—for massages at his home. One recruiter told police that Epstein advised her, “The younger, the better.”
