Two of Epstein’s survivors have sued the disgraced financier and pedophile’s estate on Tuesday, claiming his collection of porn includes CSAM (child sex abuse material) of them when they were kids. The lawsuit, which was filed in the Southern District of New York, seeks redress on behalf of more than 40 other victims—though a lawyer representing the plaintiffs has said thousands could potentially be involved.
Per the 36-page filing, Epstein “possessed, transported, received, or distributed” CSAM from “countless children” from the 1990s until his death in 2019, keeping the photos in a “modeling book” in a locked safe in his New York home. It adds that “at least in the 2000s, Epstein had his assistant take nude, sexualized photographs of multiple children, paid them for the images, and then used those photographs for his own sexual gratification and perhaps that of others.” I know he’s already on it… But here’s to hoping he rots in hell.
One of the plaintiffs, who used the pseudonym Jane Doe, said she was 12 years old when Epstein stole partially nude photographs of her, keeping them in a lockbox afterward. The filing says that after she’d learned he still possessed the material, she “suffered and continues to suffer severe emotional distress, anxiety, hypervigilance, intrusive recollection, disrupted sleep, need for and course of mental treatment, and the distinct and continuing injury of knowing that images of her as a child were held and used for another’s sexual gratification.”
The new allegations add some more detail to a complaint filed against the U.S. government by Epstein survivor Maria Farmer last June, in which she alleged Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell possessed and bragged about a “modeling book” that contained photos of “children explicitly posed in various stages of undress.” (Apparently, they fended off suspicion by saying the book was for finding Victoria’s Secret models.) Farmer’s case accused the federal government of failing to protect her, and it has not yet been scheduled for trial.
The Tuesday lawsuit asks the court for about $6 mil. in damages, as well as a “single, coordinated program” to identify and notify the other victims whose photos may be in the collection. (There’s still not been any kind of comprehensive victim-identification review put in place.)
All this presents yet another reminder of how little we still know about the pedophile’s crimes—which is part of the reason Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) have been working on collecting names for a discharge petition for a Part II of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, legislation that would require the administration to release the files in full. As of Friday, it’s been reported that they secured the final GOP vote needed to reach 218. Looks like that early recess wasn’t the move after all, was it, Mike Johnson?
