Three anonymous lawsuits were filed against Jeffrey Epstein’s estate Tuesday, accusing the late financier of forced sex acts and rape.
What We Know:
- The lawsuits were filed in Manhattan federal court on behalf of three anonymous women claiming damages such as continuing psychological and psychiatric trauma, mental anguish and humiliation. Two of the women alleged they were sexually assaulted and coerced into giving Epstein sexual massages when they were 17. The third woman stated it started when she was 20.
- The lawsuit says that one of the women was assaulted by Epstein in his “work release” office during his 2007 jail sentence; Epstein made a plea deal for his alleged molestation of five victims, one 14-years-old, getting off with only 13 months in county jail with work release privileges to serve his sentence in his office for 12 hours a day, six days a week. The woman reports that she was forced to engage in commercial sex acts at the office including intercourse. The lawsuit also states that the woman had sex with Epstein while he was still wearing an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet.
- These lawsuits are the first of an expected wave of suits following Epstein’s death due to new New York legislation that allows for easier child abuse reporting under the Child Victims Act. The law allows for sexual abuse victims of any age, including cases that have expired under the old legislation, to take legal action for the next year. The legislation, passed in January of this year, particularly benefits victims of child abuse whose claims have long expired in the New York legal system. The old statute of limitations put New York as the most restrictive state on this legal front in the nation by only allowing victims of childhood abuse to take legal action before their 23rd birthday.
- Epstein was finally charged this July with running a sex-trafficking operation after narrowly dodging similar convictions for ten years; Epstein was accused of paying for sex with minors and recruiting women as young as 14 to his sex operation after long public speculation. Epstein was denied bail and held in New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center awaiting his federal trial, when he was found dead on August 10 of an “apparent suicide.”
Epstein’s estate is valued at over $577 million, and many more victims are likely to come forward and file lawsuits against this massive estate following this New York legislation.
