Prosecutor painted Epstein victims as prostitutes, grand jury records show

MIAMI — A Palm Beach County prosecutor painted two girls molested by Jeffrey Epstein as prostitutes, drug addicts, thieves and liars in front of a grand jury empaneled in 2006 to review the state’s criminal case against sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

Palm Beach County Judge Luis Delgado unsealed the controversial grand jury records on Monday after years of legal action by the Palm Beach Post and other media, including the Miami Herald, CNN and The New York Times. Grand jury records are normally kept under seal to protect the integrity of the case, as well as witnesses. But in the years since the Epstein case was closed in 2008, evidence surfaced that suggested Epstein and his battery of high-priced attorneys may have exerted political influence to taint the state’s case.

The records have remained under seal for 16 years. Earlier this year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an order to release the files by July 1, noting that unsealing them might explain how the wealthy Epstein managed to “engineer an outcome that the average citizen would likely never have been able” to do.

The records contain nearly 200 pages, including the testimony of two girls who were molested by Epstein, the New York financier who abused hundreds of underage girls at his Palm Beach mansion between 1996 and 2008. Epstein managed to escape serious charges, in part because the Palm Beach prosecutor at the time, Barry Krischer, elected to charge him with minor prostitution and solicitation rather than bringing a felony sexual assault case.

Both Krischer and the lead prosecutor in the case, Lanna Belohlavek, told Palm Beach police that they didn’t intend to prosecute Epstein because they believed the girls were prostitutes. But Palm Beach police Chief Michael Reiter and the lead detective, Joe Recarey, both protested the decision, noting that the victims were as young as 14 and that Epstein, who was in his 50s, had used fraud and coercion to lure the girls to his home on the pretense that they would be paid to give him massages.

The records released Monday were transcripts of audio recordings of the testimony given before a grand jury convened in 2006. Although grand juries are normally convened for murder cases, Krischer took the unusual step of presenting the case to a grand jury because he was unwilling to allow Palm Beach police to arrest and file charges against the powerful and politically connected Epstein.

The actual audio recordings of the proceeding were not released to the public Monday. The Miami Herald requested the recordings, but was told that they were not available. The transcripts also seem to be missing key elements that would normally be part of a grand jury proceeding. For example, there is no record that Belohlavek introduced herself to the panel, explained what the case was about or told the jury what they were supposed to do. There’s no closing statement summarizing the case or any documentation of what the grand jury ultimately decided.

What is clear is that Belohlavek painted an unsympathetic portrait of the girls, both of whom came from broken families. One of the girls and her sister had been passed back and forth between parents and were taken to a school for troubled juveniles. The girl ran away several times before meeting a group of older kids, one of whom brought her to Epstein’s mansion.

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She described for the jury how she was ushered into a large bedroom and instructed to strip down to her underwear. Alone in the room with Epstein, and confused about what was happening, she reluctantly complied. After he molested her, he gave her $200.

“You’re aware that you committed a crime?” Belohlavek asked the girl, who was 14 at the time she met Epstein.

“Now I am. I didn’t know it was a crime when I was doing it,” said the girl. " Like, I — I don’t know. I guess it was prostitution or something like that.”

Belohlavek also allowed the grand jurors to question the victims — and some of them voiced their disapproval at what they had done.

“Did you have any idea that deep inside of you that you — what you’re doing is wrong?” as one juror.

“Yea, I did,” the girl replied.

“Oh do you?” the juror said, pointing out that the girl should have known that it would harm her “reputation.”

Asked another juror: “Did it ever occur to you that he could have hacked you up?”

“Yes,” she stammered. “I thought about it a lot.”

Said the juror: “(You) should give it a little further thought.”

David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor, was astonished at the way the case was presented to the jury.

“How is that not statutory rape?” he said of Epstein’s crime. “I can see how people think that a wealthy powerful man got away with abusing all these girls.”

Palm Beach detective Joe Recarey — the lead investigator on the case — testified in detail about how Epstein and his assistants would recruit girls from local high schools, telling them initially that they were being hired to give him massages. While they were instructed to lie about their ages, many of them told Epstein their real ages and spoke to them about high school.

Recarey, who passed away in 2018, told the Herald in an interview before his death that he was frustrated by the state attorney’s handling of the case, claiming that Krischer and Belohlavek went to great lengths to discredit the girls — and failed to present to the jury the corroborating evidence that backed up the girls’ stories, including phone records.

Neither Krischer nor Belohlavek has ever commented on the case. The Miami Herald was unsuccessful in reaching them on Monday. Both have since retired.

Epstein’s case came under new scrutiny in 2018 — 10 years later — following a series of articles by the Miami Herald that outlined the secret negotiations that led Alex Acosta, the federal prosecutor who later oversaw a federal probe, to approve a light jail sentence for Epstein. Epstein would serve just 13 months in the Palm Beach County jail, where he was given liberal privileges to work in his outside office and at his Palm Beach mansion. After his release from jail, he continued to assault and abuse women at his homes in New York, New Mexico, Paris and on his isolated island off the coast of St. Thomas.

The Herald’s series led the FBI and U.S. Attorney in New York to take another look at the case. He was re-arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges and jailed in Manhattan pending trial. He was found dead in his cell a month after his arrest. His death was ruled a suicide by hanging. He was 66.

His accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, 63, was subsequently charged in the case and was convicted of sex trafficking charges in 2020. Maxwell, a British socialite who had a long relationship with Epstein, is appealing her sentence.

©2024 Miami Herald. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.