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Late last year the Miami Herald published an investigative series called Perversion
of Justice.
>> The Miami Herald was able to identify nearly 80 girls who were
molested by Epstein, dozens more than investigators.
>> Federal prosecutors gave Jeffrey Epstein a secret non-prosecution agreement
without ever notifying his victims.
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>> We were victimized by Jeffrey Epstein, then re-victimized by the government.
>> Billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein has been arrested.
>> A wealthy money manager, whose friends have included presidents and
a prince, is behind bars in Manhattan tonight.
>> Jeffrey Epstein is dead.
>> Died by suicide overnight in a Manhattan jail cell.
>> How did something like this happen?
>> The jail system let us down, the government let us down.
We should be having our day in court with Epstein.
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>> A friend told me, do you wanna make some extra money for the holidays?
I said, yeah, of course, I've got seven brothers and sisters.
She said, okay, well you can make some really good money,
you have to just massage old guys.
But if you tell anybody I will beat your ass.
I remember there was a staircase, and it was kind of like a spiral almost.
He just laid down in his towel on his stomach.
When he flipped over, that's when he said, okay, you can go ahead and
take off your shirt and pants, but you can stay in your underwear.
As we were going back into town I was just looking out the window crying.
I was thinking to myself,
nobody is going to want to be with me again for the rest of my life.
>> We don't know exactly when Epstein begin this sort of pyramids scheme,
because it used different schemes at different points over the years.
But in Florida, we know that sometime in the late 90s his then girlfriend,
Ghislaine Maxwell, would travel to some of the spas in Palm Beach and
try to hire girls to give Epstein massages.
One girl who might have been asked to give them a massage would come
to his house brought by another girl, give him a massage, be molested.
And when she felt creeped out by it, he said, that's fine,
you don't have to do this again.
But bring me another girl and I'll give you 2, $300 for every girl you bring me.
And it became this huge web of girls who had connections to each other but
who didn't all know each other.
It just spread like a virus almost.
He had other people working for him that helped him do his scheduling and
helped him transport the girls.
The girls that he ended up flying to his other homes in Paris and
on his private island off the coast of St. Thomas.
It just grew, and grew, and grew.
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[NOISE] >> What is it that you were told you would
have to do?
>> Give him a massage.
>> Okay. >> That was it.
The first time he asked me if I would take my jeans off, and
I told him I wasn't comfortable with that.
>> He had the towel on him, and about five minutes into it he took the towel off.
And he started pleasing himself, which I was very uncomfortable with.
>> We interviewed the victims, felt that most of them were very credible.
We had a lot of physical evidence.
One of the things that is so unusual about this case is we had prosecutors who had
excellent reputations, yet this case they found reasons not to prosecute.
I still think we did everything we could have done
in the Palm Beach Police Department, and
hope the victims know that we had faith in them.
We believed in them, and
we knew this case should have been fully prosecuted when others did not.
>> I assert my federal constitutional rights as guarantee by the 5th, 6th, and
14th Amendments of US Constitution.
>> A man molests all these young girls, and he somehow gets
this secret deal that nobody knows about until the last minute.
He goes to a local jail,
not to a state prison where most sex offenders in Florida are sent.
He is picked up every day at his jail by his own private valet, and he's driven
to an office and he's allowed to have visitors, and he's there 12 hours a day.
>> It was without a doubt one of the worst failures of the criminal justice system.
>> kept looking at the story not really knowing what I was gonna do,
and then Donald Trump nominated Alex Acosta as his Labor Secretary.
>> So help me God.
>> It felt to me like, wow, I wonder what these women think about the fact this
prosecutor who had given their perpetrator this deal of a lifetime was going to lead,
not only one of the largest agencies in government, but
also lead one that has oversight of child labor laws and human trafficking.
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>> When we were able to secure certain documents, we saw really how deliberately
the two sides conspired to make sure that the victims did not know the status
of the case, weren't told that it was gonna be disposed of through a deal.
And effect we're not even told when court cases were scheduled.
And those emails actually were some of the strongest evidence that this
was a perversion of justice.
It became clear to me, and certainly to Julie,
that the secret to telling this story was to find the victims of Mr.
Epstein, who had been completely ignored by the court process in the first place.
>> I had to figure out who they were and
try to find out where they were after 10,12,13 long years.
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All the court records and all the public records,
they were identified as Jane Does.
The records were redacted.
In some places they would release a birth date of one girl but they wouldn't have
her name, and then in another place maybe they would have her first name but
not the birth date.
So it was one big puzzle.
I saw this terrible pattern in their lives.
There were so many of them that had either criminal records,
domestic problems, mental health problems, drug addictions.
I thought, well this is already more than a story about asking them, hey,
what do you think about Alex Acosta being nominated?
To me the story that hadn't been told was the story about how the criminal justice
system really let these girls down.
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>> There was a thick packet of papers, it said, The Miami Herald, Julie K Brown.
>> I became concerned that I was going to re-traumatize them
by contacting them out of the blue.
And I ultimately decided to send them all letters.
>> She printed out these stories of what was happening in the last couple of years.
I had no idea that there was lawsuits going on for the sweetheart deal,
and I had no idea that so many of these victims gone through the exact same thing.
>> Michelle lived a very difficult life after she was molested by Jeffrey Epstein.
People in her life advised her that maybe it wasn't a good idea for
her to raise this dark part of her life again.
>> We were pretty sure she was gonna go on camera.
Julie had talked to her a little bit about it, and we just weren't,
we weren't 100% sure but we were really hopeful.
>> I think ultimately she decided to trust me,
she felt like this was something that she wanted to do.
So she ignored all the advice she was given, and
against all odds decided to sit down with me and with Emily.
>> Who were you back then?
>> It's hard to remember because I've changed so much.
After that happen it was like night and day.
I was so angry and not knowing why.
My thing that I wanted to do was pick something up.
I can remember the counter top at my parents house.
I was so upset I just wanted to break it, and I ripped it off the countertop.
>> What were your parents saying at this time?
Did they say, we need to get you to get help?
>> Yeah, they're like, what is wrong with you?
I'm like, I don't know, I just wanna fucking die, I just want to go away.
I don't know what's wrong with me, I want to be somewhere else.
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>> Emily and I, when we left that interview we were very quiet in our
thoughts, knowing that it was such an emotional and important story.
Each of the girls had different circumstances to some degree,
but they were children, they were young.
>> I went to him steadily from 14,15,16.
I held so much guilt, shame.
25 is when I got into the hard drugs.
I landed myself in prison for three years.
>> Epstein served 13 months, Courtney served 3 years in a state prison.
>> It's just this unbearable hurt and pain that I was just trying to medicate,
that I just didn't wanna feel.
I didn't wanna live at all unless if I was impaired.
>> Something that felt so stupid back then I thought had no relevance and
that if I told anybody they'd be like, you're a whore,
you wanted money, why would you do that?
>> To me, still to this day,
it is my biggest shame that I carry around that I will never get rid of.
Gilan brought me in, I brought others girls in,
those girls brought other girls in.
Jeffrey constantly had young teenagers coming through his door for
one purpose and one purpose alone.
>> I'm really, really sad that I brought other girls my age and
even younger into a world that they should have never been introduced to.
>> It feels like you're never going to be good enough for the rest of your life.
>> To think that they're still blaming themselves after all this time,
it's just really hard to watch.
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>> The Miami Herald discovered 80 victims and
wrote about them in a riveting series called Perversion of Justice.
>> Exposing Epstein's crimes and
the high power people like Acosta who protected him.
>> Will you commit to making sure that there's a full and
thorough investigation into the way DOJ handled the Epstein case?
>> If I'm confirmed I'll make sure your questions are answered on this case.
>> Not long after we published our series, several federal and state probes were
launched into the handling of the Epstein case and his sweetheart deal.
But everyone was skeptical whether the DOJ would really go after Epstein.
I spoke with the victims and they said, well you know,
nothing's gonna happen, he is never gonna be arrested.
>> I didn't think that anything that I could have said would have made
a difference in the world.
That nothing was really gonna happen.
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>> Billionaire businessman Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in New York Saturday on
federal charges related to sex trafficking.
>> Today we announce the unsealing of sex trafficking charges against
Jeffrey Epstein.
>> I will say that we were assisted from some excellent investigative journalism.
>> I was pretty stunned along with I think everybody else in the journalism world.
It's rare that a prosecutor ever admits that a reporter somehow helped them with
their investigation, that just doesn't happen.
>> What the New York authorities did in starting this case
again that had been dormant for so many years was an act of courage.
And it was something that absolutely needed to be done and
to some extent restores our faith in the criminal justice system.
>> I was one out of two victims that got to see him in court.
It was so overwhelming.
He was being treated like the criminal that he was.
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I saw the back of his head and I was frozen.
It just jumped to be back to that one day, the one time I had ever met him before.
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>> After Epstein's arrest, that's when things started to really pick up.
>> The president announcing that Labor Secretary Alex Acosta is resigning,
announcing it with Alex Acosta standing right by his side.
>> He did a fantastic job.
>> Sources tell CBS News financier Jeffrey Epstein may have tried to kill himself
in jail.
>> Convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide overnight in
a Manhattan jail cell.
>> The Attorney General saying he's appalled at the development.
Investigations now by the FBI and other agencies underway.
>> I mean I immediately burst into tears.
>> It instantly made me so sad, turn my phone's off,
I don't want to talk to anybody, I don't want to see anybody.
>> I was feeling sad,
I was feeling happy that he was dead because he can't hurt anyone again.
And then that cycle just kept going over and over and over again in my brain.
>> We were this close, we were so close to having
him sit in a prison cell for the rest of his life.
>> After Jeffrey committed suicide,
the judge did give us an opportunity to come and speak our piece.
I've heard about the other victims for 10, 11 years, but
it never really hit me until the day in court.
At that minute and we were also bonded, and
it was just an empowering moment for me.
>> Justice 100% was not served.
We should be having our day in court with Epstein.
I'll never have that day to actually face him and
tell him the extent of the damage that he did to me.
>> Where do we go from here as survivors of sex trafficking?
>> We need to come together and make something,
make this horrible tragedy something positive.
>> Despite serving twice the time that Epstein served,
Courtney Wilde managed to still go after Epstein from prison, and
sue the government for giving him this deal in the first place.
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One of the outgrowths of her lawsuit was that a bill
was introduced in Congress recently.
>> Today they're introducing
the Courtney Wild Crime Victims Rights Reform Act of 2019.
>> If it passes it will reform the Crime Victims Rights Act so that there will be
penalties in the future for any prosecutor that tries to keep victims in the dark
when it comes to giving perpetrators these kinds of lenient plea deals.
>> Jeffery Epstein may be dead, but
there are a lot of people who still need to be held accountable.
It's our responsibility to stay with this story, wherever it leads us.
>> We're still fighting to find a lot of answers.
We still have some documents that we're expecting to be released from
the lawsuit that Ghislaine Maxwell was involved in with Virginia.
Ghislaine Maxwell recruited Virginia.
And although she has denied it, we believe she recruited many other women and girls.
Virginia claims that it was Ghislaine Maxwell that introduced her to
Prince Andrew, who claims that he has never met her despite her allegations
that she was directed by Epstein and Maxwell to have sex with the prince.
>> I want everyone that I've named in my court documents and
everyone that I've named publicly to be indicted.
I mean do we need to put the pressure on the government to do right by
us this time.
>> The victims and their families are owed an apology by the state of Florida and
the federal government for the way that they were treated by the prosecutors
over a decade ago in South Florida.
Yeah, an apology would be great, be a good start, and
then I believe they belong in jail.
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>> With this project, the best I could hope for
was that perhaps there would be maybe some changes in the criminal justice system.
>> This past year, it has made me feel a lot more free in my life.
I love a lot more, I open up a lot more.
>> [LAUGH] >> There's been something in me for so
long that just says keep on fighting.
And finally this past year it's been like, okay, this is why I'm doing this.
>> I didn't imagine that it would empower so
many crime victims, among them the women that were victims of Epstein.
>> There's no way to fully compensate for
the trauma that I've gone through in my life.
But one way of transcending that trauma is by speaking up.
>> And I won't stop fighting.
I will never be silenced until these people are brought to justice.
>> We had nothing to lose.
>> As a group with those girls coming forward,
it has made us stronger in that connection, and it made us want to fight.
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It's okay to speak your truth, people will believe you.
Maybe not everybody, but there's gonna be someone that believes you.
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>> I think that they found hope in the fact that America finally woke up and
listened.
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