A lawyer for several women who say they were victims of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein has sent a letter to the Department of Justice asking why the FBI “utterly failed” to investigate the well-connected financier.
The letter, sent this week to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz, says that the FBI knew about allegations about Epstein back in the 1990s but failed to take any substantial action.
“As counsel to many survivors of the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking conspiracy, we write regarding the failure of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to properly, adequately, or timely investigate the sex trafficking of hundreds of girls and young women,” a letter from lawyer Jennifer Freeman says.
“The FBI utterly failed to investigate serious allegations involving Epstein’s, and perhaps others’, child sex abuse materials (CSAM), significant additional criminality which, until recently, has been disregarded, disrespected, and essentially denied.”
The women want an explanation for why it took so long for substantive legal action to be taken against Epstein and asked the DOJ to investigate the FBI over its handling of the Epstein case.
One woman, Maria Farmer, said she had told the FBI that Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell sexually abused her and that she had seen other signs that the two of them were “committing multiple, serious, sexual abuse crimes, including hands-on sexual abuse, against minors and vulnerable young women.”
While working for Epstein in New York City, Farmer, an artist, said that she witnessed young girls entering and leaving Epstein’s mansion, and said that she was later abused by Epstein and Maxwell while working on a project in Ohio. She said that they threatened to burn all her artwork after she confronted them about stealing photographs of her partially dressed 11-year-old sister.
“Deathly afraid, on August 29, 1996, Ms. Farmer reported in detail Epstein’s and Maxwell’s criminality to her local police department, the NYPD Sixth Precinct. The NYPD said that while they could address the local fire threats, they were unable to do anything about other possibly illegal activities occurring outside their jurisdiction, such as the abuse and theft perpetrated in Ohio, and other illegal activities,” the letter says.
Farmer says that she then filed a complaint with the FBI but did not hear back until 2006, roughly ten years later. During that investigation, the letter says that complaints about CSAM were overlooked.
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