Jeffrey Epstein in 2004.
Rick Friedman | Corbis News | Getty Images
A woman who said she was sexually abused by wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein on Tuesday called him “a coward” for a jailhouse suicide that “robbed myself and all the other victims of our day in court” of the chance to confront him for his alleged crimes.
“Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused me for years,” the woman, Courtney Wild, said in U.S. District Court in Manhattan during a hearing where prosecutors were set to formally dismiss the case against the former friend of Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton as a result of his death earlier in August.
“I feel very angry and sad and justice has never been served in this case,” said Wild, one of several dozen Epstein accusers who attended the hearing.
“Jeffrey Epstein robbed myself and all the other victims our day in court to confront him one by one and for that he is a coward,” she said.
Another accuser, who did not disclose her name, told Judge Richard Berman on Tuesday “It didn’t feel good to wake up that morning and hear he allegedly committed suicide.”
“I still feel like I’m learning the ways he’s impacted me,” that woman said.
A third woman, who also did not give her name, said “”I think that many of us will never heal from what happened to us.”
“As destructive as that relationship was and as much of a villian as we’ve created him to be, based on facts, we’ve created him to be a villian, but he’s a complex villian.”
At the time of his death from hanging, Epstein, 66, was accused of child sex trafficking by prosecutors, who said he had sexually exploited many minor girls from 2002 through 2005 at his luxurious residences in Manhattan and Florida.
Prosecutors said his abuse was abetted by a number of unidentified conspirators who helped provide him with a stream of young girls and women to satisfy his sexual obsessions.
The case mirrored allegations investigated more than a decade ago by federal prosecutors in Florida and state prosecutors there. After that investigation, the federal prosecutors declined to file serious charges against Epstein in exchange for his guilty plea to relatively minor state-filed prostitution-related charges, for which he served just 13 months in jail.
None of Epstein’s alleged conspirators has been criminally charged, but U.S. Attorney for Manhattan Geoffrey Berman has suggested that they could be.
At the hearing Tuesday, one of Berman’s prosecutors said that Epstein’s sucide will not stop the effort to get “justice for the victims in this case,” and possibly to recoup money from the dead financier large financial estate.
“To be very clear today’s dismissal in no way inhibits or prohibits the government’s ongoing investigation,” the prosecutor, Maureen Comen said.
“It in no way does it prohibit the government from seeking civil forfeiture.”
“The investigation into those matters has been ongoing, is ongoing, and will continue,” she said.
“This dismissal in no way deters the government’s resolve in seeking justice for the victims in this case,” Comey said.
Berman opened Tuesday’s hearing by saying that Epstein’s death from hanging in a federal jail earlier in August is “rather a stunning turn of events” in the high-profile case.
The judge said he was giving Epstein’s victims an opportunity to tell their stories to him both as a matter of law, and to show “respect” for the women who have come forward.
“I believe it is the court’s responsibility and in its purview that the victims in the case are dealt with, with dignity and with humanity,” Berman said.
“We are very glad that Judge Berman is allowing some of the victims to speak their truth in open court,” Spencer Kuvin, a Florida lawyer involved in Epstein’s prior case, said in a statement.
“At the very least, the Federal Court system is now allowing these victims to publicly speak on the record about the atrocities committed by Mr. Epstein. Our hope is that the DOJ continues its investigation against all of the co-conspirators and that this is merely the beginning, and not the end, of the prosecutions,” Kuvin said.
Prosecutors had said that Epstein worked and conspired with employees, associates and others “who facilitated his conduct by, among other things, contacting victims and scheduling their sexual encounters with Epstein.” Those other people potentially could face criminal prosecution,
Gloria Allred, representing several of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged victims, right, arrives with an unidentified woman to federal court in New York, on Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2019.
Mark Kauzlarich | Bloomberg | Getty Images
