#justicedept

Rural Montana Had Already Lost Too Many Native Women. Then Selena Disappeared.

For decades, with little public notice, Native women and girls have gone missing or been found murdered. The disappearance of Selena Not Afraid is showing how much things are changing.

By Jack Healy, Photographs by Cristina Baussan | Published Jan. 20, 2020, 3:00 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted January 20, 2020 |

BIG HORN COUNTY, Mont. — Jackie Big Hair slept in her car again, waking every few hours to fire up the engine and gaze at the frozen highway rest stop where her 16-year-old daughter had been reported missing.

“I just have to be here,” Ms. Big Hair, 50, said, watching semis lumber across the plains. “I don’t know where else to go.”

This was her vigil now, along with searches in Billings about 30 miles away, three weeks after her youngest child, Selena Not Afraid, was reported missing from a barren stretch of Interstate 90 in a southern Montana county where 65 percent of the population is Native American. Law enforcement officials said a van carrying Selena home the day after a New Year’s party in Billings had pulled into the rest stop after breaking down, and then reportedly started up again and driven away without her. Nobody had heard from her since.

A national outcry over the killings and disappearances of Indigenous women has reached a boiling point here in Big Horn County, a rural stretch of rolling mountains and ranch lands that contains the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations and has the highest rate of missing and murdered Native Americans in Montana, and among the highest nationwide.

Local activists had an incomplete count of 27 Native women who had gone missing in recent memory in Big Horn County alone. Now, there are 28. The difference here and in many parts of the West is that for decades the disappearance of mothers and children, cousins and friends almost invariably played out in utter obscurity, with modest law enforcement investigations that almost invariably languished unsolved.

Activists and researchers say the crisis burned unheeded for generations until a few years ago, when families’ stories of how their loved ones were sex trafficked, murdered with impunity or dismissed as chronic runaways gained traction through grass-roots organizing and social media, forcing politicians and law enforcement to take notice.

Last year, 5,590 Indigenous women were reported missing to the F.B.I.’s National Crime Information Center, but advocates say the staggeringly high rates of violence suffered by Indigenous people is still not fully reflected in official accounting. Some of the victims are misclassified as Asian or Hispanic, or are overlooked if they live in urban areas instead of reservations, or their cases are lost in a jurisdictional maze over which state, federal or tribal law enforcement agency bears responsibility for investigating.

Law enforcement officials said these can be extremely difficult cases to investigate, sometimes ranging over vast expanses of territory, but that they are committed to solving them. The families say the problem is more a matter of will and resources than of difficulty.

“Native women have been dehumanized from the very beginning,” said Desi Rodriguez-Lonebear, a demographer who grew up in Big Horn County and is on the board of the Sovereign Bodies Institute, which has created its own database of cases. “The law has failed us time and time again. We’re tired of it. We’re tired of our people dying, of our kids going to jail.”

Now, families like Selena’s are taking an urgent public stand to pressure politicians and law enforcement to provide more aggressive responses to these cases. They are raising alarms through social media and even bracing themselves against Montana blizzards to keep their loved ones from being forgotten. They are organizing candlelit vigils, rallying at courthouses and sheriff’s offices and marching for days along prairie highways, reservation roads and to the steps of state capitols.

“We’re here demanding it,” Selena’s aunt Cheryl Horn said one afternoon, warming her hands with a bowl of chili as volunteers returned from another fruitless search of the nearby hills. “We’re not being quiet. We’re not leaving.”

In recent months, a flurry of federal and state agencies across the country and here in Montana have raced to respond with task forces and law-enforcement resources, including a new Justice Department effort to coordinate federal and local responses to disappearances and murders in Indian Country.

Law-enforcement authorities say that Selena, a member of the Crow tribe, went missing at about 2 p.m. on New Year’s Day. A New Year’s Eve party in Billings had spilled over into the following afternoon, and she was riding back toward her home in Hardin, about 50 miles east.

According to local and federal law-enforcement alerts, the van broke down and pulled over at the rest stop, where Selena was last seen walking into a field. Her family believes she was taken, possibly by a passing car.

When her relatives heard the news, they began pouring into the rest stop, circling their cars and campers and horse trailers into a makeshift windbreak and transforming a frozen spit of asphalt and concrete into a scene of prayer and protest.

They lit a campfire, searched through ranchers’ fields and garlanded the fences and sign poles with red ribbons and posters of Selena. They saturated social media with calls for help. “Internet warriors,” one of Selena’s aunts called the response.

At 16, Selena already knew the toll of violence too well.

She had buried three siblings — a brother who had been fatally shot by Billings police officers; a sister who was struck and killed by a car; and her twin sister, who died by suicide when she was just 11 years old.

“I’ve always felt like there’s a bad presence against us,” Selena’s older brother, R.J., said. “I’ve expected the worst.”

After Selena was reported missing, police officers from South Dakota and Wyoming joined Big Horn County sheriff’s deputies, Bureau of Indian Affairs officers and volunteers to search the nearby hills. Federal and local law-enforcement officers set up a command center in the basement of the county courthouse. Thermal drones and helicopters buzzed overhead.

The F.B.I. issued an alert for Selena and sent in a search team, but agents and sheriff’s investigators have said little more about her disappearance, or whether they are investigating the older acquaintances who had been riding in the van with her. .

The swift response has surprised some activists. “Nothing moves that fast,” said BethYana Pease, a Crow community organizer.

Families and activists say they have been sounding these alarms for years. They say the crisis flows from generations of discriminatory government policies and racism in reservation border towns like Hardin that devalue Native women’s lives and deaths.

Jay Harris, the county prosecutor, who is a member of the Crow tribe, said the proliferation of meth use and a scarcity of federal law enforcement had exacerbated the problem. Last November, the Crow chairman declared a state of emergency over what he called ineffective investigations and unanswered police calls on the 2.3 million-acre reservation, and said the tribe would move to form its own police force.

Some victims’ families wondered why the deaths and disappearances of their own mothers, sisters and nieces had not sparked a similar outcry. Ms. Pease ticked off names she said had never received justice: 14-year-old Henny Scott, who was found dead two weeks after she went missing in December 2018. Bonnie Three Irons, a mother of six, whose body was found in the mountains in April 2017.

Or 18-year-old Kaysera Stops Pretty Places. It was late August when Kaysera went out with friends in her hometown, Hardin, the county seat. Four days later, a jogger found her body in a suburban backyard next to the house where she had been that evening, just steps away from a busy road.

“Where the hell were these big shots when my granddaughter was missing?” asked Carmelia Brown, a relative who said she loved Kaysera as a granddaughter.

Kaysera’s family believes she was murdered, but her cause of death has lingered undetermined for four months, her autopsy still unfinished. Her family says it has never been told a certain time of death. The case is classified as “Suspicious” and still being investigated, said Mr. Harris, the county attorney.

Kaysera’s family members wondered how she could have lain in someone’s lawn for days without being seen. They were troubled that her body had been shuttled back and forth between the funeral home and state crime lab before being cremated by the county coroner, who is also the funeral director. They were disturbed that one of the lead investigators into Kaysera’s death had also been involved in an incident in which her younger brother was beaten and forcibly restrained.

“Why does nobody care about this?” asked Grace Bulltail, one of Kaysera’s aunts and an assistant professor of engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “We’re not being given any information.”

Family members were uncertain whether Kaysera and Selena knew each other, but their stories have become intertwined. When Kaysera’s family led marches to the county courthouse seeking answers into her death, Selena attended, her aunt Cheryl Horn said. She posted Facebook tributes to Big Horn County’s missing and murdered Indigenous women.

One morning at Selena’s roadside vigil, as one of her great-aunts lit the day’s fire, her overcoat swung open to show a red sweatshirt bearing Kaysera’s face.

“This is the justice that Kaysera didn’t get,” Ms. Horn, Selena’s aunt, said.

How a Ring of Women Allegedly Recruited Girls for Jeffrey Epstein

After Mr. Epstein’s suicide, his inner circle of girlfriends, employees and other associates is now under scrutiny by prosecutors.

By Amy Julia Harris, Frances Robles, Mike Baker and William K. Rashbaum | Published August 29, 2019 Updated 3:47 p.m. ET |

Haley Robson was a 16-year-old South Florida high school student when an acquaintance from school approached her at a local pool with an intriguing offer: Did she want to make extra money giving massages to a billionaire in Palm Beach?

She agreed. When Jeffrey Epstein tried to grope her while she was giving him a massage in nothing but a thong, she brushed his hand away, Ms. Robson said in a 2009 deposition for a civil case. But she continued to visit Mr. Epstein’s mansion dozens more times, in a lucrative new role: a recruiter of other teenage girls from her school.

“I didn’t have to convince them,” she said in the deposition. “I proposed to them. They took it.”

After Mr. Epstein’s suicide in a Manhattan jail cell in early August, federal authorities have refocused their investigation on the more than half-dozen employees, girlfriends and associates who prosecutors say he relied on to feed his insatiable appetite for girls, according to two people with knowledge of the inquiry. Ms. Robson, now 33, is among them.

A review by The New York Times of lawsuits, unsealed court records and depositions, along with new interviews, offers disturbing allegations about how this small cadre of women helped Mr. Epstein lure girls into his orbit and managed the logistics of his encounters with them.

The urgency of the investigation into Mr. Epstein’s associates was underscored on Tuesday when about two dozen women offered searing accounts of how he had sexually abused them before a packed courtroom in Manhattan.

The judge overseeing the case had invited the women to speak at a hearing to dismiss the indictment against Mr. Epstein in light of his death.

Several of the women implored federal prosecutors to continue investigating the women in Mr. Epstein’s inner circle.

“Jeffrey is no longer here, and the women that helped him are,” said Teresa Helm, who said she was recruited into Mr. Epstein’s world 17 years ago. “They definitely need to be held accountable for helping him, helping themselves, helping one another carry on this huge — almost like — system.”

The United States attorney in Manhattan, Geoffrey S. Berman, whose office brought the charges against Mr. Epstein, said after his suicide that the investigation into the sex-trafficking conspiracy was not finished and prosecutors were committed to standing up for the “brave young women” Mr. Epstein had abused.

One of the women under scrutiny, Mr. Epstein’s onetime girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, has been accused in several well-publicized lawsuits of overseeing efforts to procure girls and young women for him, a charge she has firmly denied.

But Mr. Epstein is also accused in civil suits of relying on an organized network of underlings: those who trained girls how to sexually pleasure him; office assistants who booked cars and travel; and recruiters who ensured he always had a fresh supply of teenage girls at the ready.

None of Mr. Epstein’s associates have been charged or named as co-conspirators in Manhattan. But federal authorities are eyeing possible charges that include sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy, the two people with knowledge of the investigation said.

Four women were apparently so instrumental to Mr. Epstein’s operation that they were named as possible “co-conspirators” and were granted immunity from prosecution in a widely criticized plea bargain Mr. Epstein struck with federal prosecutors in Florida more than a decade ago. That deal allowed Mr. Epstein to plead guilty to state charges and to spend 13 months in a county jail rather than face a federal sex-trafficking indictment.

The four women — Sarah Kellen, Lesley Groff, Adriana Ross and Nadia Marcinkova — could still be subject to criminal charges in Manhattan. The United States attorney’s office has said it is not bound by the Florida agreement.

‘The Boss’

Three women have alleged in lawsuits that Mr. Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring operated as a hierarchy, with the financier and Ms. Maxwell at the top.

“She orchestrated the whole thing for Jeffrey,” Sarah Ransome, who sued Ms. Maxwell and other associates in 2017, said in an interview.

Ms. Maxwell, the daughter of the British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell, was Mr. Epstein’s longtime companion, managing his homes and introducing him to many of the politicians, celebrities and dignitaries who became fixtures within his social circle.

“They were like partners in business,” Janusz Banasiak, Mr. Epstein’s house manager, said in a deposition. Mr. Epstein’s butler, Alfredo Rodriguez, described Ms. Maxwell in a deposition as “the boss.”

Ms. Maxwell has vehemently denied she trafficked girls. Neither Ms. Maxwell nor her lawyers responded to requests for interviews for this article.

But Mr. Epstein’s accusers contend in court papers that Ms. Maxwell managed the network of recruiters and helped devise the playbook for how to lure young women into Mr. Epstein’s web. Recruiters were allegedly told to target young, financially desperate women, and to promise them help furthering their education and careers, these civil complaints said.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre said in a deposition that she was 16 when she met Ms. Maxwell and was recruited as a masseuse. She said she remembered Ms. Maxwell’s sales pitch: If she gave a wealthy man a massage, a whole world of opportunity would open to her.

“If the guy likes you, then, you know, it will work out for you,” Ms. Giuffre, in a deposition, recalled Ms. Maxwell telling her. “You’ll travel. You’ll make good money. You’ll be educated.”

Ms. Giuffre took the job. Soon, she said, she became Mr. Epstein’s “sex slave,” not only providing sexual favors to him but also to some of his acquaintances, including politicians and prominent businessmen.

“My whole life revolved around just pleasing these men and keeping Ghislaine and Jeffrey happy,” she said in the deposition. “Their whole entire lives revolved around sex.”

The ‘Lieutenant’

Just below Ms. Maxwell in the chain of command was Ms. Kellen, another high-ranking employee, who has been accused in multiple lawsuits of scheduling girls to have sex with Mr. Epstein in his Palm Beach mansion.

She was called the “lieutenant” in one lawsuit. David Rodgers, Mr. Epstein’s pilot, said in a deposition that Ms. Kellen was “like an assistant to Ghislaine.”

Ms. Kellen kept the names and numbers of all the girls who gave Mr. Epstein erotic massages, according to Palm Beach police reports and Ms. Robson’s deposition. She would call them whenever Mr. Epstein was in town, asking the girls if they were ready to “work,” the reports and Ms. Robson said.

“She saw herself as the boss,” said Spencer T. Kuvin, a West Palm Beach lawyer who represented several accusers in lawsuits. “Sarah was really running that organization, bringing girls and getting them in and out of the Palm Beach home.”

Ms. Kellen, who sometimes goes by Sarah Kensington or Sarah Vickers, did not respond to requests for an interview. Her lawyers also did not respond to requests for comment.

Multiple girls told Palm Beach detectives that when they arrived at Mr. Epstein’s mansion, Ms. Kellen would escort them upstairs to Mr. Epstein’s bedroom and lay out the massage table with the various oils and lotions that they were to use on him, according to police reports.

In an interview, Ms. Ransome said Ms. Kellen and Ms. Maxwell also gave her tips on how to give Mr. Epstein erotic massages, including how to rub his feet and best satisfy him sexually.

“It was Ghislaine and Sarah Kellen that showed me how to please Jeffrey,” Ms. Ransome said.

The Assistants

Ms. Groff, Mr. Epstein’s executive assistant for almost 20 years, was one of the possible co-conspirators named in the 2008 plea deal Mr. Epstein’s lawyers worked out with the United States attorney’s office in Miami.

She said in a 2005 interview with The Times that she answered Mr. Epstein’s telephone and managed his schedule, which included meetings with prominent scientists, Wall Street executives, foreign dignitaries and American politicians.

Over the years, she said in 2005, she formed a special bond with the financier, anticipating his needs. “I know what he is thinking,” she said at the time.

But Ms. Ransome said in her lawsuit that Ms. Groff, now 53, also arranged travel and lodging for the seemingly endless stream of adolescent girls and young women who provided Mr. Epstein with erotic massages.

In a recent interview with The Times, Ms. Ransome said Ms. Groff communicated directly with her, repeating Mr. Epstein’s promises to help her obtain a fashion degree.

Ms. Groff’s lawyer, Michael Bachner, said his client worked as part of a professional staff, making appointments, taking messages and setting up meetings. “At no time during Lesley’s employment with Epstein did she ever engage in any misconduct and never knowingly made travel arrangements for anyone under 18,” Mr. Bachner said.

Ms. Ransome also alleged in her lawsuit that she was instructed by Mr. Epstein’s associates to go on a diet and to lose about 11 pounds to maintain her slim figure. In one email exchange reviewed by The Times, Ms. Ransome told Ms. Groff she was monitoring her weight for Mr. Epstein. “Please could you also let him know that I am now 57 kg and that everything is going well,” Ms. Ransome emailed Ms. Groff in 2007.

Another of Mr. Epstein’s assistants, Ms. Ross, was also named as a potential co-conspirator in the 2008 plea deal.

When Palm Beach police were investigating Mr. Epstein around 2005, Ms. Ross removed three computers from the Florida mansion, Mr. Banasiak, the house manager, said in a deposition. The police noted in their reports that the computers, which they had reason to think might contain photos of naked girls, were missing when investigators arrived.

“She show up one day with gentleman,” Mr. Banasiak said. “And she told me that they are moving out those computers.”

Ms. Ross, who went on to study accounting and is based in Miami, did not respond to calls or emails seeking comment.

‘The more you do, the more you make’

Ms. Marcinkova, a former model and pilot, had come under police scrutiny in Palm Beach in 2005.

A 16-year-old told detectives she was giving Mr. Epstein a massage when Ms. Marcinkova entered the room naked, according to Palm Beach police reports. Mr. Epstein then told the girl she could make an extra $200 if she performed oral sex on Ms. Marcinkova, and the girl reluctantly agreed, the reports said.

That encounter was the first of many sexual trysts the teenager told the police she was coerced into having with both Ms. Marcinkova and Mr. Epstein at his Palm Beach mansion, according to a police incident report.

Police records also show that investigators had indications that Ms. Marcinkova might have been underage herself when she became involved with Mr. Epstein.

Ms. Marcinkova, who later used the last name Marcinko, declined to answer questions about Mr. Epstein’s alleged abuse of girls when she was deposed in a lawsuit, invoking the Fifth Amendment.

Reached by The Times, Ms. Marcinkova’s lawyers, Erica T. Dubno and Aaron Mysliwiec, said “like other victims, Nadia Marcinko is and has been severely traumatized” and “needs time to process and make sense of what she has been through before she is able to speak out.”

Prosecutors may face thorny legal issues in deciding whether to charge some of Mr. Epstein’s associates, like Ms. Robson and Ms. Marcinkova, who may have initially been victims themselves.

Determining criminal liability is always a complex decision if a person has been exploited for sex, then used as a pawn to recruit others, said Lauren Hersh, a former sex-trafficking prosecutor in Brooklyn who now leads World Without Exploitation, an anti-trafficking organization.

“But for their own exploitation, they wouldn’t do that,” she said. “It becomes really, really tricky.”

Ms. Robson, a former stripper and Olive Garden worker, was not among the four women given immunity in the Florida plea agreement. But her role in Mr. Epstein’s operation was significant enough that Palm Beach Police detectives had planned to charge her more than a decade ago, according to an affidavit by the lead detective in Palm Beach.

She was also sued twice, and she described her role in Mr. Epstein’s operation in a deposition.

When Mr. Epstein would fly into Florida, Ms. Robson said she would get a call on her cellphone from Ms. Kellen, who would tell her how many massages the financier needed for the upcoming visit. The two of them would hammer out logistics.

“I would have a girl that would be available for those dates and times,” Ms. Robson said in a 2009 deposition.

Ms. Robson told lawyers she made $200 for every high school girl she brought to the Palm Beach mansion. She recruited the girls from her high school, including one who was 14. When she brought a 23-year-old, Mr. Epstein balked. Too old, he told her.

The girls knew what they were getting into, Ms. Robson said. The rules were unspoken, but understood.

“The more you do, the more you make,” Ms. Robson said in the deposition. “If you were topless, if you were working in your thong, your bra, you’re going to make more than a hundred.”

Reached by The Times, Ms. Robson said, “I have nothing to say. I would appreciate if I was not contacted.”

Douglas McIntosh, a lawyer who represented her in a civil case in Florida, called Ms. Robson “a lovely young lady,” but declined to answer questions about her involvement with Mr. Epstein.

In her deposition, Ms. Robson said that she had debated suing Mr. Epstein, but decided against it.

Despite Trump's repeated claims otherwise, a top Justice Department ethics official concluded that Robert Mueller's sterling reputation and lengthy history of federal service meant it was unlikely any reasonable person would doubt his independence.

Justice Dept. releases part of Mueller’s conflict-of-interest waiver

By JOSH GERSTEIN | Published 09/14/2019 11:13 AM EDT | Politico | Posted September 14, 2019 12:45 PM EDT |

The Justice Department is offering more insight into how it addressed potential conflicts of interest when former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel for the Trump-Russia investigation two years ago, but officials are continuing to keep secret key parts of their internal ethics analysis.

A memo obtained Friday by the pro-transparency organization Property of the People shows that a top Justice Department ethics official concluded that Mueller’s sterling reputation and lengthy history of federal service meant it was unlikely any reasonable person would doubt his independence.

The head of Justice’s ethics office, Cynthia Shaw, suggested such doubts were exceedingly unlikely. That arguably turned out to be an ill-founded prediction since President Donald Trump, some of his attorneys and many of his allies made sustained efforts to paint Mueller as a hack carrying out a vendetta against Trump on behalf of Democrats.

“I am not convinced that an authorization is needed, but unequivocally, if one is, the overwhelming need of the Government for Mr. Mueller’s services greatly outweighs the concern that a reasonable person may question the integrity of the Department’s programs and operations,” Shaw wrote in a May 18, 2017 memo to Associate Deputy Attorney General Scott Schools. “I am not certain that a reasonable person in possession of the relevant facts would question his impartiality.”

The key — and perhaps the only — ethics issue addressed in the memo is whether Mueller’s work as a partner at law firm Wilmer Hale created a potential conflict because a Wilmer client was involved in the investigation.

Shaw doesn’t mention the client’s name but it appears to be former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was represented by Wilmer partner Reginald Brown before Manafort switched to other attorneys a couple of months before his indictment in October 2017.

Mueller “has not represented the current firm client who may have some involvement in the investigation and has no confidential information pertaining to that client,” Shaw wrote

Wilmer Hale also did legal work for the president’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, primarily on compliance with federal ethics and financial disclosure laws.

The law firm connection was just one of several purported Mueller conflicts Trump complained about to aides and advisers in the spring of 2017, according to Mueller’s final report. The report said Trump raised such complaints with senior adviser Steve Bannon, White House Counsel Don McGahn and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus.

All three men told Mueller’s team that they pushed back on or resisted requests to act on the alleged conflicts. Bannon called the claims “ridiculous,” while McGahn viewed them as “silly” and “not real.” The issue of the alleged conflicts triggered a major falling-out between Trump and McGahn, as well as a dispute over whether Trump instructed McGahn to have Mueller fired on that basis.

In June 2017, one of Trump’s personal lawyers did call Mueller’s office to complain about the alleged conflicts, including Mueller’s work for Wilmer Hale, according to the special counsel’s report. Around the same time, close Trump friend Chris Ruddy gave an interview to PBS’ Newshour decrying “real conflicts” for Mueller and specifically mentioning Mueller’s status at the law firm.

Yet, just weeks before the public and private tempest over the issue, the Justice ethics official concluded there would be no reasonable resistance to Mueller on grounds of his impartiality.

“Mr. Mueller served as Director of the FBI for 12 years,” Shaw wrote. “He served the last two years of his tenure after Congress passed a statute specifically authorizing him to serve two years beyond the statutory term for FBI Directors. He served as Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division. He served as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California. He has been appointed to positions of responsibility by presidents of both political parties. He has a longstanding reputation for integrity.”

The disclosure of the memo is obviously belated, coming more than two years after Mueller’s appointment and about five months after he closed up shop.

Still, it is something of a breakthrough, since the Justice Department often seeks to withhold the rationale for ethics waivers by separating the bare-bones waiver from the underlying paperwork, which is typically treated as a recommendation exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

However, the final two paragraphs of Shaw’s memo are still almost entirely redacted as relating to Justice’s deliberative process.

https://apnews.com/2e2b7821707f4df4a11fcd25ff2de3ce

Early Epstein accuser: Police could have stopped him in 1997

By KATIE CAMPIONE and JENNIFER PELTZ | Published August 19, 2019 2:00 PM ET | AP | Posted August 19, 2019 |

SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — More than two decades before Jeffrey Epstein took his own life, a woman went into a California police station and filed one of the earliest sex-crime complaints against him: that he groped her during what she thought was a modeling interview for the Victoria's Secret catalog.

Alicia Arden said she never heard back from investigators about her complaint. No charges ever came of it. And to this day she sees it as a glaring missed opportunity to bring the financier to justice long before he was accused of sexually abusing dozens of teenage girls and women.

"If they would have taken me more seriously than they did, it could have helped all these girls," said Arden, an actress and model. "It could have been stopped."

With recent scrutiny focused on  Epstein's life , wealth and connections to powerful people , his early brush with the law has been something of a mystery. After Arden's 1997 complaint to Santa Monica police first came to light several years ago, the department said little about it and Epstein's lawyers said only that police discounted her allegations.

In response to Associated Press inquiries and a public records request, Santa Monica police agreed last week to summarize parts of the detective's notes to a reporter. The notes showed that Epstein was questioned soon after Arden's complaint and gave a conflicting statement. Most notably, the detective wrote that Arden did not want to press charges against Epstein but wanted him warned about his behavior, an assertion that she strongly denies.

In a follow-up statement, police spokeswoman Lt. Candice Cobarrubias declined to say anything more about how Epstein's account differed from Arden's and stressed that the case was closed because the victim was not "desirous of prosecution."

"If the victim tells the detective they do not wish to prosecute, then the detective will close the case," the statement said. "In this case, the victim advised the detective she did not wish to prosecute so there was no point in presenting it to the City Attorney for review."

When asked to provide documentary evidence of Arden's stated wishes, Cobarrubias refused to provide any more details from the detective's notes.

Contacted this past week, Arden was adamant that she did not, in any way, communicate to the police that she did not want to press charges. She was outraged to hear that the police say otherwise.

"The fact that they didn't do anything, and they discredited me, is just a stab to my heart," Arden said.

At the time of Arden's May 12, 1997, encounter with Epstein, she was 27 and had credits including TV's "Baywatch" and "Red Shoe Diaries." She says she sent modeling portfolio shots to Epstein's New York office after hearing from a mutual friend that he could help get her into the Victoria's Secret catalog. He followed up by asking to meet her, and his secretary booked an appointment for the two at a beachfront hotel.

"I always was sending my resumes and pictures around to people who owned magazines," Arden said. "I never thought that it would be bad to go and meet him."

When she showed up, she found Epstein barefoot and clad in sweat pants and a T-shirt with USA on the front. He started criticizing her figure and asked her to come close to him so he could evaluate it, according to accounts Arden gave in interviews with the AP and in her police report.

Epstein then asked her to undress and assisted in pulling her top off and skirt up, saying, "Let me manhandle you for a second" as he began groping her buttocks.

Arden said she pushed his hands away and left.

"He was bigger than me," she said. "I felt like it could have been bad if I didn't leave."

One detail she told the AP that was not in her original complaint was what happened as she left the hotel room. She said Epstein spontaneously pulled out $100 and tried to give it to her, an offer she refused because she felt he was treating her like a prostitute. But after he followed her out to her car, she took it because she needed gas.

Arden went to police the next day, and she says she got an off-putting reception. A male detective noted that she had willingly gone to Epstein's room — though she emphasized the purpose was business, she said. She remembered the detective suggesting she think about whether she really wanted to file a report.

She left, crying on the phone to a friend that she wished she could talk to a female police officer.

"I felt like I was being blamed," she said.

Nevertheless, she went back to police a week later and filed the report with the same detective.

"I wanted to be taken seriously," she said.

Jeffrey Epstein’s New York Hunting Ground: Dance Studios

The financier recruited young dancers to give him erotic massages even after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor.

By Ali Watkins | Published Sept. 3, 2019 Updated 1:54 p.m. ET | New York Times | Posted September 3, 2019 3:29 PM ET

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Lisa was 17 when a fellow dancer approached her after a ballet class in 2002 and asked if she wanted to give private exercise classes to a wealthy man named Jeffrey Epstein.

Another dancer, Priscilla, received a similar pitch in 2006 from a woman, this time to give Mr. Epstein a massage.

The same year, a third dancer, Marlo Fisken, was asked if she would become his personal trainer.

At the time, Mr. Epstein was exploiting dozens of girls he had plucked from high schools and shopping malls in Florida, luring them to his Palm Beach mansion and coercing them into giving him erotic massages through false promises, cash payments and threats, according to court records.

But in New York City, Mr. Epstein had a different hunting ground: dance studios.

The scope of Mr. Epstein’s sex trafficking in Manhattan has become clearer as several lawsuits have been filed against his estate in the days since he was found dead from a suicide in his jail cell in Manhattan, where he had been awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.

The suits say that when Mr. Epstein was luring teenagers into sexual exploitation in Florida, he was using a network of recruiters within New York City’s dance studios to procure aspiring performers into a similar scheme.

Not even a 13-month stint in jail in 2008 and 2009 stopped him, recently filed lawsuits say. While in jail, Mr. Epstein arranged for two women he had recruited in New York to be flown to Florida, where he pressured them into sex while he was on work release, the court papers said.

The United States attorney in Manhattan is continuing to investigate people close to Mr. Epstein whom prosecutors have said he relied on to feed his appetite for girls, including a half-dozen employees, girlfriends and associates. It remains unclear if the people who recruited girls from dance studios are under scrutiny.

Mr. Epstein’s activities in Manhattan apparently did not cross the radar of the New York police. “None of it sounds remotely familiar to me,” said Michael Bock, the former supervising sergeant for the Manhattan bureau of the Police Department’s Special Victims Division. “I don’t recall ever even seeing his name across my desk.”

Mr. Epstein’s network of recruiters in dance studios was described in the lawsuits filed earlier this month in Federal District Court in Manhattan by two women who say they were sexually exploited by Mr. Epstein, and in interviews with two dancers who had dealings with him in New York.

These women said Mr. Epstein took advantage of the insularity of the dance world, where dancers rely on one another for job opportunities and trust that those tips are legitimate.

“There’s some sort of level of trust with people through ballet studios,” said Nadia Vostrikov, a former dancer who said she was recruited at age 26 to be a personal trainer to Mr. Epstein by another woman at a dance studio in 2013. “There is that kind of inherent trust, we’re all part of the same community. You wouldn’t share that kind of unsafe opportunity with someone.”

Lisa, whose last name was not revealed in court papers, said in her complaint that she was recruited by a fellow dancer at her studio and that she accepted an opportunity to make money giving private exercise lessons to Mr. Epstein.

But when she arrived days later at Mr. Epstein’s palatial townhouse on East 71st Street, she found her patron was not interested in a dance workout, according to a lawsuit. Instead, Mr. Epstein quizzed her on her dance aspirations, promised to buy her new point shoes and asked her to take part in several sexually charged stretching activities.

On her third visit, Mr. Epstein asked for a massage, during which he assaulted her with a sex toy and masturbated, the complaint said. He implied Lisa’s dance career would be over if she did not go along.

Afterward, he gave her $300 and the book “Massage for Dummies.” It was the start of an eight-year cycle of abuse.

The lawsuits name as defendants Mr. Epstein’s estate and eight companies that the plaintiffs claim assisted Mr. Epstein in his sex trafficking, including by serving as fronts for procuring young women and paying associates who helped him.

The suits are among at least six complaints filed in Manhattan against Mr. Epstein’s estate and his close associates since he died by suicide on Aug. 10, all saying he forced girls and young women into sexual servitude.

One woman, Jennifer Araoz, said in a suit that she was 14 in 2001 when a woman recruited her outside her high school. She was groomed over time, she said, and was eventually pressured to give Mr. Epstein erotic massages at his townhouse.

A year later, she said, he raped her during one of those encounters. She had been an aspiring actress.

Mr. Epstein’s lawyers declined to address the allegations. They have pointed out in court that no one has accused Mr. Epstein of abusing underage girls since his conviction in 2008, when he struck a widely criticized plea bargain with prosecutors in Florida that shielded him from federal sex-trafficking charges.

Under that deal, Mr. Epstein pleaded guilty to two state charges, including soliciting a minor for prostitution. He served a 13-month sentence in a Florida jail, but was permitted to leave for 12 hours a day, six days a week.

Two of the lawsuits say that Mr. Epstein used his time on work release to have sex with at least two of the young women he had recruited in New York.

One, identified in court papers as Priscilla Doe, said Mr. Epstein flew her to Florida during his imprisonment and had sex with her at his mansion while he was wearing an ankle monitor.

Priscilla said in court papers that she had been drawn into his world two years earlier, at age 20. Her experience after she was offered a job as a masseuse closely tracked patterns described by his accusers in other lawsuits.

The first two visits, she had just given him massages and received payments. After that, however, Mr. Epstein began assaulting her sexually with his hands and sex toys, telling her that he had resources that he would use to advance her dancing career “if she would do what he wanted to do.”

In 2007, Priscilla flew to Mr. Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean and posted about the trip on social media, the lawsuit said. The next morning, Mr. Epstein was furious, held her down by her wrists and threatened her safety if she ever told anyone about what she knew of his activities.

After that, she “was in fear for her safety and her life and knew that strict compliance with the dictates of this very powerful man was required as a condition of maintaining her safety.” Mr. Epstein continued to coerce her into sex until 2010, the lawsuit said.

Another woman, identified only as Kaitlyn Doe, said in a lawsuit that she was introduced to Mr. Epstein through her sister, who was working for him. She said Mr. Epstein promised repeatedly that he would help pay $20,000 for a critical medical procedure she needed if she complied with his sexual demands. She continued to engage in sex acts with him for money until 2014.

Mr. Epstein was accused in the suits of sexually exploiting the women until they looked less like teenagers. Mr. Epstein then allegedly sought to turn two of the women into recruiters, urging Lisa “to go to her dance studio and find other dancers.” Another he pushed to become a trained masseuse.

The recruitments of Lisa and Priscilla echo the experience of Marlo Fisken, a dance instructor who said in an interview that she was recruited to provide private lessons to Mr. Epstein in New York around 2006.

Ms. Fisken, who is now based in Boulder, Colo., and manages her own dance business, said a woman she met in a bar took interest in her dance career and said she knew a wealthy man looking for a personal trainer. Ms. Fisken, who was in her early 20s at the time and new to New York City, took the job.

When she arrived at Mr. Epstein’s townhouse, he did not want to exercise but seemed interested in bizarre stretching maneuvers. During one session, Ms. Fisken said, Mr. Epstein suggested she could massage his testicles to help with flexibility.

“He was like, ‘You know, my Russian ballet instructor, she massages my testicles because it helps my flexibility,’” Ms. Fisken recalled. “I said, ‘O.K., I can’t do that for you.’”

Ms. Fisken said she worked for Mr. Epstein for a only few weeks, and was also asked to give classes to two teenagers living in one of his apartments, whom he called “my girls.” Ms. Fisken said the arrangement ended after she refused Mr. Epstein’s suggestive proposals.

“It certainly wasn’t for personal training,” she said of the classes.

Ms. Vostrikov, a former dancer, said Mr. Epstein tried to recruit her to give him dance lessons in 2013. She was 26, but looked younger. A young-looking woman approached her in the bathroom of the Steps on Broadway dance studio and said she was looking for someone to take over one of her private ballet clients.

Ms. Vostrikov agreed to speak to the potential student through Skype and was surprised when the person on the screen was an older man who wanted to fly her to Florida for lessons. The man told her that he was a registered sex offender and asked her to do an internet search for his name, Jeffrey Epstein, before she committed to the job.

“I never talked to him again,” Ms. Vostrikov said.

⚠️⚠️JEFFREY EPSTEIN CORRUPTION ALERT ⚠ ⚠

Jeffrey Epstein paid Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office $128,000 during incarceration for prostitution charges

Jeffrey Epstein paid PBSO from his ‘non-profit’, Florida Science Foundation

By: Merris Badcock | Published: 7:48 PM, Jul 16, 2019, Updated: 2:07 PM, Jul 19, 2019 | WPTV | Posted July 20, 2019|

NEWS VIDEO |

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A recently released financial record shows a money trail between convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office.

The record, released to Contact 5 through a records request, shows Epstein’s company, Florida Science Foundation paid PBSO $128,136 during his incarceration between 2008 and 2009.

Epstein pleaded guilty to lesser state charges in 2008, including solicitation of a minor. The guilty plea was part of the secret non-prosecution agreement which kept Epstein out of federal prison on numerous accusations that the part-time Palm Beacher allegedly ran a sex-trafficking ring out of his Palm Beach mansion.

The agreement also kept Epstein out of prison, and instead, allowed him to serve his sentence out at the local county jail, run by PBSO Sheriff Ric Bradshaw.

While there, the convicted sex offender was granted work-release benefits, and allowed to leave his cell six days a week, 12 hours a day to work at his Florida Science Foundation, located in a high-rise off Australian Ave. in West Palm Beach.

That foundation appears to be the same Epstein foundation which paid PBSO nearly $130,000 between October 2008 and May 2009. It’s unclear if Epstein wrote off the payments, as financial records for the so-called non-profit were not immediately available.

However, the Florida Science Foundation played another role in the Epstein saga. Once Epstein received probation, a Palm Beach County judge allowed him to serve out his community service requirements “at his own non-profit, the Florida Science Foundation,” according to former WPTV reports.

Records which show exactly how PBSO spent the nearly $130,000 or why Epstein paid them in the first place were not immediately available.

Contact 5 has requested receipts from PBSO and are waiting on a response.

Meanwhile, a Fort Lauderdale attorney claims “more than one woman” was propositioned by Epstein at his Florida Science Foundation office, while visiting him during work release hours.

“He was not sitting there conducting some scientific research for the betterment of the community,” attorney Brad Edwards told reporters at a press conference in New York City on Tuesday. “[The women] believed that they were going there for something other than a sexual purpose, and while there, surprisingly to them, the situation turned sexual.”

Edwards says the women were between the ages of 18 and 20 at the time. He currently represents other victims involved in the South Florida investigation which resulted in the secret, non-prosecution agreement.

Contact 5 asked PBSO why a convicted sex offender like Epstein was given work release benefits. Spokeswoman Teri Barbera wrote in an email, “Sex offenders are not allowed to go on work release. Epstein registered as a sex offender after he was released from jail.”

In response to your request:

Epstein was carefully guarded.

Please review the YouTube video below . 10 minutes in you will hear Chief Gauger say, he was picked up by a driver, met by a PBSO deputy at his place of employment which stayed with him the entire time he was at his office, he was allowed NO family, friends or guests. His attorney or business partner ONLY. Over 464 reports were filed by deputies stating things like, he had no visitors, his attorney visited, he had a doctors apt today, etc. NO VISITS FROM FAMILY … FRIENDS … OR GUESTS!

The rejection was a remarkable rebuke, suggesting that ordinary citizens did not believe that the lawmakers had committed any crimes.

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Federal prosecutors in Washington sought and failed on Tuesday to secure an indictment against six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video this fall that enraged President Trump by reminding active-duty members of the military and intelligence community that they were obligated to refuse illegal orders, four people familiar with the matter said.

It was remarkable that the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington — led by Jeanine Pirro, a longtime ally of Mr. Trump’s — authorized prosecutors to go into a grand jury and ask for an indictment of the six members of Congress, all of whom had served in the military or the nation’s spy agencies.

But it was even more remarkable that a group of ordinary citizens sitting on the grand jury in Federal District Court in Washington forcefully rejected Mr. Trump’s bid to label their expression of dissent as a criminal act warranting prosecution.

The move to charge the lawmakers — among them, Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan — was, by any measure, an extraordinary attempt by Trump appointees to politicize the criminal justice system even for a Justice Department that has repeatedly shattered norms of independence from the White House and followed Mr. Trump’s directives to prosecute his adversaries.

But manipulating bureaucratic levers is not the same thing as controlling the entire criminal justice system.

Before Mr. Trump’s second term, it had been exceedingly rare for grand jurors to rebuff requests by prosecutors seeking indictments. It is now happening with increased frequency, as Mr. Trump’s appointees push ahead with questionable cases in an effort to appease him.

On Tuesday, prosecutors presenting the case sought to persuade the grand jurors that the lawmakers had violated a statute that forbids interfering with the loyalty, morale or discipline of the U.S. armed forces, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.

They sought to bring charges against Mr. Kelly, Ms. Slotkin and their four colleagues in the House: Jason Crow, a former Army Ranger; Maggie Goodlander, a former Navy reservist; Chrissy Houlahan, a former Air Force officer; and Chris Deluzio, a Navy veteran.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Ms. Slotkin welcomed the outcome. “No matter what President Trump and Pirro continue to do with this case, tonight we can score one for the Constitution, our freedom of speech, and the rule of law,” she said in a statement.