This case is NOT just going away ……
We are talking about more than 1,000 Girls and Young Women….
Victim’s generally want the seriousness of the crimes outed, but NOT their names….
Victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell are alarmed over the Justice Department’s effort to unseal grand jury testimony in their cases and its cooperation with Maxwell, a convicted sex offender.
Several victims, in letters from their lawyers, have balked at the department’s approach, saying it “smacks of a cover up,” calling aspects of it “cowardly,” and arguing that it demonstrates the Trump administration considers the victims “at best, an afterthought.”
And they warn that the Trump administration, with its treatment of Maxwell, is on the precipice of undoing the only measure of justice the victims received from a sex trafficking ring that, by the government’s own account, harmed more than 1,000 girls and young women.
In letters to the federal judges fielding the government’s request to unseal the materials, victims have largely — though not entirely — agreed with the Justice Department’s move to reveal the testimony, despite the fact that the department itself has acknowledged that much of the information is already public.
But they have derided the administration’s suggestion that it will seek to redact not only victim information but also “other personal identifying information” of third parties from the transcripts.
And they expressed fear and disgust over the administration’s recent treatment of Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for sex trafficking. After a pair of interviews with a top DOJ official, Maxwell was transferred to a less restrictive facility, an unusual upgrade in her prison accommodations. She has also advocated for a pardon from President Donald Trump, who has reiterated he has the power to grant her clemency….
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Victims speak out
Most of the letters to U.S. District Judges Richard Berman and Paul Engelmayer have been filed by lawyers for victims, with the names of the victims undisclosed or redacted.
Bradley Edwards, Brittany Henderson and Paul Cassell represent numerous victims, including some whose names, they said, appear in the grand jury materials and one who testified at Maxwell’s trial. In a letter to the court, they said their clients could support unsealing only if extreme care is taken to protect victims.
“The survivors support transparency when it can be achieved without sacrificing their safety, privacy, or dignity,” they wrote. “But transparency cannot come at the expense of the very people whom the justice system is sworn to protect — particularly amid contemporaneous events that magnify risk and trauma: the public platforming of Ms. Maxwell as a purportedly credible commentator despite her sex-trafficking conviction and perjury charges, her transfer to lower-security custody, a government request to unseal filed without conferral, and the looming specter of clemency.