Featured Image Credit: Anadolu/Getty
Topics: Crime, Jeffrey Epstein, US News
William Morgan
One of the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse has been forced to issue a desperate public plea to officials after the Department of Justice failed to redact her name from multiple files that were released on Friday.
The victim, who is usually named as Jane Doe to protect her identity, told CNN that she was surprised to find out that her actual name had been left unredacted in some of the thousands of documents that Congress forced the DOJ to release.
This is despite criticism that many of the other files remain blacked out, which officials say is to protect victims. It even appears that this process may have been incomplete, with some sleuths figuring out how to see through the redactions.
Jane Doe claims to have asked officials to remove her name from the released files over the weekend, but CNN said no changes had yet been made to protect her identity. This has forced her to make a heartfelt appeal to the DOJ in the name of abuse survivors everywhere, saying that their failure 'haunts me to my core.'
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She said in her appeal: “The reason I feel so passionate is it’s not just about me and what happened. I fear for the little girl who’s calling the FBI right now and asking for help.
“I am so afraid for her, because if I have to do all of this right now… I have no words. I just have no words. It hurts my heart. It haunts me to my core.”
Doe said she witnessed and suffered abuse at the hands of wealthy convicted pedophile Epstein in 2009, after he had pled guilty in Florida to soliciting prostitution from a minor. Despite telling the FBI what she experienced, no action appeared to be taken and multiple requests to see her file in the years since went nowhere.
But now these files have been made available to the public, forcing Doe to join a group of more than a dozen survivors criticizing the DOJ for its handling of the files and failure to protect their identities.
The survivors have also questioned why officials have used 'abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation', when some of their names had been left for all to see. They said that this was 'causing real and immediate harm.'
One of Epstein's victims who has gone public, Marina Lacerda, told the BBC that she had a straightforward demand for the DOJ: "It is very simple, redact our names and un-redact the powerful, the elite, men who are out there and are continuing to do these horrible things to women."
Similarly to Jane Doe, she had a desperate plea: "They have done it to us and they will continue to do so. Please look at us as your children."
This problem has been made even worse for both survivors and the officials attempting to redact identifying information in the files with some figuring out how to get around the blacked-out information.
Un-redacted portions of some of the documents raise further questions about why certain pieces of information were being withheld.
Sleuths who got behind the redactions on the case settled by Epstein's estate with the Virgin Islands were able to reveal more about how the financier was able to evade legal consequences for so long.
One un-redacted file reads: "Epstein also threatened harm to victims and helped release damaging stories about them to damage their credibility when they tried to go public with their stories of being trafficked and sexually abused.
"Epstein also instructed one or more Epstein Enterprise participant-witnesses to destroy evidence relevant to ongoing court proceedings involving Defendants’ criminal sex trafficking and abuse conduct."