File 016508

14 The Virgin Islands Daily News
PERVERSION OF JUSTICE
Thursday, February 28, 2019
PERVERSION
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 13
as a massage often led to masturbation, oral
se=rszvclother sex act, police and
dropped his towel, exposing himself. The alkged abuse dat. back to 2001 and
lie told Licata to get comfortable and then. went on for years.
in a fimt voice, told her to take off .r cloth.. prosecutors, special offer
At 16, Limta had never before been fitlly na-
ked in front of anyone.
Shaking and panicked.
she mechanically
pulled off her jeans
and stripped down ttt
herar=reer
for 30 minutes and
then reached over and
unsnap,. her bra. He
then began touching
her with me hats.
"I kept looking a t
the timer because I
didn't want to have
ts..7.1.:ndoaf.;:f
she remembered of the
massage...He kept
= ' hallr
to pinch his nippl..
tijInlao raat,tiYhart"g
harder and do this.
• • •
MiChelle LiCata SayS She waS 16 when She fitSt vnirenraOgin'as
h=e;:snr home on El Brill° Way to give hirn a massage. She says he tried to
„siheri ihe shower. Penetrate her with his fingers.
l'hell7d2enheinalaust.'ory c ass.
It wasn't long before allot of Licata, fellow
students at Royal Palm Beach High School
had heard about "a army old guy" named
Jeffrey who lived in a pink waterfront mansion
and was paying !iris S200 . =Jo give him
InaEZrnairitilryt, f4.11aInt Beach police, and then
the FBI, came knocking on Licata's dO0r. In
Iteltoce7f,"=:`,3r=1:=7, 1 a
wOuld be many
more Jane Do. to fol.:
Jane Doe No. 3, Jane Doe
No. 4, Jane Does 5,6,7.8
— and as the years went by
— Jane Does 102 and 103.
Long before frMeToo
bmame.the catalyst for a t
72cntrl als au I teff nartxra"
decade before the fall of
Haney Weinstein, Bill Aff1'0Y EPS,.
Cosby and U.S. Olympic
gymnast. doctor Larry Nassar — there was
Jeffrey Edward Epstein.
Epstein, a mult.tillionairc hedge fund
manager whose friends included a constella-
tiOn of entertainers, politieian, buStheSS titans
and royalty. for years lured teenage girls to his
Palm Beach mansion as part of a cult-like s.
pyramid scheme. police in t. town of Palm
BeaCh found.
The girls arrived, sometimes by taxi, for
trysts at all hours of the day and night.
Few were told much more than that they
would be paid to give an old man a massage
— and that . might ask them to strip down to
their undenvear or get naked. But what began
In 2007, despite ampk physical evidence
and multipk witnesses corroborating t. girls"
stori., federal prosecutors and Epstein, law-
yers quietly put together a remarkable deal for
Epstein, then 54.
Hc agreed to plead guilty to two felony pros-
titution charg. in state court, and in exchange,
he and his accomplices received immunity
from federal sex-trafficking charges that could
have sent him to prison for life.
Hc served 13 months in a ptivate wing of
the Palm Beach County stocicade. His alleged
co-conspitatOrs, whO helped schedule his sex
session, were never prosecuted.
The deal. call. a federal nomprosecution
agreene=sfIetrd
of Epstein, crimes and who else was involved.
Thc U.S. attorney in Miami, Alexander
Acosta, was personally involved in the negotia-
tions, records, letters and entails show.
Acosta is now a member of Pr.ident
Donald Trump, Cabinet. As U.S. secretary of
Labor, he has oversight over international child
labor laws and human trafficking.
"How come people who don't have money
get sent to jail — and can't even makc bail —
and they have to do their time and sit there and
think about what they did wrong? He had no
repercussiorn and doesn't even beliew hc did
.ribcf2:=8,", stud Licata, now 30.
officially identifictryTernat
Vrent su;y:tsiOftftreteextvictims of EpstLitt n2thoov8.
witnesses and allegedcZtiwmaas tcestified in civil
court that there were hundreds of girls who
were brought to Epstein, homes, including
girls from Empe, Latin America and former
Soviet Republic countries.
But Acosta and Epstein's
armada of attorneys —
711:7=vii't "Pi rald -
Reofy'Bul ralC ic.att ytd=
former Whitewater special
=1".clo'n"th !rprstn
1.:daaciradInce.r svetatr acenp= I" a
There were really j.
"rtIO'Ignog:Z:
aliceftiPcIt1=Patt"
Detective Joreph Recarcy.
For Reiter. business
J.:',0YrEeTer,,dabie
than any of t. other 8.000
or so wealthy and po:teartf,din
Irr cas. involving
wealthy residents before — from the murders
of heiresses to the rape case tnvolvmg William
I.nnedy Smith, a the Kennedy family.
The msternmost town in Florida, Palm
Beach is a 10.4-square-mile barrier island
between the Intracoastal Waterway and thc At-
lantic Ocean populated by some of the rich.t
IratildnetrthteTenTpuils's his "winter White
nieZs nt1 rdast=7:11tr
unusual efforts to preserve its well-mannered
image, like banning shinless joggers.
But it was a linle surprising, even to Reiter,
to learn that one of its residents had a revolv-
ing door of middle school and high school girls
coming to his gated mmpound throughout t.
day and night.
In thcir first media interviews about the case,
Reiter and Roca, revmled ncw details about
thy inwstigation, and how they were, in their
view, pr.sured by then-Palm Beach State At-
= = 'Lir; ar =PIZ f't ase
Between March of 2005 — w.n the care
was opened — and seven months bier, whcn
rioolice crcuted:asdeazInit;a2,7 at Eprin,
tvii:Itric:o=tfylatViCert ired acted
By the time police felt they had enough
evidence to arrest Epstein on sex charg.. they
.d identified about 35 possible underage
tims and were tracking down at least a dozen
more, the poli. report said.
vas sumrised at how quickly it snow
balled. I thought at some point there would
be a last interview, but the n.t victim would
Kenneth Starr
Michael Reiter
reignee.4"="0:tra=rd,.
kept getting bigger and bigger,” Rec.y said.
Blaming the victims
•
By then, word had gotten
back to Epstein from somc
of the girls that they had
bEeplrhaitrie7f=dPac;er
Alan Dershcnvitz.
"Alan Dershowitz flew
down and met privately
with Krischet, Recarey
said. "And the shenanigans
that happened, I don't think Alan D....
I'vc ever seen or heard of
before."
Police reports show that Epstein, private
investigators attempted to conduct inter-
views while posing as cops; that they picked
through Reiter, trash in search of dirt to
discredit him; and that the private inv.tiga-
tors were accused of following the girls and
their families.
In one case, the father of one girl claimed
hc had been run off!. road by a private
int,Traat.-PuIetrnia',=;re
dated and frightened by Epstein and Sarah
1.11en, the millionaire's assistant and alleged
scheduler of massage, who warned them
not to talk to police, according to the police
report.
Dershowitz, in an interview with the Her-
ald, said he .d nothing to do with gathering
background on the girls — or in directing
stitrztrilifitInw the police, or t. girls and
"I'm not an investigator. My only job was
I:iv:oast:1nd try thc mse when it comes to
Ile nevertheless convinced Krischer that
the girls would not be credible on the witn.s
stand, according to Reiter and Recarecy...n
doTsslicercskotil=1:117ntgeaftfi7rst to shPJ,:d
that Epstein, accusers had troubled pasts.
Dershowitz met with Krischer and Recarey,
sharing with them the results of an inv.tiga-
tion into onc of the girls whom Dershowitz
described as "an accomplished drama stu-
dent" who hurled profaniti. at his investiga-
tor at "a furious pace."
"Our investigation had discovered at least
one of her websites and I am enelming some
examples ... t. site goes on to detail, includ-
f:„seetlt.i.°1:,""el,;Id'ated
letter to Recarey. He also disputed the claim
that onc of the defense tcam's private investi-
gators .d misrepr.cnted himself as a police
officer.
Recarcy stood his ground.
“Fl is attomeys showed us a MySpacc page
whcrc one of the girls was holding a beer
in her hand, and they said, 'oh look, she is
underage drinking,— Recarey recalled. "Well,
tell me what teenager dtresn't? DOes that
mean she isn't a victim because she drank
a beer? Basically. what you're telling me is
the only victim of a sexual battery could be a
nuKrischer and the lead state Prese.for .
the case, Assistant State Attorney Lanna Be-
lohlavek, beg= to dodge Remrey and Reiter,
rlitrf:t"Ona:jdtp=lndly toe"' dIgerecir and
Recarey said.
"Early on, it became clear that things had
changed, from ICrisc.r saying, 'we'll put this
guy awtiy fOr tO 'these 911 the reasons
why we aren't going to prosccutc
Reiter said.
Krischcr, v.o is now retired and in private
rittafni 'Helm% d ITUkteh t
also did not respond to an email sent to her
office.
"It bmame apparent to me that some of
our evidence was being leaked to Epstein,
lawyers.hwho began to question everything
tRtzesailt,i1. in our probable cause affidavit,-
=hit! tomorrow: Searching Epstein,