Kevin Polowy, Jun 18, 2020<\/p>\n
As Netflix viewers have discovered in the weeks since its release, the four-part series Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich<\/em><\/a> is an infuriating but urgent viewing experience \u2014 a comprehensive detailing of how the enigmatic financial powerbroker orchestrated a \u201cmolestation pyramid scheme\u201d that went unchecked for decades because of his extreme wealth and connections.<\/p>\n It\u2019s heartbreaking to hear the stories of the victims who come forward, most of whom were underage and from disadvantaged backgrounds when they were molested, assaulted or raped by Epstein after being lured into his house under the guise of being paid to give him a massage. And it\u2019s absolutely rage-inducing to examine the circumstances that let Epstein continue his reign of sexual abuse for an additional 12 years after he was first indicted in 2007, then given a \u201csweetheart deal\u201d plea agreement and a slap-on-the-wrist prison sentence. Epstein died by an apparent suicide after he was finally arrested again in 2019.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a heavy watch for sure, but our goals were to expose how justice in the legal system was not carried out in the past. And this is a chance to tell people exactly who he was, what he was, how he operated, how many people may have known about it and remained silent out of fear and or even culpability,\u201d Filthy Rich<\/em> director Lisa Bryant<\/a> tells Yahoo Entertainment in a recent interview. \u201cWe really wanted to dig deep and give a bigger picture for people who really didn\u2019t know much about him and tell it through the eyes of the survivors of his abuse and the key players who tried to bring him down and have been silenced for so long.\u201d<\/p>\n The miniseries is loosely based on the 2016 book Filthy Rich: A Powerful Billionaire, the Sex Scandal that Undid Him<\/em><\/a> by popular crime novelist James Patterson (the Alex Cross<\/em> series), released long before Epstein made headlines worldwide following his arrest last July. \u201cHe was disappointed, as a world\u2019s bestselling author, that people seemed to not be paying much attention,\u201d says Bryant, who began production on Filthy Rich<\/em> nine months before Epstein\u2019s 2019 takedown. \u201cAnd the press is to blame a little bit in itself for not being more outraged when things happened back then.\u201d<\/p>\n Patterson, who appears in the series, was a neighbor of Epstein in Palm Beach, Fla., where the financier and sex offender routinely lured high school girls to his mansion. He commonly preyed on girls from the low-income or depressed neighborhoods of West Palm Beach, then enlisted several of them to become recruiters for him, creating what one psychologist in the film calls a \u201csexual pyramid scheme.\u201d<\/p>\n Palm Beach police began investigating Epstein in 2005, and in 2008 the FBI case ultimately brought against him accused him of sexually assaulting 36 girls (some as young as 14). It looked like Epstein was on the brink of a long and severe prison sentence \u2014 until closed-door meetings between prosecutors (led by then-U.S. Florida District Attorney Alex Acosta) and Epstein\u2019s pricey attorneys led to a shocking reversal. Epstein struck a plea deal in which he was found guilty of only two crimes \u2014 soliciting a prostitute and procuring an underage girl for prostitution \u2014 and served only 13 months in a white-collar jail that he could leave on a near-daily basis for work release.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that the high-powered defense team did a very good job \u2014 and that\u2019s their job \u2014 to try to tear down the credibility of these\u2026 children, really, they were underage girls. And I think that is a travesty, that they were called liars and prostitutes and ripped apart,\u201d says Bryant.<\/p>\n The filmmaker takes adamant exception with the victims being labeled sex workers by the court. \u201cThey are not prostitutes, let\u2019s clarify that,\u201d she says. \u201cThese were underage girls who were manipulated and groomed by this appalling monster who was a serial sex abuser and ran an international sex-trafficking ring. So the word \u2018prostitute\u2019 shouldn\u2019t be in the vocabulary of someone underage. They cannot be held accountable to the standards of an adult and make those kinds of decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n Bryant spoke to dozens of survivors for the documentary, many of whom appear on camera to share their horror stories. \u201cThey were fearful. One of the women we interviewed early on wanted to be in silhouette, because she was afraid for her life,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m really proud of each and every one of them. Trauma is something that doesn\u2019t just go away. They\u2019re each dealing with it in their own way. They were emotional interviews, they\u2019re in a way re-living that. But they\u2019ve been silenced for so long, they wanted to [speak]. I think it was cathartic for them.\u201d<\/p>\n The documentary crew, which took extra security precautions like encrypted communication during production, attempted to interview Epstein on several occasions. They also tried tracking down Ghislaine Maxwell<\/a>, Epstein\u2019s longtime close associate who allegedly oversaw much of the sex offender\u2019s bidding and whom many of the survivors insist be held accountable. \u201cWe actually did speak with one of her sisters, and emailed with another, and they don\u2019t want any part of this, and have distanced themselves as well. And they aren\u2019t gonna offer up any information about where their sister may be hiding. Nobody really knows where she is. There have been other friends and other acquaintances who we\u2019ve talked to who have been in touch with her,\u201d Bryant says. \u201cGhislaine Maxwell, by all accounts, feels she\u2019s gonna be OK in the end \u2014 that the non-prosecution agreement [as part of Epstein\u2019s plea deal] from 2008 is gonna protect her. And that\u2019s something that the attorneys for the survivors are fighting so hard to get overturned to make things easier to hopefully bring the co-conspirators to trial.\u201d<\/p>\n Filthy Rich<\/em> also looks at two of the more media-salacious relationships Epstein had over the course of his life with U.S. presidents Donald Trump<\/a> and Bill Clinton<\/a>. Epstein frequented Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, and the two were known to be friends. (One of Epstein\u2019s victims, Virginia Giuffre \u2014 who in the series accuses Epstein\u2019s prominent legal adviser Alan Dershowitz<\/a> of having sex with her multiple times when she was a teen\u00a0\u2014 was first recruited by Maxwell at the resort.) Trump acknowledged Epstein\u2019s preference for young females in a 2002 New York Magazine <\/em>profile<\/a>: \u201cI’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with,\u201d the future president said. \u201cIt is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Their relationship reportedly soured in 2004 over a bidding war for a $40 million mansion.<\/p>\n Epstein attended multiple political fundraisers with Clinton (one even with Trump in attendance), and in 2002 flew the former president and actors Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker to Africa to tour HIV\/AIDS project sites<\/a>. According to flight logs, Clinton flew on Epstein\u2019s private jet 27 times to at least a dozen international locations for humanitarian causes after his presidency. Most controversially, though, is the question of whether Clinton visited Epstein\u2019s private Little St. James Island in the Virgin Islands, nicknamed \u201cPedophile Island\u201d<\/a> for Epstein\u2019s routine abuse and trafficking of minors. A spokesperson for Clinton as well as the Secret Service has said Clinton never made the trek, but two of the series\u2019 interviewees, a technician and Giuffre, insist he was there. \u201cI remember having dinner with Clinton,\u201d Giuffre said in Filthy Rich<\/em>. \u201cI never saw him do anything improper. I wish he would just come clean about [it].\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think the story really is the ultimate story of abuse of wealth and power,\u201d Bryant says when asked about Epstein\u2019s relationships with the presidents and how they\u2019re portrayed in the series.<\/p>\n \u201cOur officials really have to do their jobs and not give the wealthy a free pass. I think it shows that the American system is broken and was built for political power and gain. And I think we saw that over and over again in his story over the years. I hope that this film is an opportunity to set change in motion and create more awareness of what\u2019s happening right in plain sight. Really, awareness, accountability and change is what needs to happen. And brave survivors that come forward with their stories need to be respected and listened to.\u201d<\/p>\n While the first three episodes of the miniseries are particularly harrowing for their depictions of the sexual abuse of minors, the fourth and final installment sees Epstein face comeuppance \u2014 and the victims finding some small measure of redemption \u2014 when he is finally arrested in 2019 for the sex trafficking of minors in New York and Florida. Epstein was found dead in his jail cell nearly two months later, and though his death was officially ruled a suicide, conspiracy theories abound<\/a> about the cause of death, with some of the more outlandish ones implicating Bill and Hillary Clinton. Filthy Rich<\/em>briefly digs into them with a few grains of salt.<\/p>\n \u201cAs a documentary you have to be very careful because you have to have proof to tell anything, so that was something we dealt with, especially after his arrest and death\u2026 Unless you have concrete proof, it\u2019s very hard to tell those things and legally vet them. You can\u2019t throw allegations around, certainly not in a journalistic documentary,\u201d Bryant says. There are also theories about which of Epstein\u2019s rich, powerful and famous friends may have also been guilty of sexual abuse (Prince Andrew, Duke of York, for one, resigned from his royal duties<\/a> over allegations of sexual abuse tied to his relationship with Epstein.)<\/p>\n \u201cThat was a tough thing. I think people wanted to hear, \u2018X, Y and Z were guilty of having sex with underage girls,\u2019\u201d Bryant says. \u201cAnd you just can\u2019t do it, it would be irresponsible to do that. And that\u2019s a tough thing, because we might\u2019ve had a lot of off-the-record conversations with people who implicated people in his black book.\u201d<\/p>\n And then of course there\u2019s the ultimate possible conspiracy at play in Filthy Rich<\/em>: How in the world was Epstein given such a light punishment in 2008 \u2014 the \u201cdeal of a lifetime,\u201d as it\u2019s been called, allowing him to return to his predatory lifestyle and assault countless more victims in the decade that followed?<\/p>\n The uproar over the case was so intense in 2019 \u2014 particularly in a post-#MeToo era, that Acosta, who was serving as Labor Secretary in the Trump Administration, was forced to resign over his role in the secretive, bewildering Epstein plea deal. “Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims,\u201d reported the Miami Herald<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe deal happening in secret behind these women\u2019s backs is no doubt [telling us] something else was at play here,\u201d Bryant says, noting there is a Justice Department investigation into the case currently underway. \u201cFrom all I could tell in our reporting, Alex Acosta stands by his statements that he wanted him to go to jail and the best deal that he could\u2019ve gotten was those two charges of basically soliciting a prostitute and procuring a minor for prostitution\u2026 Nobody really knows [what happened]. Hopefully we can get to the bottom of it, and hopefully the plea deal is overturned\u2026 Hopefully those answers will come.\u201d<\/p>\n