Name-brand journalist Edward Jay Epstein was seduced by the charms of accused pedophile Jeffrey Epstein more than three decades ago. Yet even after the Miami Herald, multiple lawsuits and law enforcement authorities detailed how he sexually abused dozens of teenage girls and sometimes raped them, the late Jeffrey Epstein’s spell apparently remains strong.
“Look, take this about Jeffrey. He is the poster boy for rehabilitation,” said the 83-year-old Epstein (no relation to the convicted sex offender who authorities said hanged himself in his jail cell at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center a month after his July arrest on new federal charges of sex trafficking with minors). “He went to prison [after pleading guilty to reduced charges in 2008]. He served his term [13 months, nine of them on work-release that allowed him daytime visits to his Palm Beach, Florida, office]. He got out. The U.S. attorney’s office said he stuck completely to the terms of his parole. He registered as a sex offender—which is no fun, but which was something he was supposed to do. And he made $500 million.”
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Edward Epstein added: “I did hang around with Jeffrey because I was fascinated with him. For one thing, the women around him were some of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life. These were not underage women. They were women like [former model and Miss Sweden] Eva Andersson and [actress] Morgan Fairchild. None of them were really girlfriends of his, but they hung around him…
“I don’t understand Jeffrey,” Edward continued. “I can’t conceive of why he would go out with an underage woman, unless your theory’s right that he’s a pedophile…It wasn’t like he was some sort of ugly gnome that couldn’t get a girl…When I knew him, I never saw so many good-looking women who stayed in his little orbit.”
Edward Epstein also cast doubt on the notion—advanced by the November 2018 Miami Herald investigation of Jeffrey’s extraordinarily lenient 2008 sentence for soliciting prostitution and sex trafficking with a minor, an article that ultimately prompted the resignation of Donald Trump’s labor secretary, former U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, and new federal charges from the Southern District of New York—that Jeffrey destroyed dozens of young lives.
“I’m not sure he destroyed their lives,” Edward said. “He paid them money, and they went on for six or seven years giving him massages. I don’t know if that destroyed their lives. Getting a massage or getting a girl to masturbate you doesn’t necessarily destroy your life.” – READ MORE