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One of the teenagers was just 14.
One of the teenagers was just 14.
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Was prosecutor Lanna Belohlavek interested in the horrors perpetuated on that child by billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein? Not a whit.
Acting as the twisted financier’s defacto defence lawyer, Belohlavek tore into this terrified girl. Using the teen’s MySpace page (supplied by Epstein’s legal eagles) that depicted boozing, drugs and simulated sex, Belohlavek proceeded to torpedo her witness.
And then she suggested the girl was a prostitute and asked if she knew “you committed a crime.”
On Monday, a Florida judge released a previously sealed 150-page transcript of a 2006 grand jury Epstein investigation that offered up a treasure trove of disturbing and heartbreaking testimony.
Author Barry Levine called the shocking revelations “absolutely distgusting.” Levine wrote the Epstein tome The Spider: The Criminal Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell and called the case “infuriating.”
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“We know the overall story but this is new information. This is … absolutely appalling,” Levine told the Toronto Sun on Tuesday.
Why the grand jury was convened in the first place back in 2006 remains a mystery. Palm Beach detectives had Epstein nailed to the cross with dozens of victims.
“It’s stomach-churning. You had jurors on the panel victim-shaming these girls and so did the assistant prosecutor,” Levine said. “I mean asking the one victim if she had ‘any idea, deep inside of you that what you were doing was wrong?’”
The veteran reporter — called “swashbuckling” by The New York Times — notes that under U.S. law sex with an underage person is statutory rape.
And the grand jury itself? It never should have been called because cops had a mountain of evidence against Epstein who is estimated to have raped in the neighbourhood of 500 underage girls.
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“They had enough evidence and witnesses in 2006 to send Jeffrey Epstein to prison forever,” Levine said, adding investigators had 40 victims then. Why the prosecutor called the grand jury has never been made clear.
“Palm Beach Police were very, very confident in charging Epstein and taking the case to trial,” he said. “When Epstein lawyered up, everything changed.”
Epstein — who hanged himself in 2019 while awaiting sex trafficking charges — targeted girls from the wrong side of the tracks, often from single parent homes. Almost all attended Royal Palm High School.
When the grand jury was called, Epstein unleashed a small army of private eyes to dig up dirt on the girls, who were mostly between 14 and 17. The twisted financier would pay them $200 per “massage.”
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And he told them if they had friends, they would be welcome. One brought a 23-year-old to his oceanside mansion but she was deemed “too old”.
“They were deemed promiscuous. That was far fetched and ridiculous,” Levine said. “A complete travesty of justice.”
Disgusted Palm Beach detectives called in the FBI. But former Trump White House Secretary of Labor, Alexander Acosta (at the time the U.S. Attorney for South Florida) inked a non-prosecution deal with Epstein.
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The hedge fund manager was charged with solicitation that allowed him to skate on the heaviest charges in 2008. Instead, Epstein came and went as he pleased from the county jail, spending his days at his mansion and sexually abusing more underage girls.
Jeffrey Epstein was infamous for sharing his underage harem with other powerful men.
“There is a belief there was a conspiracy, and I believe it, to protect these men from any type of presecution,” Levine said. “A lot of wealthy men are going to get away with this.
“As for a secret list I don’t think we’ll ever conclusively know who else took advantage of thse girls.”
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