Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story

Brown tells three stories. The first is about Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of underage girls and sex trafficking; the second is about Epstein’s undermining the criminal justice system using money, connections, and intimidation to secure the complicity of prosecutors and silence victims; and the third is about Brown’s trials and tribulations as an investigative reporter working on those stories. The book is written like a memoir as her personal story fills many of the pages. Many of the details describe the immense amount of work and dedication it took for her to penetrate the maze of the criminal justice system to find out how Epstein was able to manipulate it. She also discusses the toll the work took on her personal life making her own story a significant part of the book.<br /><br />As for Epstein, the book confirms what is common knowledge, that he was a sexual predator, but the scope and scale of his crimes still amazes. Brown makes her case relying heavily on her interviews with victims, girls who were as young as fourteen when they were raped by Epstein and his friends. She clearly implicates Alan Dershowitz, Prince Andrew and Trump among others as participants in Epstein’s sexual abuse. Then there were his assistants and procurers, most significantly Ghislaine Maxwell, who apparently was actually in love with Epstein. <br /><br />The most revealing part of the book, as the title states, is how Epstein was able to get away with his crimes by manipulating law enforcement with favors and threats. His “charitable” contributions to pet projects and organizations of local officials and the police kept them looking the other way. He also used money and favors to keep victims quiet. When that didn’t work Epstein hired lawyers and private investigators to make life hell for them or anyone who threatened his depraved lifestyle. Brown focuses on the 2008 plea deal under which Epstein served a year in jail for procuring a child for prostitution. He was jailed in the county jail in Palm Beach under supervision of the sheriff who had a good relationship with Epstein. Epstein was able to get work release which meant he could spend the day at his office. Police sat outside, for whom Epstein hired a caterer to make sure they were well fed, while Epstein still brought in young girls for sex while serving his sentence.<br /><br />Federal prosecutors led by Florida U.S. Attorney Alex Acosta negotiated the plea deal with Dershowitz and other Epstein lawyers. It gave Epstein immunity from federal charges in return for Epstein pleading guilty to two state charges for which he received the year in a jail run by his buddy the county sheriff whose deputies monitored Epstein’s liberal work release. The deal stopped an ongoing FBI investigation which had already identified over thirty victims of Epstein’s while Epstein’s conviction was based on only one. Brown questions whether the highly favorable deal for Epstein was to protect prominent figures and how much intimidation and inducements to prosecutors secured the deal. The deal was kept secret from the victims, many of whom filed civil suit later pointing out that their rights under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act had been violated. Brown followed up with many of the victims and released her reporting and documentary in 2018. It created a firestorm of controversy that led to the resignation of Acosta who had been appointed by Trump as Secretary of Labor and to the reopening of the case in 2019 by New York U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman.<br /><br />The remaining mystery is Epstein’s “suicide”. After Berman charged Epstein with sex trafficking, he was held in the Manhattan Correctional Center run by the Feds. He was found dead in his cell. Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide but many disagreed and there were very suspicious circumstances. Guards had fallen asleep, surveillance cameras didn’t work, the guards falsified records, his cell mate was removed and not replaced, his body was moved before pictures were taken, and outside forensic doctors said broken bones in his neck indicated strangulation, just to name a few. Epstein’s lawyers had just met with him and said he was upbeat as they felt they could beat the charges. Brown clearly doubts this was a suicide. Epstein took a lot of secrets with him and many prominent people benefited from that. <br /><br />There were two takeaways for me from this book. First is the credit we owe investigative journalists. Without Brown’s reporting, Epstein would likely still be trafficking in young girls. It takes a tough, determined person willing to work long hours for little pay to do what Brown did. She was named one of <i>Time</i> magazines 100 most influential people in 2020. She deserves all the kudos she has earned. Second, the criminal justice system is inherently corruptible. It is too easy for a person with money and connections to not only hire the most powerful and well-connected lawyers, but to hire private detectives to harass and dig up dirt on accusers, prosecutors, reporters, anyone in their way, and to pull strings to offer inducements to prosecutors who play ball. How can a poor abused teenager get justice against a billionaire like Epstein who stopped at nothing? It can only happen when people like Brown completely dedicate themselves to the fight and are fortunate enough to be successful. I can’t think of a better illustration of the importance of a free press.<br />

4.5 stars ? <br /><br />Everyone buy a subscription to a newspaper, even if you don’t read the paper, to support journalists like Julie K. Brown. <br /><br />This book is a powerful example of the critical importance of the press as parts of “checks and balances”. <br /><br />My heart breaks for all his victims. <br /><br />Also, f—ing Florida. If Chicago was corrupt in the 1920s, Florida holds that claim from 1990-now (possibly sooner). The level of corruption is Horrifying!<br /><br />Epstein was amigos with both Trump and Clinton, UK royalty, among others (rumors include Bill Gates) and institutions like MIT &amp; Harvard. I was shocked to learn Steven Pinker was on his defense team… <br /><br />If nothing else, this book reiterates that silence is complicity.

There are two stories in this book. One is the Jeffrey Epstein story, the other is how investigative journalism is done in budget conscious regional newspapers. <br /><br />“Miami Herald” reporter, Julie K. Brown, shows the process of creating an investigative series from getting the project approved through to the aftermath of its publication. There are documents to find, interviews to be arranged and completed, reading and writing, and long drives, flights, cheap hotels and travel vouchers to submit. There are dispiriting rivalries/jealousies among reporters and the tactics of those who don’t want this story written are life threatening. All the while there is life - two kids to raise and bills to pay. <br /><br />Brown works from primary sources such as police and court records, government documents and any scrap of internal or email material. She shows how to read them between the lines. Traveling with a videographer, she interviewed victims and their families, local police, former Epstein employees, prosecutors and defense attorneys. She traveled to the Virgin Islands and spoke with anyone she could. <br /><br />Interviews are not easy to get. Victims and those with information about Epstein’s crimes are terrified for good reason: they are followed and harassed. Previous investigators and prosecutors who have cooperated with other journalists, feel this story will go nowhere like the others so talking to a reporter is an unnecessary risk.<br /><br />Once Brown's series on Epstein was published the dominoes started falling. The public was able to see how in 2008 the prosecutors bended to defence lawyers and unethically stacked the system on Epstein’s behalf: Even after accords were reached the lawyers returned to argue for still more leniency; They allowed Epstein’s lawyers to sit outside the grand jury room to intimidate witnesses; They scheduled the trail with two days notice so witnesses couldn’t come; They switched a 14 year old’s name for that of a 17 year old to minimize the number of states where Epstein would be registered as a pedophile.<br /><br />The 2008 “work release” sentence was incredibly loose The very liberal format set by the court was ignored. Young girls visited him at his “office” and he catered extravagant meals for his guards. His ankle bracelet had technical problems and he never visited his parole officer.<br /><br />There is a long section on Alex Acosta, his background, his lifestyle (unaffordable at his salary) and his resignation. There is an entire chapter on Alan Dershowitz and a well reasoned chapter entitled “Jeffrey Epstein Did Not Commit Suicide”. <br /><br />In the end Brown suggests that the timing of Bill Barr’s (clumsy) firing of US Attorney for SDNY Geoffry Berman may relate to Berman’s aggressive pursuit of Epstein and the recent arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell. Days after this firing, Donald Trump, (who has several pages covering his alleged involvement with underage girls, including a credible lawsuit whose plaintiff has withdrawn it and has not been heard from again) said of Maxwell “I wish her well.”<br /><br />You see in so many instances how Epstein skirts the rules and how people make exceptions for him. For instance after his 2008 conviction many did not want to be associated with a registered pedophile: The sellers of an island he wanted to buy would not sell to him so he set up some shell companies to hide his identity and make the couple think the buyer was a Saudi Arabian. Harvard University would no longer accept his donations, but he arranged gifts through others and we can presume Harvard knew and accepted the actual source. Bill Gates stated that he would no longer associate with him, but there they are together in 2014. <br /><br />You see how without a reporter’s initiative, investigative stories like this would not get written. Even with this achievement, with the downturn in newspaper subscribers, Brown’s job is not secure,<br /><br />If you are interested in Epstein, this book has a lot of information. You may or may not like the author’s insertion of her personal life as she tracks this story (I appreciated it for its demonstration of how this type of work plays out on a daily basis). The book needs and index. There are no photos, but for those of people and events that did not make the news, this would have added to the material. <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/51152449.The_Spider_Inside_the_Criminal_Web_of_Jeffrey_Epstein_and_Ghislaine_Maxwell" title="The Spider Inside the Criminal Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell by Barry Levine" rel="noopener">The Spider: Inside the Criminal Web of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell</a> and <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/50608283.A_Convenient_Death_The_Mysterious_Demise_of_Jeffrey_Epstein" title="A Convenient Death The Mysterious Demise of Jeffrey Epstein by Alana Goodman" rel="noopener">A Convenient Death: The Mysterious Demise of Jeffrey Epstein</a> are good for their outline of this story. This book has more detail both in hard facts and description. It is a bit more recent so it has more on where things stand now.

Oh man…it’s very rare that a book that I actually finish takes me 5 months to read, and yet, this one did. Do I even have to explain the main reasons why?<br /><br />I have worked in various aspects of adult victim services and advocacy for essentially most of my career, have obviously heard a lot of horrible stories, and routinely read books like this just to “know thy enemy” and always keep one step ahead of the kind of shit they are doing and, more importantly, getting away with.<br /><br />Therefore, I typically have a very strong stomach when it comes to this kind of content, but there is just something so superlatively gross and next level fucked up and disgusting about Jeffrey Epstein and all those who enabled his revolting escapades.<br /><br />To avoid succumbing to the occupational hazard of burnout, I’ve trained myself to be a very big believer in the invincibility of compassion, and concepts like empathy, forgiveness, acceptance, non-violence and whatnot, so I wouldn’t say this about many people, but man - he just seems completely irredeemable and it’s hard to understand what his higher purpose would have been for taking up any space on this planet.<br /><br />At very least we will probably not have to witness him achieving his reportedly self-identified end of life goal of having his penis cryogenically frozen alongside his brain.

Great book. Well researched. <br /><br />The book contents, though, were really terrible. I learned a lot about this creepy guy. <br /><br />Some of this book is really stomach-turning. <br /><br />Would recommend to learn more about this. <br /><br />4.3/5

J. . Brown has really taken on four stories in this book. Besides putting brackets around the Epstein story and it’s available information, Brown puts on her investigative journalist’s hat and gives voice to the victims of Epstein’s crimes over the many years he built his sex trafficking businesses. The stories told by these young women are heartbreaking and difficult to read. Seeing the complicity of government officials in black &amp; white is somehow more disgusting than hearing it on the news.<br /><br />Another venture addressed is the death of Jeffrey Epstein - there’s an entire chapter devoted to it. Epstein’s demise is the stuff of which legend and lore is built: vanished tapes, missing and tight lipped people with memory failure and really bad vi$ion.<br /><br />Brown looks at the relationships with Alex Acosta, Ken Starr, Alan Dershowitz, and other high powered wealthy people. What she doesn’t do is provide many answers to the basic How &amp; Why questions. It was frustrating reading and at times it seemed like she gave up the pursuit by saying, “I don’t know.” I suppose that’s better than making something up but it lacks passion found elsewhere.<br /><br />Woven thru the book is Brown’s own story. It’s honest and at times emotional, especially when she speaks about how hard it is to make time for her son and be good at her job.<br /><br />This book reads like True Crime and Investigative Reporting; Criminal Law as a genre is laughable. Perversion is complete in the criminal justice system and those involved in Epstein’s case. Brown writes well and if these are categories of interest to you, this book won’t disappoint. The subject is difficult and parts of the text are descriptive, not gratuitous or graphic. Still, sensitive folks should take care.<br /><br />It’s clear that none of Epstein’s “partners” will be held accountable. Brown casts her hope that the new administration will do something. I hope she’s not holding her breath?

This book was very disappointing. I feel like I know as much about author Julie K. Brown as I do about Jeffrey Epstein. Brown says, ‘No reporter wants to be part of their own story.’ Yet she liberally included her story — from her children to her financial status — throughout the book. I even know what car she drives.<br />I didn’t learn much about Epstein that was not already reported.<br />Brown feels slighted about not winning her profession’s top award for her superb series in the Miami Herald: ‘I would never know whether the efforts by some in the journalism industry to undermine my series impacted the decision-making that went into that year’s Pulitzer Prizes.’<br />Brown’s story and how she gathered the information for her series is very much part of this book.

This is not a good book. It’s really convoluted and confusing, is it a story about Epstein or a really incredibly self serving and boring auto biography? Well it’s those things but the main purpose of this book, which is so shocking, is another social justice warrior reporter and their partisan effort to somehow find some sort of way to stick it to Trump. <br /><br />I’ll just give a few examples because this woman is not worth my time. She mentions Trump so many times it’s really obvious. She only started this story as a way to get to Trump through the nomination of Alexander Acosta. She spends an incredible amount of the book telling what was going on in the Trump administration while was supposedly researching Epstein even tho what she mentions has nothing to do with Epstein case and then she labels her story when it finally comes as “trump official blah blah blah.” That’s telling. Finally to make it completely a partisan hack job she spends an whole chapter on something didn’t do and barely mentions Clinton and his association. Disgusting. Anyway, this is a bad partisan attempt to shit on Trump and I only finished to to give it one star.

An extraordinary book revealing corruption and coverup surrounding one of the most notorious predators of young girls. Brown broke many stories reporting for ⁦@MiamiHerald and shows why journalism matters in this excellent book. This started as a local story about the exploitation of young girls in Palm Beach and South Florida. She followed the corrupt trail of a US Attorney and reported as he was forced to quit the Trump cabinet. Brown reported on judges who looked the other way and Epstein himself who was allowed a free pass in and out of jail with catered meals and privileges. Many in Epstein's cultivated crowd of moguls, a former president and British royalty and legal beagles have run for cover. The impact of her newspaper stories and the book now have international impact.

Bit of a disappointing book as it does not uncover much about Epstein's life and origins and mostly focuses on the already well-publicized details of his later legal travails. How did Epstein go from a math teacher to billionaire financier? What were his ties with intelligence agencies and foreign governments? No new information is surfaced in this book. I didn't really understand what the point of writing it was, except as a quasi-biography of the author as she unpacked the details of what we already know.