Jeffrey
Epstein: Filthy Rich is an upcoming American television miniseries about a
convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The miniseries is based on the 2016
book of the same name by James Patterson, and co-written by John Connolly with
Tim Malloy. Filthy Rich is scheduled to release on May 27, 2020.
Filthy Rich
tells a stories of the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein, and how he used his wealth
and power to commit these crimes.[1]
Episodes
1 "Hunting Grounds" Lisa Bryant May 27, 2020
2 "Follow the Money" Lisa Bryant May 27, 2020
3 "The Island" Lisa Bryant May 27, 2020
4 "Finding Their Voice" Lisa Bryant May
27, 2020
The
miniseries was based on the 2016 book Filthy Rich: A Powerful Billionaire, the
Sex Scandal that Undid Him, and All the Justice that Money Can Buy: The
Shocking True Story of Jeffrey Epstein written by James Patterson, and
co-written by John Connolly with Tim Malloy. Filthy Rich was announced prior to
Epstein's death.
'It's outrageous': inside an infuriating Netflix
series on Jeffrey Epstein
Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich synthesizes legal
information with first-person testimony of the billionaire’s abuse and bought
immunity into a shocking watch
Adrian
Horton
Wed 27 May
2020 16.13 BSTLast modified on Wed 27 May 2020 17.23 BST
It’s
difficult to watch Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, a four-hour Netflix series on
the now-deceased convicted sex offender without a choking sense of outrage. How
many girls had to suffer to get attention? How perversely twisted is the
American justice system that a Gatsby-esque billionaire, friends with such
powerful figures as Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew and Donald Trump, a
longstanding donor to Harvard and MIT, could buy his way out of an almost
certain life sentence for child sex abuse and trafficking?
Filthy Rich
arrives, of course, less than a year after Epstein, 66, died, officially by
suicide, in a New York jail last August. “There’s no justice in this,” Shawna
Rivera, speaking publicly for the first time about Epstein’s alleged abuse
starting when she was 14, says in the final episode. “There was just so much
more to be said that will never be said.”
There is,
however, much to be learned from the sordid, winding, thwarted path to
Epstein’s eventual arrest on sex trafficking charges in July 2019. Filthy Rich
doesn’t so much break new ground as synthesize the abundance of information
with the visceral impact of first-person testimony on Epstein’s crimes –
stories of predation, self-doubt and shame by numerous survivors betrayed by
the justice system supposed to protect them. Epstein’s decades-long legal saga
is “the biggest example I’ve ever seen of somebody using their money and
influence to thwart reporting on the subject and to work out an outrageous
deal,” Joe Berlinger, an executive producer, told the Guardian.
Production
on Filthy Rich began before Epstein became a household name – before his death,
before his shock arrest, before a 2018 Pulitzer-winning investigation by the
Miami Times-Herald into the sweetheart plea deal negotiated by federal
prosecutors to keep Epstein out of prison. “The level of incompetence and
back-door dealing that allowed him to get off – no one on this production
thought he would ever be arrested during the making of the show,” said
Berlinger, who first began work on an Epstein project in spring 2018, after he
received a copy of mystery novelist James Patterson’s 2016 true crime book on
the reclusive billionaire (and neighbor in Palm Beach).
The book
“infuriated me”, Berlinger said, especially since, in 2018, “people were afraid
to tell this story.”
Convincing
women to speak on the record “was hard”, director Lisa Bryant said. “Some
people wouldn’t talk at all, some numbers were wrong, some decided they just
weren’t ever going to talk, for various reasons. Some hadn’t even told their
parents about it.” The case of Epstein was never a he-said, she-said situation;
to quote the retired Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter in the Herald’s
original story: “This was 50-something ‘shes’ and one ‘he’ – and the ‘shes’ all
basically told the same story.”
But
Epstein’s intimidation factor was strong, and many of the survivors, their
justice thwarted by the plea deal and Epstein’s subsequent immunity, had moved
on with their lives. “Yes, there was a pattern that he had, but each person’s
experience with that and how they handled it is different,” said Bryant. “This
is their story to tell, their narrative. We wanted this to be told through
their eyes.”
The series
revolves around the various experiences of the survivors, dating back to at
least 1996, when the painter Maria Farmer and her teenage sister, Annie,
contacted the FBI to allege molestation by Epstein and his ex-girlfriend
Ghislaine Maxwell. It went nowhere. Years later, in 2005, Palm Beach police
launched an investigation into an alleged sex ring run out of Epstein’s
beachside mansion, in which Epstein and Maxwell allegedly coerced high-school
girls – most of them around 14, in vulnerable circumstances and needing money –
into sex acts under the pretense of a “massage” for $200. Maxwell has denied
any involvement. The alleged crimes expanded even further, as favorites were
allegedly trafficked to rich and powerful friends for parties at Epstein’s $77m
Upper East Side mansion in New York, at a London townhouse, and on Epstein’s
private island in the Caribbean.
Some
survivors featured in the series are speaking on camera for the first time;
others, such as Virginia Giuffre, have been advocating for justice for years.
Giuffre alleges in and out of the documentary that she was forced to have sex
with Prince Andrew, who has denied the allegations and queried the veracity of
a photo that exists of him with his arm around her aged 18, with a smiling Maxwell
in the background.
Given
witness testimony in the series by a former Epstein employee who alleges he saw
the prince engaged in poolside “foreplay” with a topless Giuffre on Epstein’s
island, Andrew’s defense and lack of cooperation with prosecutors reads even
more shabbily here. Andrew says he has “no recollection” of meeting Giuffre.
The show
stokes justifiable outrage through each survivor’s account, retracing how the
Palm Beach police department’s investigation was bumped up to the FBI, and was
then derailed by a “non-prosecution agreement” the Herald called “the deal of a
lifetime.” Signed in 2008, the deal – brokered by state attorney and later
Trump labor secretary Alex Acosta and Epstein’s all-star team of lawyers,
including OJ Simpson defender Alan Dershowitz (the only Epstein acolyte to
attempt a defense in the series) – was controversially sealed and kept private
from the accusers. It offered Epstein and named and unnamed co-conspirators
immunity from federal criminal charges; instead, he pleaded guilty to two
prostitution charges in state court, and served 11 of 13 months in Palm Beach
jail, out six days a week on “work release”.
“He was
still seeing girls, he was still making money, he was still conducting business
– I mean, it’s just outrageous,” said Berlinger of Epstein’s “incarceration”.
Epstein’s elusion of justice for another decade demonstrated how the American
criminal justice system “was built for money and power and political gain”,
said Bryant. “And we see that over and over again in this case.”
The series
also addresses, but does not endorse, conspiracy theories on the cause of
Epstein’s death; the medical examiner ruled a suicide by hanging, though an
outside expert hired by Epstein’s brother raised unsubstantiated doubts, citing
an unusual neck fracture. “I think it’s up for debate, and for people to look
at the evidence both ways and make their own decisions,” said Bryant.
“There was
nothing that we turned up that would definitively support the idea that he was
murdered,” said Berlinger, “but we certainly felt [the theories] should be
touched upon.” Personally, Berlinger said: “I do believe it was suicide.”
Epstein’s
death denied survivors’ their true day in court, though several did speak at a
posthumous hearing. There remains the possibility of prosecuting those linked
to Epstein: perhaps Maxwell, whose whereabouts remain unknown and who recently
sued Epstein’s estate – the fund supposed to compensate victims – for her legal
fees. “I firmly believe and hope that the survivors will get that money,” said
Bryant, and that statutes of limitations are reconsidered given greater
understanding of childhood sexual trauma, the length and difficulty of
processing enough to speak publicly.
For the
survivors, said Berlinger, “the ultimate closure would be for everyone who
enabled this sick lifestyle and everyone who enabled a wealthy white person
with power and influence to have a different standard of justice to also be
held to account.”
Jeffrey
Epstein: Filthy Rich is now available on Netflix
You've read
the Jeffrey Epstein headlines, now get the full story. The world's bestselling
author, James Patterson, has written the definitive book on the billionaire
pedophile at the center of the newly unsealed federal sex crimes case.
Jeffrey
Epstein rose from humble origins into the New York City and Palm Beach elite. A
college dropout with an instinct for numbers -- and for people -- Epstein
amassed his wealth through a combination of access and skill. But even after he
had it all, Epstein wanted more. That unceasing desire -- and especially a
taste for underage girls --resulted in sexual-abuse charges, to which he
pleaded guilty and received a shockingly lenient sentence.
Included
here are police interviews with girls who have alleged sexual abuse by Epstein,
as well as details of the investigation against him.
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