Back in 1996, Farmer filed a complaint against the later convicted sex offender Epstein, who died in custody in 2019. According to the complaint, the billionaire had stolen photos that Farmer had taken of her sisters when they were 12 and 16 years old, respectively, which were then suspected of being resold by Epstein.
Epstein then allegedly asked Farmer if she could take more photos and threatened her that her house would be “burned down” if she told anyone about the photographs.
“How many were injured?”
These allegations are written in one of the documents now released by the US Department of Justice. In the document, Maria Farmer's name is masked, but her lawyer Jennifer Freeman confirms to CNN that it is her client's complaint.
Farmer describes how emotional it was to finally have it in black and white that her complaint was documented. At the same time, she is critical of how her case was handled.
"Just seeing it written down and knowing that they had it documented for this entire time - how many people were harmed after this date (1996)?" she tells CNN.
Can't find testimonials
One person who has not found the information she provided to the authorities about what she was subjected to by Epstein is Jesse Michaels, who, in an interview with CNN, stated that she spent hours searching for her testimony and other communications provided to the federal police, the FBI.
I can't find any of that. Is this the best the government can do? she says.
The same tone is heard from Marina Lacerade, who has also accused Epstein of crimes.
"Are we protecting the survivors or are we protecting these elite men? The whole idea of being transparent was that only the names of the victims and survivors would be left out," she told CBS.
An investigation into businessman Jeffrey Epstein began in 2005 after a 14-year-old girl told police she had been molested by him at his home in Palm Beach, Florida. The investigation grew and in 2007 he was indicted in federal court.
After a plea deal with prosecutors, Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in prison for sex trafficking in 2008. He was released after 13 months.
The case received renewed attention in 2018 after a series of articles in the Miami Herald in which several women came forward and accused Epstein of sexual assault during the period from 2001 to 2005.
In July 2019, Epstein was arrested at an airport in New Jersey. The new charges against him concerned the abuse of dozens of underage girls between 2002 and 2005. According to the prosecution, Epstein tried to buy the silence of witnesses with millions of dollars. Epstein denies the crime.
On August 10, 2019, Jeffrey Epstein was found dead in his cell in Manhattan's New York City jail. He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. It is believed he took his own life, but this is disputed.
A prominent plaintiff against Epstein was Virginia Giuffre, who died earlier this year. She claimed that Epstein’s convicted accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell discovered her at Donald Trump’s Florida spa when she was 17 and hired her as Epstein’s masseuse – his “sex slave.”
Giuffre also accused Britain's Prince Andrew of rape, which ended with an agreement between the parties outside of court.
