Two women filed a federal lawsuit against Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, claiming their photographs were found in his vast collection of child pornography.
Identified in court papers only as Jane Doe and Amy, the women allege that “few if any” of those whose photos were in Epstein’s collection were informed that these photographs are in the hands of federal investigators.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the Southern District of New York, seeks class-action status and is asking for unspecified damages and requesting the court to “design and supervise a single, coordinated program for identifying and notifying” the other women whose “unlawful sexualized images” were part of Epstein’s collection.
“One of Epstein’s most horrific but often overlooked crimes was his possession, transportation, production, and distribution of child pornography and/or child sexual abuse material (together ‘CSAM’) of countless children,” the lawsuit says.
“Beginning in the early 1990s until his death in 2019, Epstein, along with his co-conspirators, created and participated in a multi-decade, vast CSAM conspiracy,” it says.
The lawsuit alleges that Epstein kept a “modeling book” containing “sexualized images of children” in a locked safe. No CSAM charges were filed against Epstein, and according to the lawsuit, Epstein and unnamed co-conspirators alleged the images “were for the purposes of developing child models for Victoria’s Secret.”
“This lawsuit holds Jeffrey Epstein’s estate accountable for a crime that has never been fully addressed on its own terms,” one of the accusers’ lawyers, Hillary Nappi of AWK Survivor Advocate Attorneys, said in an emailed response to questions.
Named as defendants in their capacities as co-executors of Epstein’s estate are his longtime lawyer Darren Indyke and accountant Richard Kahn. Their lawyer, Daniel Weiner, declined to comment.
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City, where he was jailed while he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Allegations that Epstein and co-conspirators “created what they referred to as a ‘modeling book’” were previously mentioned in a lawsuit Epstein survivor Maria Farmer filed against the government. Her case alleges that the government failed to protect her and others from Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
“Although they claimed that the ‘book’ was for the purposes of developing child models for Victoria’s Secret, the book contained nude or partially nude sexualized images of children,” the lawsuit filed Tuesday says.
Jane Doe says in the lawsuit that she was around 12 years old when “Epstein stole partially nude photographs of her” that were “taken as part of an artist study.”
“In Epstein’s possession and given the manner in which he obtained, catalogued, and retained them alongside a collection of sexualized images of children, the Jane Doe Images constituted a lascivious exhibition” that Epstein took with him across state lines, the lawsuit says.
“Despite contemporaneous reports made to law enforcement, specifically alerting law enforcement that Epstein had obtained these photos of Jane Doe, and similar photos of another minor, no one in law enforcement took action to prosecute anyone or even investigate these reports,” it says.
Meanwhile, pornographic photographs of Amy have been in circulation since the 1990s, the lawsuit says.
Dubbed the “Misty” series, those images “consistently appear in collections maintained by individuals who possess child pornography,” the lawsuit says. And photos from that collection were “seized from Epstein’s properties.”
But Amy was never notified, according to the lawsuit. And her lawyers contend that the only child porn Epstein victims who were contacted by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children “were limited to a small number that were addressed in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial.”
Nappi said: “We want the estate to preserve and account for everything seized from Epstein’s properties, and we want a real, court supervised process to identify and notify every survivor depicted in that collection. Many of them have no idea their images exist in his files, and they deserve to know, and they deserve the chance to seek justice.”
NCMEC had no comment when it was asked whether it has identified and contacted any of the other women whose images were in Epstein’s possession. The private, nonprofit organization’s mission is to help find missing children and combat child sexual exploitation.
Maxwell was convicted in December 2021 of recruiting and grooming teenage girls to be sexually abused by Epstein. She is serving a 20-year prison term for conspiring to sex traffic minors. And, according to a whistleblower report to Congress last year, she sought to get her sentence commuted by President Donald Trump.
Trump, a once-close friend of Epstein’s who adamantly maintains he did not know Epstein was preying on young girls, has not granted Maxwell’s request.
