(Washington) Victims of sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein filed a complaint Thursday against the US administration and Google after their identities were mistakenly revealed in documents posted online by the US Department of Justice.
Published at
This ministry put online in January more than three million files linked to the investigation targeting the fallen financier, including his links with prominent figures.
But in these documents the names of victims who were to remain anonymous were published.
The Justice Department “revealed the identities of approximately 100 victims of the convicted sexual predator, publishing their private information and identifying them for the world to see,” says the complaint, seen by AFP, filed in a San Francisco court.
“Even after the government acknowledged that this disclosure violated victims’ rights and removed the information, online actors like Google continually republished it, refusing victims’ requests to remove it,” the plaintiffs complain.
Google continues to display victims’ personal information in search results and in AI-generated content, according to the complaint.
Journalists from New York Times also found dozens of photos of naked people in these files, in which faces were visible.
Jeffrey Epstein was arrested and charged in July 2019 with sexual exploitation of minors and criminal conspiracy. He was found hanging in his cell on August 10, 2019, while awaiting trial. The autopsy ruled it suicide.
Already accused more than ten years earlier in Florida of using the services of underage prostitutes, he was sentenced in 2008 to a modified prison sentence of 13 months, according to a secret agreement made with a prosecutor allowing him to escape federal prosecution.
“The victims are now facing a new trauma. “Strangers call them, send them emails, jeopardize their physical safety and accuse them of having been accomplices of Epstein when in reality, they were Epstein’s victims,” underlines the complaint.
