Prosecutors in Florida knew two years before the deal that Epstein had raped teenage girls, according to a transcript

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Prosecutors in Florida knew two years before he signed a plea deal that the late millionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein had sexually abused teenagers. The deal has long been criticized as too lenient and was a missed opportunity to send him to prison a decade earlier, according to transcripts released Monday.

The 2006 grand jury investigation was the first of many law enforcement probes over the past two decades into Epstein’s rape and sex trafficking of teenagers – and how his connections to the rich and powerful apparently allowed him to avoid prison or serious incarceration for more than a decade.

The investigations revealed Epstein’s close ties to former President Bill Clinton and Britain’s Prince Andrew, as well as his once-friendly relationship with former President Donald Trump and numerous other wealthy and influential individuals who denied any criminal or inappropriate conduct and were not charged.

The release of about 150 pages by District Judge Luis Delgado on Monday came as a surprise, as a hearing on the release of the graphic testimony was scheduled for next week. Governor Ron DeSantis had signed a law in February allowing the release on Monday or at any time afterward ordered by Delgado. Florida grand jury transcripts are normally kept secret forever, but the law made an exception for cases like Epstein’s.

Transcripts show that the grand jury heard testimony that Epstein, then in his 40s, raped teenage girls as young as 14 at his Palm Beach mansion. He often paid them to rape or abuse them. The teenage girls testified and told investigators they also received cash or rental cars if they found him more girls.

“The details in the file will outrage decent people,” Delgado wrote in his order. “The grand jury’s testimony concerns activities ranging from grossly unacceptable to rape — the entire conduct involved is sexually deviant, repulsive and criminal.”

In 2008, Epstein made a deal with federal prosecutors in South Florida that allowed him to avoid more serious federal charges and instead plead guilty to state charges of procuring and soliciting a person under 18 for prostitution. He was sentenced to a year and a half in the Palm Beach County Jail, during which he was allowed to go to his office almost every day as part of a work release program, followed by a year of house arrest. He was required to register as a sex offender.

Criticism of the agreement led to the resignation in 2019 of Trump’s Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who was U.S. attorney for South Florida in 2008 and signed the agreement. A 2020 Justice Department investigation concluded that Acosta exercised “poor judgment” in handling the Epstein prosecution, but it was not professional misconduct.

The lead prosecutor in the Epstein case, former Palm Beach County District Attorney Barry Krischer, did not immediately respond Monday to an email and voicemail seeking comment on the release of the transcripts.

Current Palm Beach County District Attorney Dave Aronberg, who was not involved in the investigation, said in a statement he was glad the recordings were released. He said he had not yet read the transcripts and therefore could not comment on whether Krischer should have sought a harsher prosecution of Epstein.

Brad Edwards, an attorney for many of the victims, said in a statement that the transcripts showed that Krischer’s office “brought the case to the grand jury with an agenda – to bring minimal or no criminal charges against Jeffrey Epstein.”

“A fraction of the evidence was presented in a misleading way, and the office portrayed the victims as criminals,” he said. “It’s so sad how many victims Epstein was able to abuse because the state brought him water when they had the chance to put him away.”

Epstein’s estate will pay $155 million in compensation to more than 125 victims.

According to the transcripts, Palm Beach Police Detective Joe Recarey testified in July 2006 that the investigation was launched when a woman reported in March 2005 that her stepdaughter, who was then in high school, said she had been paid $300 for “sexual acts with a man in Palm Beach,” Recarey testified.

Another teen, whose name was redacted in the transcript, told investigators that she was 17 when a friend approached her and told her she could earn $200 by giving a massage at Epstein’s home.

When Epstein tried to touch her in the house, she told him she was uncomfortable. He then told her he would pay her $200 if she brought “girls” into the house. “And he told her, ‘The younger the better,'” Recarey said.

Over time, she brought six friends to Epstein’s home, including a 14-year-old, and compared herself to Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss in interviews in October 2005, Recarey said.

When she brought a 23-year-old friend with her, Epstein told her the friend was too old.

“The more you did, the more money you made,” the teen told the detective. “She explained that there would be a massage or possibly touching and that you would have to do the massage either topless or naked.”

Another teen testified that she visited Epstein’s home hundreds of times in the early 2000s, starting when she was 16. She testified that Epstein paid her $200 each time she gave him a naked massage, rented her a car and gave her $1,000 when he raped her.

A search of Epstein’s mansion in 2005 found evidence that supported the girls’ statements. In addition, Epstein’s caretaker told investigators that the teenagers who came to the mansion “were very young. Too young to be a masseuse.”

Epstein was charged with sex trafficking in 2018 in New York – where he also owned a mansion that was the scene of abuse – after the Miami Herald published a series of articles that renewed public attention to the case, including interviews with some of the victims who had filed civil suits against him. Epstein was 66 when he took his own life in a New York jail cell in August 2019, federal officials say.

Delgado wrote in his ruling that the transcripts showed why Epstein was “the most notorious pedophile in American history.”

“For nearly twenty years, the story of how Jeffrey Epstein victimized some of Palm Beach County’s most vulnerable has been the subject of great anger and, at times, tainted public perceptions of the criminal justice system,” Delgado wrote.

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Associated Press reporters Mike Schneider in Orlando, Florida, Curt Anderson in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Stephany Matat in West Palm Beach, Florida, Kim Chandler in Montgomery, Alabama, and Sudhin Thanawala in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Terry Spencer, Associated Press