Question
How did Epstein’s victims find out about the non-prosecution agreement?
Answer
The victims of Jeffrey Epstein were deliberately kept uninformed about the 2008 NPA — this was not an oversight but an explicit requirement of the agreement itself, which included a “keep confidential” clause committing the government to not inform the public of the agreement’s existence. This violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act.
Most victims were not notified at all: Rather than being told of a federal agreement that would affect their rights, many victims simply did not hear from federal prosecutors during the NPA negotiation period.
Some learned through news coverage: The NPA’s existence first became more widely known in 2011 when news coverage of Epstein’s civil litigation touched on the federal agreement. Some victims first learned through reading news stories.
Civil litigation discovery: Attorneys representing victims in civil cases eventually obtained the NPA documents through discovery, which allowed them to understand the full scope of what had been agreed. They then informed their clients.
Brad Edwards and victim attorneys: Attorneys like Brad Edwards, who represented victims in civil proceedings, were among the first outside the prosecution to discover and document the NPA’s actual terms, and they communicated this information to their clients.
The legal vindication: Judge Kenneth Marra’s February 2019 ruling formally found that the government had violated the CVRA by failing to notify victims and by executing the secrecy provision. By that point, many victims had been living with the consequences of the NPA for over a decade.
Sources
Judge Marra’s February 2019 CVRA ruling; victim attorney accounts; Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell, Relentless Pursuit (2022); Senate Judiciary Committee documentation of notification failures.