The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it had withdrawn thousands of files and “media” related to the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as attorneys told a New York judge that nearly 100 of his victims’ lives have been “turned upside down” due to the agency’s poor redactions in its most recent release of records.
On Jan. 30, the Justice Department released the names of several of Epstein’s victims who were abused by the sex offender while they were underage, as well as some who have not publicly disclosed their identities.
According to a review by The Wall Street Journal, 43 of the 47 victims’ full names were left unredacted in records made public, with some of the names appearing more than 100 times in the files.
In addition to unredacted names, the records include nude photos showing the faces of possible victims, email addresses, and other revealing information that was either not fully covered or plainly unredacted.
The DOJ said that “technical or human error” was to blame for the mishandling of the files.
On Feb. 1, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told ABC News that the DOJ attempted to protect victims and remove their names when alerted. Officials also claimed they had spent weeks redacting names after receiving lists of victims’ information from their attorneys.
“Every time we hear from a victim or their lawyer that they believe that their name was not properly redacted, we immediately rectify that,” Blanche said, adding that the errors affected “0.001% of all the materials.”
U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton wrote in a letter to the New York judge overseeing the sex trafficking cases against Epstein and accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, that the DOJ had removed nearly all content identified by victims or their attorneys, along with a “substantial number” of files identified by the government.
