(NEW YORK) — A new round of court records from a lawsuit related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein were released Monday.
At least 17 documents were unsealed. More than 200 documents have been released since Wednesday.
The records are part of a defamation lawsuit brought by Virginia Giuffre, an alleged victim of Epstein, against his longtime companion Ghislaine Maxwell that the two settled in 2017. Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges.
Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence after she was convicted in 2021 of aiding Epstein’s sex trafficking of young women and girls. Her appeal will be heard in March.
The documents unsealed Monday include several photographs produced by Sarah Ransome, who filed a lawsuit against Epstein, Maxwell and other alleged co-conspirators in 2017 under the pseudonym “Jane Doe 43.” Ransome was also involved in the Giuffre case as a witness. She was deposed and provided dozens of photographs showing Epstein, Maxwell, herself and other young women on Epstein’s private island.
According to another unsealed filing, Ransome testified that some of the pictures were taken by Jean Luc Brunel, a French model scout and associate of Epstein, and given to her by him.
Brunel died by suicide in his prison cell in February 2022 while awaiting trial on charges of rape of underage girls and sexual harassment — a crime in France. Brunel had maintained he was innocent.
Several of the photographs unsealed Monday appeared in the media following Epstein’s arrest and death. Ransome spoke publicly at a hearing in a New York courthouse in August 2019 and has granted several interviews since.
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska ruled last month there was no legal justification for continuing to conceal more than 150 names of “John and Jane Does” mentioned in the records.
So far, 208 documents have been unsealed out of an anticipated total of around 250.
A total of 132 documents were released Friday. About 19 documents were released Thursday and the first 40 were released on Wednesday.
Friday’s documents detail how Maxwell reacted after Giuffre made explosive allegations in a court case filed by Epstein’s alleged victims against the federal government, which challenged the lenient treatment the sex offender received. It was the first time Giuffre alleged publicly that she was forced by Epstein and Maxwell to have sex with Prince Andrew and other prominent men.
Prince Andrew has denied the allegations and claimed he could not recall ever meeting Giuffre. He later settled a lawsuit she filed against him.
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