Nude photos. The names and faces of sexual abuse victims. Bank account and Social Security numbers in full view.
All of these appeared in the mountain of documents the U.S. Justice Department released to comply with a law requiring it to open investigative files on Jeffrey Epstein.
The law was intended to preserve privacy protections for Epstein’s victims. Their names were supposed to have been blacked out in documents. Their faces and bodies were supposed to be obscured in photos. Instead, a review by The Associated Press and other news organisations found countless examples of sloppy, inconsistent or non-existent redactions that revealed sensitive private information.
A photo of a girl who was underage when she was hired to give sexualised massages in Florida appeared in a chart of Epstein’s alleged victims. Police reports with the names of several victims, including some who have never publicly identified themselves, were released with no redactions. Despite the Justice Department’s efforts to fix oversights, a photo of a topless woman with her face visible remained on the site into Wednesday evening.
Some accusers and their lawyers called for the Justice Department to take down the site and appoint an independent monitor to prevent further errors. A judge scheduled a hearing in New York but later cancelled it after one victims’ lawyer cited progress in resolving issues. Brittany Henderson, a lawyer for victims, said they were still considering “all potential avenues of recourse” to address the “permanent and irreparable” harm caused to some women. “The failure here is not merely technical,” she said. “It is a failure to safeguard human beings who were promised protection by our government. Until every document is properly redacted, that failure is ongoing.”
Annie Farmer, who says she was 16 when she was assaulted by Epstein and his confidante Ghislaine Maxwell, said her name has been public but other details she preferred private — including her date of birth and phone number — were wrongly revealed. “At this point, I’m feeling really most of all angry about the way that this unfolded,” she told NBC News. “The fact that it’s been done in such a beyond careless way, where people have been endangered because of it, is really horrifying.”
The Justice Department blamed technical or human errors, saying it has taken down many problematic materials and is working to republish properly redacted versions. The review and redaction task happened on a compressed timeline: President Donald Trump signed the disclosure law on Nov. 19, giving the Justice Department 30 days to release the files. The department missed that deadline, saying it needed more time to protect privacy. Hundreds of lawyers were pulled from regular duties to complete the review, prompting complaints from at least one judge that it was delaying other matters.
The database on the Justice Department website is the largest release of files so far in the investigations into Epstein, who killed himself in a New York jail cell in 2019 while awaiting federal sex trafficking charges. AP reporters found multiple examples of victims’ names and other personal information revealed, along with many cases of overzealous or odd redactions — for example, a news clipping that blacked out “Joseph” in a nativity-scene caption and an email in which a dog’s name was redacted.
The department says staff were instructed to limit redactions to victims and their families, yet many other names — including lawyers and public figures — were blacked out in some documents. Regarding images, the Justice Department said it intended to mask any nudity and any photos that could show a victim. In many cases faces were obscured but significant nudity or identifying skin remained visible. Photos showed identifiable women in dressing rooms or bathing suits; in one set of more than 100 images, almost all were blacked out except the final image, which revealed the woman’s full face.
