A lawsuit filed by prosecutors in the Virgin Islands says multimillionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein used two private islands in the U.S. territory to engage in a nearly two-decade-long conspiracy to traffic and abuse girls.
“The complaint speaks for itself and lays out allegations of a pattern and practice of human trafficking, sexual abuse and forced labor of young women and female children as young as 13 years old,” Virgin Islands Attorney General Denise N. George said, according to the Associated Press.
The lawsuit reportedly alleges the crimes happened between 2001 and 2018, involving girls between the ages of 12 and 17. The girls were allegedly flown from other countries to the Virgin Islands then moved to Epstein's property on the island of Little St. James to hide the activity.
The suit alleges that at one point, Epstein and associates organized a search party to catch a 15-year-old victim trying to swim away and kept her passport to keep her captive.
The lawsuit seeks to confiscate hundreds of millions of dollars from Epstein's estate in the Virgin Islands.
Epstein died in August 2019 while in custody in New York. His death was ruled a suicide.
AP reports the lawsuit alleges Epstein's associates “continued to conspire to prevent detection of the Epstein Enterprise’s criminal wrongdoing and to prevent accountability" even after his death.
