London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Jul 22, 2025

'It's outrageous': inside an infuriating Netflix series on Jeffrey Epstein

Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich synthesizes legal information with first-person testimony of the billionaire’s abuse and bought immunity into a shocking watch
It’s difficult to watch Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, a four-hour Netflix series on the now-deceased convicted sex offender without a choking sense of outrage. How many girls had to suffer to get attention? How perversely twisted is the American justice system that a Gatsby-esque billionaire, friends with such powerful figures as Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew, Ehud Barack and Donald Trump, a longstanding donor to Harvard and MIT, could buy his way out of an almost certain life sentence for child sex abuse and trafficking?

Filthy Rich arrives, of course, less than a year after Epstein, 66, died, officially by suicide, in a New York jail last August. “There’s no justice in this,” Shawna Rivera, speaking publicly for the first time about Epstein’s alleged abuse starting when she was 14, says in the final episode. “There was just so much more to be said that will never be said.”

There is, however, much to be learned from the sordid, winding, thwarted path to Epstein’s eventual arrest on sex trafficking charges in July 2019. Filthy Rich doesn’t so much break new ground as synthesize the abundance of information with the visceral impact of first-person testimony on Epstein’s crimes – stories of predation, self-doubt and shame by numerous survivors betrayed by the justice system supposed to protect them.

Epstein’s decades-long legal saga is “the biggest example I’ve ever seen of somebody using their money and influence to thwart reporting on the subject and to work out an outrageous deal,” Joe Berlinger, an executive producer, told the Guardian.

Production on Filthy Rich began before Epstein became a household name – before his death, before his shock arrest, before a 2018 Pulitzer-winning investigation by the Miami Times-Herald into the sweetheart plea deal negotiated by federal prosecutors to keep Epstein out of prison. “The level of incompetence and back-door dealing that allowed him to get off – no one on this production thought he would ever be arrested during the making of the show,” said Berlinger, who first began work on an Epstein project in spring 2018, after he received a copy of mystery novelist James Patterson’s 2016 true crime book on the reclusive billionaire (and neighbor in Palm Beach).

The book “infuriated me”, Berlinger said, especially since, in 2018, “people were afraid to tell this story.”

Convincing women to speak on the record “was hard”, director Lisa Bryant said. “Some people wouldn’t talk at all, some numbers were wrong, some decided they just weren’t ever going to talk, for various reasons. Some hadn’t even told their parents about it.” The case of Epstein was never a he-said, she-said situation; to quote the retired Palm Beach police chief Michael Reiter in the Herald’s original story: “This was 50-something ‘shes’ and one ‘he’ – and the ‘shes’ all basically told the same story.”

But Epstein’s intimidation factor was strong, and many of the survivors, their justice thwarted by the plea deal and Epstein’s subsequent immunity, had moved on with their lives. “Yes, there was a pattern that he had, but each person’s experience with that and how they handled it is different,” said Bryant. “This is their story to tell, their narrative. We wanted this to be told through their eyes.”

The series revolves around the various experiences of the survivors, dating back to at least 1996, when the painter Maria Farmer and her teenage sister, Annie, contacted the FBI to allege molestation by Epstein and his ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell. It went nowhere. Years later, in 2005, Palm Beach police launched an investigation into an alleged sex ring run out of Epstein’s beachside mansion, in which Epstein and Maxwell allegedly coerced high-school girls – most of them around 14, in vulnerable circumstances and needing money – into sex acts under the pretense of a “massage” for $200. Maxwell has denied any involvement. The alleged crimes expanded even further, as favorites were allegedly trafficked to rich and powerful friends for parties at Epstein’s $77m Upper East Side mansion in New York, at a London townhouse, and on Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean.

Some survivors featured in the series are speaking on camera for the first time; others, such as Virginia Giuffre, have been advocating for justice for years. Giuffre alleges in and out of the documentary that she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew, who has denied the allegations and queried the veracity of a photo that exists of him with his arm around her, with a smiling Maxwell in the background. Virginia Giuffre denies she was 18 at the time of the photo; she says she was 17.

Given witness testimony in the series by a former Epstein employee who alleges he saw the prince engaged in poolside “foreplay” with a topless Giuffre on Epstein’s island, Andrew’s defense and lack of cooperation with prosecutors reads even more shabbily here. Andrew says he has “no recollection” of meeting Giuffre.

The show stokes justifiable outrage through each survivor’s account, retracing how the Palm Beach police department’s investigation was bumped up to the FBI, and was then derailed by a “non-prosecution agreement” the Herald called “the deal of a lifetime.” Signed in 2008, the deal – brokered by state attorney and later Trump labor secretary Alex Acosta and Epstein’s all-star team of lawyers, including OJ Simpson defender Alan Dershowitz (the only Epstein acolyte to attempt a defense in the series) – was controversially sealed and kept private from the accusers. It offered Epstein and named and unnamed co-conspirators immunity from federal criminal charges; instead, he pleaded guilty to two prostitution charges in state court, and served 11 of 13 months in Palm Beach jail, out six days a week on “work release”.

“He was still seeing girls, he was still making money, he was still conducting business – I mean, it’s just outrageous,” said Berlinger of Epstein’s “incarceration”. Epstein’s elusion of justice for another decade demonstrated how the American criminal justice system “was built for money and power and political gain”, said Bryant. “And we see that over and over again in this case.”

The series also addresses, but does not endorse, conspiracy theories on the cause of Epstein’s death; the medical examiner ruled a suicide by hanging, though an outside expert hired by Epstein’s brother raised unsubstantiated doubts, citing an unusual neck fracture. “I think it’s up for debate, and for people to look at the evidence both ways and make their own decisions,” said Bryant.

“There was nothing that we turned up that would definitively support the idea that he was murdered,” said Berlinger, “but we certainly felt [the theories] should be touched upon.” Personally, Berlinger said: “I do believe it was suicide.”

Epstein’s death denied survivors their true day in court, though several did speak at a posthumous hearing. There remains the possibility of prosecuting those linked to Epstein: perhaps Maxwell, whose whereabouts remain unknown and who recently sued Epstein’s estate – the fund supposed to compensate victims – for her legal fees. “I firmly believe and hope that the survivors will get that money,” said Bryant, and that statutes of limitations are reconsidered given greater understanding of childhood sexual trauma, the length and difficulty of processing enough to speak publicly.

For the survivors, said Berlinger, “the ultimate closure would be for everyone who enabled this sick lifestyle and everyone who enabled a wealthy white person with power and influence to have a different standard of justice to also be held to account.”

Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich is now available on Netflix
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
US Treasury Secretary Calls for Institutional Review of Federal Reserve Amid AI‑Driven Growth Expectations
UK Government Considers Dropping Demand for Apple Encryption Backdoor
Severe Flooding in South Korea Claims Lives Amid Ongoing Rescue Operations
Japanese Man Discovers Family Connection Through DNA Testing After Decades of Separation
Russia Signals Openness to Ukraine Peace Talks Amid Escalating Drone Warfare
Switzerland Implements Ban on Mammography Screening
Japanese Prime Minister Vows to Stay After Coalition Loses Upper House Majority
Pogacar Extends Dominance with Stage Fifteen Triumph at Tour de France
CEO Resigns Amid Controversy Over Relationship with HR Executive
Man Dies After Being Pulled Into MRI Machine Due to Metal Chain in New York Clinic
NVIDIA Achieves $4 Trillion Valuation Amid AI Demand
US Revokes Visas of Brazilian Corrupted Judges Amid Fake Bolsonaro Investigation
U.S. Congress Approves Rescissions Act Cutting Federal Funding for NPR and PBS
North Korea Restricts Foreign Tourist Access to New Seaside Resort
Brazil's Supreme Court Imposes Radical Restrictions on Former President Bolsonaro
Centrist Criticism of von der Leyen Resurfaces as she Survives EU Confidence Vote
Judge Criticizes DOJ Over Secrecy in Dropping Charges Against Gang Leader
Apple Closes $16.5 Billion Tax Dispute With Ireland
Von der Leyen Faces Setback Over €2 Trillion EU Budget Proposal
UK and Germany Collaborate on Global Military Equipment Sales
Trump Plans Over 10% Tariffs on African and Caribbean Nations
Flying Taxi CEO Reclaims Billionaire Status After Stock Surge
Epstein Files Deepen Republican Party Divide
Zuckerberg Faces $8 Billion Privacy Lawsuit From Meta Shareholders
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
SpaceX Nears $400 Billion Valuation With New Share Sale
Microsoft, US Lab to Use AI for Faster Nuclear Plant Licensing
Trump Walks Back Talk of Firing Fed Chair Jerome Powell
Zelensky Reshuffles Cabinet to Win Support at Home and in Washington
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Irish Tech Worker Detained 100 days by US Authorities for Overstaying Visa
Dimon Warns on Fed Independence as Trump Administration Eyes Powell’s Succession
Church of England Removes 1991 Sexuality Guidelines from Clergy Selection
Superman Franchise Achieves Success with Latest Release
Hungary's Viktor Orban Rejects Agreements on Illegal Migration
Jeff Bezos Considers Purchasing Condé Nast as a Wedding Gift
Ghislaine Maxwell Says She’s Ready to Testify Before Congress on Epstein’s Criminal Empire
Bal des Pompiers: A Celebration of Community and Firefighter Culture in France
FBI Chief Kash Patel Denies Resignation Speculations Amid Epstein List Controversy
Air India Pilot’s Mental Health Records Under Scrutiny
Google Secures Windsurf AI Coding Team in $2.4 Billion Licence Deal
Jamie Dimon Warns Europe Is Losing Global Competitiveness and Flags Market Complacency
South African Police Minister Suspended Amid Organised Crime Allegations
Nvidia CEO Claims Chinese Military Reluctance to Use US AI Technology
Hong Kong Advances Digital Asset Strategy to Address Economic Challenges
Australia Rules Out Pre‑commitment of Troops, Reinforces Defence Posture Amid US‑China Tensions
Martha Wells Says Humanity Still Far from True Artificial Intelligence
Nvidia Becomes World’s First Four‑Trillion‑Dollar Company Amid AI Boom
U.S. Resumes Deportations to Third Countries After Supreme Court Ruling
Excavation Begins at Site of Mass Grave for Children at Former Irish Institution
×