Beautiful Virgin Islands

Friday, Oct 31, 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

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
UK and Vietnam Sign Landmark Migration Deal to Fast-Track Returns of Irregular Arrivals
UK Drug-Pricing Overhaul Essential for Life-Sciences Ambition, Says GSK Chief
Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie Temporarily Leave the UK Amid Their Parents’ Royal Fallout
UK Weighs Early End to Oil and Gas Windfall Tax as Reeves Seeks Investment Commitments
UK Retail Inflation Slows as Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since Spring
Next Raises Full-Year Profit Guidance After Strong Third-Quarter Performance
Reform UK’s Lee Anderson Admits to 'Gaming' Benefits System While Advocating Crackdown
United States and South Korea Conclude Major Trade Accord Worth $350 Billion
Hurricane Melissa Strikes Cuba After Devastating Jamaica With Record Winds
Vice President Vance to Headline Turning Point USA Campus Event at Ole Miss
U.S. Targets Maritime Narco-Routes While Border Pressure to Mexico Remains Limited
Bill Gates at 70: “I Have a Real Fear of Artificial Intelligence – and Also Regret”
Elon Musk Unveils Grokipedia: An AI-Driven Alternative to Wikipedia
Saudi Arabia Unveils Vision for First-Ever "Sky Stadium" Suspended Over Desert Floor
Amazon Announces 14 000 Corporate Job Cuts as AI Investment Accelerates
UK Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since March, Food Leads the Decline
London Stock Exchange Group ADR (LNSTY) Earns Zacks Rank #1 Upgrade on Rising Earnings Outlook
Soap legend Tony Adams, long-time star of Crossroads, dies at 84
Rachel Reeves Signals Tax Increases Ahead of November Budget Amid £20-50 Billion Fiscal Gap
NatWest Past Gains of 314% Spotlight Opportunity — But Some Key Risks Remain
UK Launches ‘Golden Age’ of Nuclear with £38 Billion Sizewell C Approval
UK Announces £1.08 Billion Budget for Offshore Wind Auction to Boost 2030 Capacity
UK Seeks Steel Alliance with EU and US to Counter China’s Over-Capacity
UK Struggles to Balance China as Both Strategic Threat and Valued Trading Partner
Argentina’s Markets Surge as Milei’s Party Secures Major Win
British Journalist Sami Hamdi Detained by U.S. Authorities After Visa Revocation Amid Israel-Gaza Commentary
King Charles Unveils UK’s First LGBT+ Armed Forces Memorial at National Memorial Arboretum
At ninety-two and re-elected: Paul Biya secures eighth term in Cameroon amid unrest
Racist Incidents Against UK Nurses Surge by 55%
UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves Cites Shared Concerns With Trump Administration as Foundation for Early US-UK Trade Deal
Essentra plc: A Closer Look at a UK ‘Penny Stock’ Opportunity Amid Market Weakness
U.S. and China Near Deal to Avert Rare-Earth Export Controls Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit
Justin time: Justin Herbert Shields Madison Beer with Impressive Reflex at Lakers Game
Russia’s President Putin Declares Burevestnik Nuclear Cruise Missile Ready for Deployment
Giuffre’s Memoir Alleges Maxwell Claimed Sexual Act with Clooney
House Republicans Move to Strip NYC Mayoral Front-Runner Zohran Mamdani of U.S. Citizenship
Record-High Spoiled Ballots Signal Voter Discontent in Ireland’s 2025 Presidential Election
Philippines’ Taal Volcano Erupts Overnight with 2.4 km Ash Plume
Albania’s Virtual AI 'Minister' Diella Set to 'Birth' Eighty-Three Digital Assistants for MPs
Tesla Unveils Vision for Optimus V3 as ‘Biggest Product of All Time’, Including Surgical Capabilities
Francis Ford Coppola Auctions Luxury Watches After Self-Financed Film Flop
Convicted Sex Offender Mistakenly Freed by UK Prison Service Arrested in London
United States and China Begin Constructive Trade Negotiations Ahead of Trump–Xi Summit
U.S. Treasury Sanctions Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro over Drug-Trafficking Allegations
Miss USA Crowns Nebraska’s Audrey Eckert Amid Leadership Overhaul
‘I Am Not Done’: Kamala Harris Signals Possible 2028 White House Run
NBA Faces Integrity Crisis After Mass Arrests in Gambling Scandal
Swift Heist at the Louvre Sees Eight French Crown Jewels Stolen in Under Seven Minutes
U.S. Halts Trade Talks with Canada After Ontario Ad Using Reagan Voice Triggers Diplomatic Fallout
Microsoft AI CEO: ‘We’re making an AI that you can trust your kids to use’ — but can Microsoft rebuild its own trust before fixing the industry’s?
×