A federal judge in Manhattan canceled a scheduled hearing after attorneys for Jeffrey Epstein victims and the Justice Department reached an agreement to protect victims’ identities amid the release of a large set of court documents, according to a lawyer who spoke to the judge. Judge Richard M. Berman’s Wednesday hearing was called off after Florida attorney Brittany Henderson notified him that the parties had resolved the privacy issues through “extensive and constructive discussions,” a development that Henderson said followed complaints that the government’s redactions were incomplete.
In a Sunday letter to Berman, Henderson and attorney Brad Edwards told the judge that “immediate judicial intervention” was needed after they identified thousands of instances in which the government allegedly failed to redact names and other personally identifying information of women sexually abused by Epstein when it began releasing millions of documents last week. Henderson later told the court that the agreement would address the identities of nearly 100 women whose information was included in the release, according to the lawyer’s description of the arrangement.
Berman canceled the Wednesday public hearing after he was notified of the agreement, and in an order canceling the proceeding he said he was “pleased but not surprised that the parties were able to resolve the privacy issues.” Henderson, in her letter, wrote that “We trust that the deficiencies will be corrected expeditiously and in a manner that protects victims from further harm.”
The letter described examples that included statements from women whose comments were included among the attorneys’ filings. Among eight women whose remarks were cited in the Sunday letter, one said the records’ release was “life threatening,” while another said she received death threats and was forced to shut down credit cards and banking accounts after her security was jeopardized, according to the account presented to the judge.
Henderson and Edwards had asked the court to order changes that would prevent further exposure, including a request that the Justice Department website be temporarily shut down and that an independent monitor be appointed to ensure additional errors would not occur. Henderson did not specify in her court filing what the government lawyers said in order to protect identities going forward or what the agreement consisted of in detail.
Separate reporting into the court record, including a letter filed Monday in Manhattan federal court by U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton, attributed the redaction problems to errors during the document release. Clayton wrote that “technical or human error” led to mistakes, and he said the department had improved its protocols to protect victims. He also said the department had taken down nearly all materials identified by victims or their lawyers, along with many more materials the government said it identified on its own.
The release included what the attorneys and the court record described as some of the largest release of Epstein-related documents to date, including nude photos showing faces of potential victims and other identifying information that was either unredacted or not fully obscured. Most of the materials described in connection with the document release stemmed from sex-trafficking probes involving Epstein and his former girlfriend, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence after she was convicted in December 2021 at a New York trial.
Epstein took his life in federal jail in New York in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.