A longtime attorney for victims of Jeffrey Epstein was invited to testify at Tuesday’s congressional hearing in West Palm Beach. As of Monday morning, he wasn’t sure he would.
“I have no interest in participating in one more photo opportunity with a group of people standing in front of already overly exploited Epstein survivors,” attorney Jack Scarola told The Palm Beach Post.
“If the purpose of this shadow hearing is simply to maintain a political focus on the failure to have completely released the Epstein papers — while I recognize the legitimacy of that concern — I don’t need to be a participant in that.”
If lawmakers are prepared to engage seriously with what went wrong in the Epstein case and how to prevent it from happening again, Scarola added, he has things to say.
“I hope to find out today,” he said May 11. “And if I don’t find out, I won’t be there.”
If Scarola does testify, he said he’ll propose fixes to the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, a federal law that was supposed to guarantee Epstein’s victims a seat at the table during his prosecution.
In Epstein’s case, prosecutors not only kept victims in the dark while negotiating the infamous sweetheart deal but sent letters after the deal was signed telling victims the case was still under investigation.
“All of these politicians who stand up and talk about protecting the rights of potential future victims have done nothing to address those concerns,” Scarola said. “And it’s an easy fix.”
Scarola said violations of the act should void whatever action violated it, meaning a deal made without notifying victims would not be allowed to stand. Attorneys’ fees should be recoverable when violations are proven, he said. Damages should be available to victims who are denied their rights.
He and other attorneys for Epstein’s survivors have raised these concerns for years, in federal court filings and in public. Asked why lawmakers have not yet acted, Scarola said he could only speculate.
“It certainly is not because the idea hasn’t been proposed,” he said. “This is a legislature which unfortunately is greatly politically divided, and it has become obviously very difficult to advance substantive legal issues.”
Some of Scarola’s clients are weighing whether to appear at the hearing themselves. Those who do appear will be doing so after what Scarola described as three separate rounds of harm: the original abuse, the failures of the prosecution and the document release process that was supposed to deliver some measure of resolution.
Scarola said his clients are skeptical of the government’s claim that all relevant documents have been released. The redactions, he said, have been “a joke.” People who should have been protected were named. People who should not have been protected were redacted.
Among those named, he said, were some of his own clients.
“These are women who have suffered enormously,” he said, “as a result of their initial victimization, as a result of their prolonged revictimization by the system. To communicate to them that they have been victimized one more time was not easy.”
Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. Reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Attorney for Epstein victims may skip hearing in West Palm. Here’s why
Reporting by Hannah Phillips, Palm Beach Post / Palm Beach Post
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