Let us imagine Jeffrey Epstein’s small island, Little Saint James, covering approximately 72 acres, planted with tall palm trees and featuring luxury villas, a main residential compound, and a structure resembling a temple topped with a golden dome.
Alongside this, the island contained service and leisure facilities, sea docks for yachts and boats, swimming pools, and golf cart style vehicles used to move between facilities and tour the island.
Nearby lies Great Saint James, a larger island as its name suggests, but it was not the primary residence for Epstein and his guests.
On the island Epstein purchased in 1998, at the lowest estimate, dozens of employees worked, including domestic staff, technicians, guards, drivers, and pilots. Yet what took place there involving Epstein and his guests did not come to light until after 2005, and not as a result of a report or whistleblowing by those who worked on the island.
The secret lies in the contracts
The explanation lies in non disclosure agreements commonly used in the United States, which function as a sword hanging over the necks of employees and workers, under the pretext of protecting employers’ rights and secrets.
A non disclosure agreement, commonly referred to as an NDA, regardless of the terminology used, serves the same legal purpose. It is an agreement restricting the transfer of information between two parties, the employer and the employee, to a third party such as authorities, competitors, or others.
Such agreements bind the second party from sharing or disclosing any information in any form, under the threat of financial penalties, which are often substantial sums that the employee is in no position to pay.
Numerous workers told the Associated Press that they were forced to sign non disclosure agreements in order to work for Epstein.
Why did no one speak?
Forbes reports that more than 70 percent of workers who report abuse face some form of retaliation, whether dismissal, pay cuts, reduced working hours, denial of promotion, or legal action against them.
The magazine quotes Joel Goins, co founder of the organisation Lift Our Voices, as saying that more than 80 percent of American employees are bound by forced arbitration clauses, which prevent workers from resorting to the courts or joining class action lawsuits as a condition of employment. More than one third are also bound by non disclosure agreements.
The organisation notes that nearly half of US states lack laws regulating non disclosure agreements in the workplace.
For example, employees who were abused by film producer Harvey Weinstein were forced to negotiate non disclosure agreements with the company. These agreements included clauses preventing them not only from revealing what they experienced, but also from speaking to a doctor or counsellor unless those professionals also signed non disclosure agreements. They were also required to make every effort not to disclose anything in any civil or criminal case brought against Weinstein.
How was he exposed?
In March 2005, police in Palm Beach, Florida began investigating Epstein following a complaint by the family of a 14 year old girl who reported being sexually assaulted at his mansion. Subsequently, several underage girls, many of them high school students, told police that Epstein had hired them to provide massages with a sexual nature. The case escalated until Epstein’s death in custody in 2019.
Delayed testimonies
A former Epstein employee told Bloomberg that workers on the island were required to wear black or white polo shirts and to disappear in Epstein’s presence so that he would not see them.
The testimony was given in July 2019, after Epstein’s arrest and before his death.
The former employee, who did not specify his role, said Epstein’s office was a completely restricted area, except for the housekeeper on rare occasions.
He added that Epstein would walk around shirtless, wearing shorts and sandals, while meditative music played around the main house and pool area, where women would sunbathe naked.
In an interview with the US network NBC, Steve Scully, an information technology worker who worked on Epstein’s island from 1999 to 2006, said he saw many young women there. He said the main house was filled with photographs of topless girls in the master bedroom, office, and gym.
Scully’s statements were published on 13 August 2019, after Epstein’s death.
The US Department of Justice later announced that it had temporarily removed some published files related to Epstein, claiming they contained information pertaining to certain victims.
In a statement, the department said the documents were temporarily withdrawn from public access, explaining that their removal was due to the inclusion of information relating to some victims.
It described the release of sensitive information, which prompted reactions from victims and their lawyers, as a “technical or human error”.
