Sex-criminal financier Jeffrey Epstein housed women who say he abused them in several London flats in the years after UK police decided not to investigate him, the BBC can reveal.
We found evidence of four flats, rented in the affluent borough of Kensington and Chelsea, in receipts, emails and bank records contained within the Epstein files. Six of the women housed in them have since come forward as victims of Epstein's abuse.
Many of them - from Russia, eastern Europe and elsewhere - were brought to the UK after the Metropolitan Police decided not to investigate Virginia Giuffre's 2015 allegation that she had been a victim of international trafficking to London. The Met said it followed reasonable lines of inquiry at the time, interviewing Giuffre on multiple occasions following her complaint and co-operating with US investigators.
Some of the women housed in the London flats were coerced by Epstein to recruit others into his sex trafficking scheme, as well as regularly transported to Paris by Eurostar to visit him, according to emails in the files.
The BBC searched through millions of pages of records gathered by the US Department of Justice in its investigation of the disgraced financier, and released as part of the Epstein files, in order to piece together the most detailed picture yet of his operation in the UK.
It shows how the operation grew more extensive than was previously known - with more victims, established infrastructure such as housing, and frequent transportation of women across borders - right up to Epstein's death, despite warnings to UK police.
We are not publishing any details about the young women to protect their anonymity as the victims of sexual abuse.
Our investigation found British police had other opportunities to open an inquiry into the disgraced financier's activities in the UK, in addition to Giuffre's complaint that she had been trafficked and forced to have sex with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor in 2001. Mountbatten-Windsor has always denied any wrongdoing.
By early 2020, a second woman had complained to the Met that she had been abused by Epstein in the UK, the BBC has established. It is not clear whether this complaint was acted on.
Despite their desirable addresses, the flats were sometimes crowded, with the women having to sleep on sofas. On some occasions, Epstein responded angrily when the women complained about the living conditions, emails show.
In one case, Epstein said he would pay a woman's rent as a gift if she worked for him for six months, but otherwise he would consider it a loan that needed to be repaid. In another message, Epstein swore at the woman and called her rude, saying she had disgusting behaviour.
Kevin Hyland, a former senior detective with the Met Police and the UK's first Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, noted, People are outraged that somebody came forward and said, 'I was trafficked by this man', and yet he was just allowed to carry on. Who in the police made that decision?
The case raises serious questions about the systemic failures in addressing human trafficking and the exploitation of vulnerable women, with calls for a public inquiry to assess the scale and breadth of Epstein's operations, as well as the complicity or negligence of public institutions.
