Documents naming Jeffrey Epstein’s associates to be unsealed

A federal judge in New York is set to make public in January the names of dozens of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s associates, court records show.

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Judge Loretta Preska ordered the release as part of a civil lawsuit earlier filed by Virginia Giuffre, a woman who said she was sexually abused and trafficked by Epstein. She said Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, facilitated the abuse.

The lawsuit was settled in 2017, although the terms were not disclosed.

The names to be released next month include some of Epstein’s victims, his co-conspirators and associates who are not accused of wrongdoing, ABC News reported. In an order filed Monday in court, Preska said she will give people 14 days to dispute their records being made public. Earlier, the judge indicated the names would not be unsealed indefinitely, Fox News reported.

The more than 170 names to be unsealed include several people who have been identified in media reports and people whose names have come up in related trials and lawsuits, according to court records.

At least 11 names will not be released, including those of eight people identified as minor victims of sexual abuse and two people described as being “classic outsider(s), peripheral to the events at issue.”

One other person’s information will remain sealed after they were mistakenly identified in a photograph and subsequently characterized as an alleged perpetrator by a reporter, court records show. Giuffre did not accuse the person of being involved in the abuse.

Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges that he sexually abused and exploited dozens of girls between 2002 and 2005.

In 2021, a jury convicted Maxwell of helping to recruit young girls for sexual abuse. She was sentenced last summer to serve 20 years in prison.