2 Jeffrey Epstein victims sue Miami Herald journalist who helped put him behind bars

• Two of Jeffrey Epstein's victims accused journalist Julie K. Brown, whose reporting led to his arrest, of defamation.
• Courtney Wild said she misrepresented her experience of sexual abuse.

When reporter Julie K. Brown published her book about the pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein last summer, she dedicated it to "all of Jeffrey Epstein's survivors." Four of them she singled out by name, including a woman named Courtney Wild.

Wild apparently didn't return the appreciation. On Thursday, she and Haley Robson, another woman who has accused Epstein of sexual abuse, filed a defamation lawsuit against Brown, alleging Brown misrepresented their experiences with Epstein and ultimately "re-victimized" them.

"Brown falsely stated that Ms. Wild was raped by Epstein and then had sex with Epstein multiple times after the rape," the lawsuit, filed in Miami-Dade County court in Florida, says. "Neither is true."

The way Brown wrote about Robson was even more egregious, according to the lawsuit, which was first reported by Florida Bulldog.

"When Robson refused to sit for an interview for the book, Brown threatened her, saying her refusal would be the 'biggest mistake of your life,'" the lawsuit says.

Brown's "Perversion of Justice" series published in the Miami Herald in 2018 renewed scrutiny on Epstein, the well-connected financier who at the time was still splitting times between his homes in Manhattan, New Mexico, and Palm Beach, Florida.

Though Florida law enforcement officers identified 34 sexual abuse victims in 2006, federal prosecutors in Florida offered him a non-prosecution agreement in 2007 that allowed him to spend just 13 months in county jail, on a part-time basis, on prostitution solicitation charges.

Brown's Miami Herald series of articles unraveled the mechanics of how Epstein was able to secure that deal, and how his victims were kept in the dark. Their publication led to the resignation of Alexander Acosta, who was serving as then-President Donald Trump's Labor Secretary and who oversaw the 2007 deal with Epstein as a US Attorney in Florida.

When law enforcement in New York arrested Epstein on sex-trafficking charges in 2019, then-US Attorney for the Southern District of New York said his team was "assisted by excellent investigative journalism." Epstein ultimately killed himself in jail while awaiting trial. His associate Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested in July 2020 and convicted of sex-trafficking charges of her own this past December.

Brown expanded her reporting and told the backstory of her Miami Herald series with a book, titled "Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story," released in July 2021. HBO is planning to adapt it into a limited series, and a researcher for the show shadowed Brown as she reported on Maxwell's trial in New York.

The lawsuit says Brown wrongly depicted a victim as an Epstein collaborator

Thursday's lawsuit alleges that Brown defamed Wild because she sought to take credit for Wild's own work seeking justice. For years, Wild, through her attorney Brad Edwards, has fought in the courts to challenge the non-prosecution agreement between federal prosecutors and Epstein. Members of Congress have also introduced a bill in her name that would reform those laws.

"Knowing Ms. Wild had spearheaded each of these major achievements, and not Ms. Brown as she claimed in her book, Ms. Brown sought to debase and defame Ms. Wild by writing that Ms. Wild 'told the FBI the times that she had sex with him when she was underage,' that she could not 'remember the exact time he raped me,' and that, at a certain point thereafter, she 'didn't have to do the sex anymore,'" the lawsuit says.

According to Edwards, Wild has said that Epstein introduced her to sexualized massages where he stimulated himself, starting when she was 14 years old. Wild has also said Epstein forced her to watch him have sex with others, but not that they had sexual intercourse.

According to the new lawsuit, Brown sought an interview with Robson "under the guise of helping Ms. Robson restore her reputation and tell her true story as one of Epstein's victims."

In the years prior, media reports had identified Robson as a person who recruited other girls for Epstein, and according to the lawsuit Brown's book depicted Robson as "not as a victim but rather as an eager participant and co-conspirator in Epstein's crimes" after she declined Brown's interview request.

In fact, according to the lawsuit, Robson was a victim in the "pyramid scheme of abuse" described by prosecutors in Maxwell's trial, where Maxwell and Epstein manipulated teen girls into recruiting other friends for them to sexually abuse.

The New York Times identified Robson in 2019 as one of the women in Epstein's circle who had come under renewed scrutiny by prosecutors following Epstein's arrest. But Edwards, who also represents Robson, told Insider earlier this year that she was never under investigation, and that she received funds from the Epstein Victims' Compensation Program. In recent years, Robson has given numerous interviews discussing her horrifying experience with Epstein and has become an advocate for sex-trafficking awareness.

The lawsuit asks a judge to force Brown to provide a public apology, as well as unspecified monetary damages.

"Brown's libelous attacks on these two victims will have lasting effects as both have children and family members who will suffer regular attacks by those in the community who read or hear of these defamatory statements," the lawsuit says.

In a statement to the Miami Herald, the publication's Executive Editor Monica Richardson said it had "no involvement in this lawsuit."

"This is a private business matter related to Julie Brown and her book," Richardson said.

Neither Brown nor her publisher, HarperCollins, immediately responded to Insider's request for comment.

Jeffrey Gutchess, the lawyer representing Robson and Wild in the defamation lawsuit, told Rolling Stone that the women were "young and vulnerable" teenagers who were "exploited by a powerful man."

"They're strong individuals, but they've struggled. So to go through that emotional trauma for so many years and then have a prominent author and journalist write a book that characterizes them this way, it's one more punch in the gut," Gutchess said. "And it's continuing to harm them. When people in the community read the book, or when their children read it, the taunting and tormenting continues."