In March 2005, the parent of a 14-year-old victim of Jeffrey Epstein took her child to the Palm Beach County Police Department to report the abuse. The case was assigned to the Special Victims Unit and Detective Joe Recarey.

Detective Recarey, then 38, found more and more victims. He uncovered the giant pyramid scheme of sexual predation dating back at least to 2001 that would eventually prove to have entrapped and abused several hundred vulnerable young girls.

Epstein would find a way to bait a young girl to his house, promising her between $200 and $300 for a massage. The girls would be met at the side door of his mansion. They would be greeted by Ghislaine Maxwell, or another member of the house staff, or another girl, and led to his bedroom. On the way they would pass photos of Epstein and some of the most powerful people in the world on the walls, as well as photos of nude children and women. They'd enter the bedroom to find him lying face down on a massage table. He would then ask some questions, trying to figure out how susceptible each girl was to being groomed.

Next, Epstein would do any number of things based on his assessment of his ability to manipulate her. He might turn over and expose himself. Or he would tell her to take off her clothes, or masturbate during the massage. Or he would rape her. In some cases, if the girl became visibly upset, he would say, "That's OK. You don't have to do it, but you do have to bring more girls to me." Or he would promise to pay for school or meet some other needs the girl had.

One victim's mother needed cancer treatment she couldn't afford. Epstein said he would pay for it as long as she kept coming over. If she stopped, he would stop paying. Each time, he would pay the girls whether they were being sexually assaulted or luring others to be sexually assaulted. His house was a revolving door of young girls throughout the day and night.

It was later shown that in addition to manipulating girls to pull in other girls, Maxwell used her access and fake motherly presence to find girls at local Palm Beach spas, including Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago. Maxwell convinced the girls that she knew a man who could help get them massage certifications. Maxwell was so convincing in her approach that, at least in one case, the father of a girl dropped her off at Epstein's mansion himself.

Virginia Robert Giuffre is probably the most well-known of Epstein's victims. Her book "Nobody's Girl," published after her death by suicide, details her harrowing experience. She is in the now-infamous photograph with a younger Prince Andrew. Virginia wanted to be a massage therapist. She was 16 or 17 and working a summer job as a locker room attendant at the Mar-a-Lago spa when Maxwell spotted her reading a book about massage therapy, and approached her and asked about her interest in the subject. Maxwell told Virginia that she knew a wonderful rich man who was looking for a traveling masseuse and would be willing to help her get her official massage training.

When Virginia came by the house that day, Epstein and Maxwell asked her personal questions about her past, which exposed her vulnerability. Then they assaulted her. That began a nightmare of entrapment for Virginia that lasted for years. I should note that several of the victims say Maxwell did not just deliver the girls to Epstein, but also actively participated in the sexual abuse. The victims Epstein targeted were often runaways, unhoused, staying in shelter homes with unstable support systems, who had experienced sexual exploitation in the past and were in financially precarious situations without the means to advance their lives. Many of them, like Virginia Giuffre, thought that this was their ticket out of difficult lives, according to the Guardian newspaper.

As part of Detective Recarey's investigation, he and another hero of the case, Chief of Palm Beach Police Department Michael Reiter, deployed the full resources of the department on the investigation. Recarey identified 35 possible underage victims and was tracking down at least a dozen more. They surveilled Epstein's house. They pulled trash from Epstein's home, finding a log of phone messages with girls' names on them that matched the times victims told the police they were at the house, as well as numerous girls' names and phone numbers on other message slips.

They found a school report card of one of the victims. They found a messenger report showing that Epstein had flowers delivered to a girl at school when she had a performance there. They spoke with one of Epstein's employees who confirmed there were regular visits to Epstein's room from young girls. They were confident they had more than sufficient evidence to arrest Epstein on sex charges.

Chief Reiter went to meet with Palm Beach state attorney Barry Krischer. At the state level in Florida, once local police gather enough evidence to be assured that a crime is committed, they bring it to the state attorney, who decides whether there's sufficient proof to issue a search warrant and bring charges. Reiter had a great relationship with Krischer. They had worked closely together for years. He told Krischer about the evidence in the case. And he said that Krischer said, "We'll put him away for the rest of his life. This will be an easy case."

Meanwhile, Epstein learned that some of the girls had been questioned by the police. He hired famed Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, who represented O.J. Simpson and later Donald Trump in his first impeachment trial, as his attorney. Recarey said that Dershowitz met privately with Krischer. Epstein hired private investigators to do around-the-clock surveillance of Recarey and Rei-ter. They picked through their trash in search of dirt to discredit them, and even reached out to Reiter's elementary school teachers.

Epstein's private investigators also attempted to conduct interviews of survivors, posing as cops. They followed the girls in their families. According to police and court reports, the father of one girl claimed that he had been run off the road by a private investigator. Epstein associates warned the girls not to talk to the police.

As the case proceeded, reporters would get threatening weekly calls to make the case go away. Dershowitz and the rest of the defense team compiled dossiers on victims, attempting to show that they were not credible, according to Palm Beach Today reporting.

Krischer and his lead prosecutor in the case started dodging Reiter's and Recarey's calls and dragged their feet on approving subpoenas to continue the investigation, the Palm Beach Post found in its investigation.

It also became evident to Reiter that the evidence they had gathered from their investigation was being leaked to the Epstein legal team; this according to Palm Beach Today reporting.

As a result, he and Recarey stopped putting their records into the computer system and kept them on paper. When Reiter and Recarey were finally able to search Epstein's home on Oct. 20, 2005, it seemed that Epstein had advance notice. They found loose hanging wires throughout the house, and Epstein's computer hard drives, surveillance camera, and videos were missing

They did find phone message pads noting calls from David Copperfield and Donald Trump, as well as messages that read, "Wondering if 2:30 is okay to come. She needs to stay in school." And "Tanya can't come at 7 p.m. tomorrow because she has soccer practice." They also found naked photos of underage girls in his closet.

Two of Epstein's employees gave sworn interviews confirming that girls had been coming and going in the house. One, Alfredo Rodriguez, said that when he was tasked with cleaning up Epstein's bath after the sessions with the girls, he often discovered sex toys and once accidentally stumbled on a high school girl sleeping naked there. He said he was a "human ATM machine, because Epstein ordered him to always keep $2,000 on him to pay the girls."

Neither the state nor the federal investigation ever subpoenaed or got the computers that Epstein had removed from his house prior to Reiter and Recarey's search of his mansion, which suggests those computers were either destroyed or are in someone else's hands. The emails, videos, and other incriminating evidence is not among the six million files and the Epstein files we are fighting over right now.

In May 2006, Recarey and Reiter wrote up probable cause affidavits to charge Epstein and three of his associates with sex-related crimes. But instead of charging them, and despite the legal and moral reality that there is no such thing as a child prostitute, Krischer took the highly unusual step of indicting Jeffrey Epstein on one minor charge of solicitation of prostitution. And referring the case to a grand jury before indicting him. This was done in order to add an extra hurdle before Epstein could be charged, and is usually only done for murder charges. Even though Recarey had lined up more than a dozen girls brave enough to be witnesses to the grand jury, Krischer's office would not tell him when the grand jury would take place, and only called two of them.

The grand jury proceedings were sealed. No one knew what happened there until July 2, 2004, five years after the Palm Beach Post sued to get them released. In the newly unsealed documents, it is clear that Krischer and his prosecutor Lana Belakhov tanked their own case and vilified the victim witnesses, including asking the victims in front of the grand jury whether they had understood that they had engaged in prostitution and could be charged with a crime. At this time, it became obvious to Chief Reiter that whatever Krischer's office was pursuing, it was not justice.

Reiter made the remarkably brave decision, putting his career at risk, to write a public letter calling on Krischer to remove himself from the case, then beseeched the FBI to take up the investigation.

Gwen Ford Faulkenberry is an author, teacher, and award-winning columnist from Ozark. Email her at gfaulkenberry@hotmail.com. Watch her vodcast here: https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/podcast/smalltowngirl/

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