The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has removed thousands of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein from its website after victims said their identities had been exposed.
Lawyers representing Epstein’s victims said the files released on Friday contained flawed redactions that had “turned upside down” the lives of nearly 100 survivors.
According to the lawyers, the release included email addresses and nude photographs in which the names and faces of potential victims could be identified.
In a statement, survivors described the disclosure as “outrageous” and said they should not be “named, scrutinized and retraumatized”.
The DOJ said it had taken down all files flagged by victims and attributed the mistakes to “technical or human error”.
In a letter submitted to a federal judge on Monday, the department said: “All documents requested by victims or counsel to be removed by yesterday evening have been removed for further redaction.”
The DOJ said it is continuing to review additional requests and is also checking whether other documents require further redaction. It added that a “substantial number” of documents identified independently have also been removed.
The document release was mandated after both chambers of Congress approved legislation compelling the DOJ to publish Epstein-related files. Under the terms of the measure, the federal government was required to redact information that could identify victims.
On Friday, two lawyers acting for Epstein’s victims asked a federal judge in New York to order the DOJ to take down the website hosting the files, calling the release “the single most egregious violation of victim privacy in one day in United States history”.
Brittany Henderson and Brad Edwards said there was “an unfolding emergency that requires immediate judicial intervention” because the DOJ had “failing to redact victims names and other personally identifying information in thousands of instances”.
Several victims submitted personal statements alongside the letter, including one who described the release as “life-threatening” and another who said she had received death threats after her private banking details were published.
Epstein survivor Annie Farmer said: “It’s hard to focus on the new information that has been brought to light because of how much damage the DOJ has done by exposing survivors in this way.”
Another victim, Lisa Phillips, said many survivors were “very unhappy with the outcome” of the release.
“The DOJ has violated all three of our requirements,” she told BBC’s Newsday on Tuesday. “Number one, many documents still haven’t been disclosed. Number two, the date set for release has long passed. And number three, DOJ released the names of many of the survivors.”
She added: “We feel like they’re playing some games with us but we’re not going to stop fighting.”
Gloria Allred, a women’s rights lawyer who has represented many of Epstein’s victims, previously told the BBC that numerous victims’ names appeared in the latest release, including individuals who had never been publicly identified.
“In some cases… they have a line through the names but you can still read the names,” she said. “In other cases, they’ve shown photos of victims — survivors who have never done a public interview, never given their name publicly.”
A DOJ spokesperson told the BBC’s US news partner CBS that the department “takes victim protection very seriously and has redacted thousands of victim names in the millions of published pages to protect the innocent”.
The spokesperson added that the department was “working around the clock to fix the issue” and that, so far, “to date 0.1% of released pages” had been found to contain unredacted information that could identify victims.
Millions of Epstein-related files have been released by the DOJ since a law mandated their publication last year, including three million pages, 180,000 images and 2,000 videos released last Friday alone.
That release came six weeks after the department missed a deadline signed into law by US President Donald Trump under bipartisan congressional pressure requiring all Epstein-related documents to be made public.
Epstein died in a New York prison cell on 10 August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
