victims

Almost 90 flights linked to Jeffrey Epstein arrived at and departed from UK airports, some with British women on board who say they were abused by the billionaire, a BBC investigation has found.

We have established that three British women who were allegedly trafficked appear in Epstein’s records of flights in and out of the UK and other documents related to the convicted sex offender.

US lawyers representing hundreds of Epstein victims told the BBC it was “shocking” that there has never been a “full-scale UK investigation” into his activities on the other side of the Atlantic.

The UK was one of the “centrepieces” of Epstein’s operations, one said.

Testimony from one of these British victims helped convict Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell of child sex-trafficking in the US in 2021. But the victim has never been contacted by UK police, her Florida-based lawyer Brad Edwards told the BBC.

The woman, given the name Kate in the trial, was listed as having been on more than 10 flights paid for by Epstein in and out of the UK between 1999 and 2006.

The BBC is not publishing further details about the women in the documents because of the risk this might identify them.

US lawyer Sigrid McCawley said the British authorities have “not taken a closer look at those flights, at where he was at, who he was seeing at those moments, and who was with him on those planes, and conducted a full investigation”.

Under the Jeffrey Epstein Transparency Act, the deadline to release all US government files on the sex-offender financier is Friday.

But the flight logs were among thousands of documents from court cases and Epstein’s estate which have been already made public over the past year, revealing more about his time in the UK, such as trips to royal residences.

The BBC examined these documents as part of an investigation trying to piece together Epstein’s activities in the UK.

It revealed that:

• The incomplete flight logs and manifests record 87 flights linked to Epstein – dozens more than were previously known – arriving or departing from UK airports between the early 1990s and 2018
• Unidentified “females” were listed among the passengers travelling into and out of the UK in the logs
• Fifteen of the UK flights took place after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for soliciting sex from a minor, which should have raised questions from immigration officials

Although Epstein died in jail in 2019, before his trial on charges of trafficking minors for sex, legal experts have told the BBC a UK investigation could reveal whether British-based people enabled his crimes.

Two months ago the BBC sent the Metropolitan Police, which has previously examined allegations about Epstein’s activities in Britain, publicly available information about the UK flights with suspected trafficking victims on board.

Later, we sent the Met a detailed list of questions about whether it would investigate evidence of possible British victims of Epstein trafficked in and out of the UK.

The Met did not respond to our questions. On Saturday, it released a broader statement saying that it had “not received any additional evidence that would support reopening the investigation” into Epstein and Maxwell’s trafficking activities in the UK.

“Should new and relevant information be brought to our attention”, including any resulting from the release of material in the US, “we will assess it”, the Met said.

US lawyer Brad Edwards, who has been representing Epstein victims since 2008, told us “three or four” of his clients are British women “who were abused on British soil both by Jeffrey Epstein and others”.

Other victims were recruited in the UK, trafficked to the United States and abused there, he said.

Mr Edwards said he is also representing women of other nationalities who say they were trafficked to the UK for abuse by Epstein and others.

Our analysis shows Epstein used commercial and chartered flights, as well as his private planes, to travel to the UK and to arrange transport for others, including alleged trafficking victims.

More than 50 of the flights involved his private jets, mostly flying to and from Luton Airport, with several flights at Birmingham International Airport, and one arrival and departure each at RAF Marham in west Norfolk and at Edinburgh Airport.

Limited records of commercial and chartered flights taken by Epstein, or paid for by him, show dozens more journeys, mainly via London Heathrow, but also Stansted and Gatwick.

In a number of the logs of Epstein’s private planes, including some detailing trips to the UK, women on the flight are identified only as unnamed “females”.

“He’s absolutely choosing airports where he feels it will be easier for him to get in and out with victims that he’s trafficking,” said Ms McCawley.

Private aircraft did not have to provide passenger details to UK authorities before departure in the same way as commercial aircraft during the period covered by the documents we examined. The Home Office told us they were “not subject to the same centralised record-keeping”.

That loophole was only closed in April last year.

Kate, the British woman who testified against Maxwell, was on some of the commercial flights in the records we examined. She described in court that she had been 17 when Maxwell befriended her and introduced her to Epstein – who then sexually abused her at Maxwell’s central London home.

In the 2021 trial, she described how Maxwell gave her a schoolgirl outfit to wear and asked her to find other girls for Epstein. As well as the dozen flights to and from the UK, Kate told the court she had been flown to Epstein’s island in the US Virgin Islands, New York and Palm Beach in Florida, where she says the abuse continued into her 30s.

Mr Edwards, her lawyer, told BBC News that even after that testimony, Kate has “never been asked” by any UK authorities any questions about her experience – “not even a phone call”.

He said that if British police were to launch an investigation into Epstein’s activities and his enablers, Kate would be happy to help.

Prof Bridgette Carr, a human-trafficking expert at the University of Michigan Law School, said trafficking cases usually require many people working together.

“It’s never just one bad person,” she said. “You don’t think about the accountant and the lawyer and the banker – or all the bankers – and all these people that had to implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, be OK with what was happening for it to continue.”

There are also questions about how Epstein was able to travel freely to the UK after his 2008 conviction for soliciting a minor for sex, which meant he had to register as a sex offender in Florida, New York and the US Virgin Islands.

Epstein was released from prison in 2009 after serving 13 months. Documents suggest Epstein took a Virgin Atlantic flight from the US to London Heathrow in September 2010, just two months after he completed his probation on house arrest.

Home Office rules at the time said foreign nationals who received a prison sentence of 12 months or more should, in most cases, have been refused entry.

But immigration lawyer Miglena Ilieva, managing partner at ILEX Law Group, told us that US citizens did not usually require a UK visa for short stays, so there was no application process where they would be asked about criminal convictions.

“It was very much at the discretion of the individual immigration officer who would receive this person at the border,” she said.

The Home Office said it does not hold immigration and visa records beyond 10 years and added “it is longstanding government policy that we do not routinely comment on individual cases”.

During the 1980s, Epstein also used a foreign passport – issued in Austria with his picture and a false name – to enter the UK as well as France, Spain and Saudi Arabia, according to US authorities.

Epstein also listed London as his place of residence in 1985, when he applied for a replacement passport, ABC News has previously reported.

In its statement on Saturday, the Met said it had contacted “several other potential victims” when it examined 2015 allegations by Virginia Giuffre that she had been trafficked for sexual exploitation by Epstein and Maxwell.

Ms Giuffre also said she was forced to have sex with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on three occasions, including when she was 17 at Maxwell’s home in London, in 2001. The former prince has consistently denied the allegations against him.

The Met said its examination of Ms Giuffre’s claims “did not result in any allegation of criminal conduct against any UK-based nationals” and it concluded that “other international authorities were best placed to progress these allegations”.

That decision was reviewed in August 2019 and again in 2021 and 2022 with the same result, it said.

But for lawyer Sigrid McCawley, the message the Met is sending to victims is “that if you come to law enforcement and this is a powerful person you’re reporting on… it will not get investigated.”