The release of thousands of pages of documents related to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse by the US department of justice (DOJ) has left some who were anxiously awaiting the files disappointed.
By law, the DOJ had to make all materials public by the end of Friday. But only some have been released, many with numerous redactions.
The lawmakers who pushed for these documents to see the light of day have described the DOJ’s efforts as insincere, and some legal experts say that the redactions may only fuel ongoing conspiracy theories.
“We just want all of the evidence of these crimes out there,” Epstein survivor Liz Stein told the BBC.
Ms Stein told Radio 4’s Today programme that she thought the justice department was “really brazenly going against the Epstein Files Transparency Act” – the law that requires all the documents to be released.
Survivors are really worried about the possibility of a “slow roll-out of incomplete information without any context”, she noted.
Marina Lacerda, who was 14 when she was abused by Epstein, also told the BBC some of the survivors were “still nervous and sceptical about how they are going to release the rest of the files”.
“We are very worried that it will still be redacted in the same way that it was today.
“We are a little disappointed that they’re now still lingering on and distracting us with other things.”
