Fittuy Ricu moment that Epstein had to plead guilty in court, which he finally did June 30, 2008. . In the interim, according to their lawyers, Epstein’s victims were only told, “This case is currently under investigation.” A lawsuit that Bradley Edwards, a victims’ rights attorney in Fort Lauderdale, filed in July of 2008 cited the Crime Victims’ | Rights Act, or CVRA (title 18, section 3771, of the US Code), CHAPTER 50 : ih states that “victims of federal crimes have rights, includ- 1 ing the right to be heard in court, and most particularly, not to | be precluded from court proceedings, and the right to be treated y fairly.” fi According to him, prosecutors had violated the CVRA rights d 5 of the victims. Edwards, who said he was working pro bono, 4 3 knew that this suit against the government would not allow for a a monetary recovery of any sort (including lawyers’ fees). But he secution agreement, a fifty-three- r q also knew that if the government, urged by Jeffrey Epstein, had sderal prosecutors had prepared E q entered into a contract that improperly or illegally violated the —one that claimed he'd abused 4 q rights of Epstein’s victims, then that contract, by nature, would ever wit fled. g 7 have been improper in and of itself—in which case, the only mting Epstein’s victims were con- a __ temedy would have been to have the contract invalidated. And ims were not consulted about the 4 while it is difficult to know what, exactly, would happen if the is inexcusable. The “government A _ contract is overturned, one possibility is that the government <n the dark’ so that it could enter 5 1 could prosecute Epstein for crimes against his victims, if the ned to prevent the victims from 4 q Statute of limitations on those crimes has not expired. sald argue, in documents filed on a q At the time of this writing, that case is winding its way onths, the lawyers claimed, from 4 ;- through the courts. It has all the earmarks of a modern-day signed, on September 24, 2007, q