A new BBC investigation has revealed that convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein housed women who say he abused them in several London flats in the years after UK police decided not to investigate him. The flats, located in the affluent borough of Kensington and Chelsea, were identified through receipts, emails, and bank records contained within the Epstein files.
Six of the women housed in these flats have since come forward as victims of Epstein's abuse. Many of them were brought to the UK from Russia, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere after the Metropolitan Police decided not to investigate Virginia Giuffre's 2015 allegation that she had been a victim of international trafficking to London.
According to emails in the files, some of the women housed in the London flats were coerced by Epstein to recruit others into his sex trafficking scheme, as well as regularly transported to Paris by Eurostar to visit him.
The BBC searched through millions of pages of records gathered by the US Department of Justice in its investigation of the disgraced financier, and released as part of the Epstein files, to piece together the most detailed picture yet of his operation in the UK. It shows how the operation grew more extensive than previously known, with more victims, established infrastructure such as housing, and frequent transportation of women across borders.
Tessa Gregory, a human rights lawyer with Leigh Day, told the BBC she was 'staggered' no UK police investigation had ever been launched. 'Where there are credible allegations of human trafficking, the UK state, even if no victims come forward, has a positive legal obligation to conduct a prompt, effective and independent investigation,' she said.
The Met said it followed 'reasonable lines of inquiry' at the time, interviewing Giuffre on multiple occasions and cooperating with US investigators. However, Kevin Hyland, a former senior detective with the Met Police who was the UK's first Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, told us police missed opportunities to investigate the convicted sex offender. 'People are outraged that somebody came forward and said, 'I was trafficked by this man', and yet he was just allowed to carry on,' he said.
Just a few months before his arrest on charges of trafficking children for sex, and his death in jail awaiting trial, the investigation found that Epstein was messaging a young Russian woman on Skype who was living in one of the London flats he paid for. He sent her an image which seems to have been a picture of himself. The woman jokingly asked who the good-looking man in the picture was. Epstein said it was her landlord, but said that unlike most landlords, he pays rather than collecting the rent.
Epstein used the Eurostar to move women in and out of the UK uninterrupted up until his arrest. The number of tickets he purchased for young women steadily increased in the final years of his life. The BBC found Epstein purchased at least 53 tickets to transport women between France and England from 2011 to 2019, with 33 of those purchased after Giuffre's 2015 complaint. In the last six months of his life, Epstein moved women in and out of London by Eurostar 10 times, with one woman being transported to London just 16 days before his arrest.
Several people in the UK who worked for Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell have been identified by the BBC, including a driver and Maxwell's former assistant. However, they did not respond to the BBC's inquiries. The assistant's home was found empty with builders' ladders and sacks of rubble outside.
In statements issued in 2016, 2019, 2021, 2022, and 2025, the Metropolitan Police said it believed 'that other international authorities were best placed to progress' the allegations. However, emails in the files show that the National Crime Agency (NCA) sent financial intelligence about Epstein's UK transactions to the FBI in 2020, including payments for the rent of one of the Chelsea flats.
Lisa Phillips, an Epstein survivor, told BBC Newsnight that 'a lot of women came forward in the UK whether through their attorney, or through the Metropolitan Police, or their local police station' and is calling for a public inquiry. Tessa Gregory, the human rights lawyer, said the state needed to be held accountable and a statutory public inquiry would have the power to compel witnesses and look at these issues in detail.
Source: www.bbc.com