Around ten previously unknown suspected victims have come forward in France's ongoing investigation into the criminal network of late American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Paris Public Prosecutor Laure Beccuau announced on Sunday. Speaking to the RTL broadcaster, Beccuau said that roughly 20 suspected victims had made themselves known since she publicly urged potential victims to come forward in February — among them, approximately ten individuals entirely new to investigators. "We also had new victims come forward, ones we didn't know at all," she said.
France opened a human trafficking investigation earlier this year following the release by the US Justice Department of a large cache of files related to the Epstein case. French magistrates are specifically pursuing possible offences committed on French soil or involving French nationals who may have facilitated Epstein's crimes. Investigators have re-examined Epstein's computers, telephone records, and address books, and Beccuau confirmed her team would be issuing requests for international judicial assistance. Because a number of the newly identified victims are based abroad, investigators have been arranging meetings in Paris at the victims' convenience.
The French probe has deep roots in earlier investigations involving figures from the European modelling world. Suspected victims already known to French authorities include women who had previously spoken out during probes into former European model agency boss Gerald Marie and the late model agent Jean-Luc Brunel. Fifteen women urged French authorities in March to investigate Marie's possible links to Epstein. A separate investigation into allegations of sexual abuse by Marie in the 1980s and 1990s was closed in 2023 because the alleged offences were too old to prosecute. Brunel was arrested in 2020 on allegations that he sexually abused minors and supplied victims to Epstein; he was found dead in prison in 2022. Two former models have also told reporters that a modelling scout named Daniel Siad groomed them with the aim of delivering one of them to Epstein in the 2000s and the other to Marie in the 1990s.
Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges, had a luxury apartment in Paris that French investigators searched the following month. He had previously pleaded guilty in 2008 to procuring for prostitution a girl under 18, serving 13 months before being released on probation. Beccuau noted that, at this stage of the French investigation, none of the individuals who could potentially be implicated have yet been formally questioned.
The renewed attention in France is part of a broader international effort to understand the full scope of Epstein's network. In the United States, nearly 3.5 million files linked to the case have been made public, and congressional committees continue to probe unanswered questions about his death and the extent of his alleged trafficking operation. For victims and prosecutors in France, the priority for now is clear: listening carefully to those who have only just found the courage to speak.