The judge, Richard M. Berman of U.S. District Court, said Epstein’s “past sexual conduct is not likely to have abated,” and he was concerned that if Epstein were released, he would continue to abuse teenage girls.
“Mr. Epstein’s alleged excessive attraction to sexual conduct with or in the presence of minor girls — which is said to include his soliciting and receiving massages from young girls and young women perhaps as many as four times a day — appears likely to be uncontrollable,” Berman wrote in a bail decision.
The judge said he had taken into account the statements of two of Epstein’s accusers — Annie Farmer and Courtney Wild — who he said had “movingly testified” in a hearing earlier in the week that they feared for their safety and the safety of others if Epstein were to be released.
A federal indictment has charged that between 2002 and 2005, Epstein and his employees paid dozens of underage girls to engage in sex acts with him at his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida.
The indictment also accused Epstein of using some of his victims to recruit additional girls, paying his “victim-recruiters” hundreds of dollars for each girl they brought to him.
Ever since his July 6 arrest at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey after a flight from Paris, Epstein, 66, has been detained at the highly secure Metropolitan Correctional Center. His lawyers had proposed allowing him to post a substantial bond and remain in his mansion guarded by 24-hour security guards, at his expense.
Prosecutors vigorously opposed that proposal, saying Epstein was seeking “special treatment” and trying to build his own private jail — a “gilded cage.”
In a court hearing earlier Thursday, Berman announced he was denying Epstein’s request, saying his proposed bail package was “irretrievably inadequate.”
One of Epstein’s lawyers, Marc Fernich, said of the judge’s ruling, “We expect to appeal and look forward to fighting the case.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.