Epstein housed abuse victims in London flats, BBC reveals – BBC News

A BBC investigation into millions of US Department of Justice records says Jeffrey Epstein housed abuse victims in four London flats for years after the Metropolitan Police declined to investigate trafficking allegations made in 2015.

The evidence, drawn from receipts, emails and bank records in the Epstein Files, links the properties to repeated cross-Channel movements of women, some of whom were allegedly coerced into recruiting others. The report says more than 50 Eurostar tickets were bought between 2011 and 2019, with 33 purchased after the 2015 complaint.

The findings raise serious questions about missed opportunities to intervene and whether UK authorities failed in their duty to investigate credible allegations of trafficking.

BBC files expose extensive UK trafficking links

The BBC’s review of the released records indicates that Epstein maintained at least four flats in Kensington and Chelsea to house women, many from Russia, eastern Europe and elsewhere, after the Met decided not to pursue Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 trafficking allegations.

According to the report, some of the women were later identified as victims of Epstein’s abuse, while others were allegedly pressured into recruiting more young women. The records also point to regular travel between London and Paris, suggesting a structured operation that continued until Epstein’s arrest in 2019.

Missed opportunities and legal obligations

Human rights lawyer Tessa Gregory said it was “staggering” that no UK investigation had been launched despite credible trafficking allegations, pointing to the state’s obligations under Article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Former anti-slavery commissioner Kevin Hyland said the available evidence should have been more than enough to trigger an inquiry, arguing that repeated travel bookings, housing arrangements and victim complaints were all warning signs that should have been acted on.

The report also says British authorities knew by 2020 that Epstein had rented at least one of the London flats identified in the files.

Inside the coercion and control tactics

Messages cited in the files suggest Epstein presented himself as a landlord who paid rent for women he housed, while using that support to create dependence and control. In some cases, he is said to have framed rent as either a gift in exchange for work or a debt to be repaid.

The records also describe overcrowded living conditions, payments for English language courses, and attempts to involve women in identifying or recruiting others. Together, they portray a system of coercion, dependency and cross-border movement.

Renewed scrutiny and possible reopening

Following the release of the Epstein Files, UK police forces are reviewing new material through a National Police Chiefs’ Council group. The Met has said it is assessing information suggesting London airports may have been used as transit points in trafficking routes.

No UK-based individual has been charged as a result of these latest disclosures. However, the scale of the evidence and the criticism of earlier inaction are likely to intensify calls for fresh investigations into Epstein’s UK network and any accomplices who may still have escaped scrutiny.

Jeffrey Epstein, the billionaire sex offender, remains in the headlines, with many unanswered questions still surrounding his global sex-trafficking operation.

A review of the millions of documents in the Epstein Files, released in January, suggests that Epstein had established part of his sex-trafficking network in the UK.

The investigation found that Epstein had an established network in the UK, with people who helped him there. It also identified flats where some of the women were housed, while credit-card receipts showed how their lives were funded. There was also travel in and out of the UK. Despite this, there has never been a full police investigation into his activities in Britain or into any of the people who helped him.

The reporting focused on the final years of Epstein’s life, after Virginia Giuffre, one of his accusers, made a complaint to the Metropolitan Police in 2015, saying she had been trafficked to the UK by Epstein in the early 2000s. She took her own life last year.

Receipts in the files show that after 2015, Epstein was routinely moving women back and forth from the UK to France via Eurostar. The women would then end up at Epstein’s 18-room central Paris home. One survivor said he liked being in the city because he was virtually anonymous and there were always girls there waiting for him.

Back in the UK, the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea appears repeatedly in the Epstein Files. It was there that four addresses were identified that had been rented by Epstein for some of the women he abused to live in.

Kevin Hyland, a former senior Metropolitan Police detective and the UK’s first Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, said:

People are outraged that somebody came forward and said, “I was trafficked by this man”, and yet he was just allowed to carry on. Who in the police made that decision? A lot of people will say, “Epstein’s dead, so there’s nothing that can be done.” But we would not have said that about Jimmy Savile, and look what that revealed.

Survivors of Epstein in the United States are now calling for a UK public inquiry to establish why no investigation was ever carried out into Epstein’s abuse.

Human rights lawyer Tessa Gregory said the UK has a legal obligation to investigate human trafficking, whether or not a victim comes forward:

There appear to be credible allegations that young women and girls were trafficked into and through the UK by Epstein and his associates for the purposes of sexual exploitation. The UK state, even if no victims come forward, has a positive legal obligation to conduct a prompt, effective and independent investigation.

These findings were put to the Metropolitan Police, which said it was confident it had fulfilled its legal duties and was still assessing whether UK airports had been used as transit points in the facilitation of sexual exploitation and human trafficking.

There are now serious questions about whether Epstein’s sex-trafficking network could at least have been interrupted if a full police investigation had been launched in the UK after Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 complaint.

Now it is not clear whether, or why, Keir Starmer, as prosecutor, ever carried out discovery in relation to Egov.co.uk, because there are no documents showing that his office examined it either as a mechanism for holding details on vulnerable children who had been drawn into prostitution in Rotherham and Rochdale, or as something connected to the Education Acts, whose operation appears to have allowed children to be removed from effective oversight by failing to attend a virtual school. You really could not make this up: the process is described there.

Operation Span in Heywood Rochdale, where 16 men were prosecuted, then came Operation Doublet with 19 arrests, then came Operation Lytton in Manchester. It is known that these children are vulnerable and are recorded by the Manchester Council.

For years, Sir Keir Starmer has cited the Rochdale grooming gang prosecution as part of his record at the Crown Prosecution Service. In Parliament on 30 April 2025, he said: “I oversaw the first grooming gang prosecution, which was in Rochdale, more than a decade ago.”

But Ruby, a survivor of the Rochdale/Heywood abuse network, tells a very different story. In her testimony, she describes being targeted at 12, groomed through free food, alcohol and cigarettes, isolated from other girls, threatened with violence, and repeatedly abused by men who operated around takeaways, cars, houses and flats. She says teachers, police and social services were told, but failed to protect her.

The transcript also raises one of the gravest questions about the CPS charging decisions: Ruby says DNA evidence existed in relation to a man who made her pregnant when she was a child, yet he was not charged with rape. She describes the later handling of foetal remains and DNA evidence as a further violation, and says the lack of a rape charge left her feeling that the strongest evidence in her case had still not delivered justice.

Starmer himself later told MPs that traditional credibility tests used by police, prosecutors and courts “do not work” for young children subjected to systematic abuse, because applying those tests to grooming victims would “almost invariably” produce the wrong result. For Ruby, however, that later recognition does not answer the central question: why were children treated as unreliable, rather than protected, when the evidence was already there?

For the “Inside This Investigation”:

Inside this investigation:

The grooming playbook — how vulnerable 12-year-old girls in Heywood were targeted with free food, alcohol, cigarettes, transport and false “boyfriend” relationships before being isolated and abused.

The ignored warnings — Ruby says she repeatedly told teachers, police, social workers and professionals what was happening, yet the institutions around her failed to intervene.

The DNA evidence question — Ruby alleges that DNA evidence existed after she became pregnant as a child, but that the man involved was not charged with rape. This is the most serious claim and should be framed as Ruby’s account unless you have the underlying case file or court record.

The credibility trap — Starmer acknowledged in 2012 that standard tests of credibility and reliability could fail grooming victims, especially where children had been drinking, delayed disclosure, changed accounts, or returned to perpetrators.

The accountability gap — Full Fact notes that Starmer was head of the CPS when an earlier Rochdale decision not to prosecute was made, but says it found no evidence that he was personally involved in that original decision. So the safest wording is “the CPS under Starmer’s leadership” unless you are quoting Starmer’s own “I oversaw” statement or have documents proving personal involvement in the specific charging decision.

One important correction: use Operation Doublet and Operation Lytton, Public CPS/GMP material confirms the 2025 Rochdale case involved seven men convicted of multiple offences against two vulnerable girls between 2001 and 2006, with the CPS saying both victims were known to social services and one was in care.

A. Rochdale / Heywood / CPS / Starmer

1. Ruby survivor interview transcript — Express Report
   Use for Ruby’s testimony: grooming at age 12, Heywood locations, alcohol/cigarettes, teachers/police/social services allegedly being told, pregnancy/DNA allegation, and lack of aftercare.
2. Hansard, 30 April 2025 — Prime Minister’s statement
   Use for Starmer’s own words: “I oversaw the first grooming gang prosecution, which was in Rochdale,” and his later claim that he asked for the file, reviewed it, and changed the prosecution approach. https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2025-04-30/debates/122A9037-41B9-450B-849D-E51A0865556A/Engagements
3. Home Affairs Committee oral evidence, 13 November 2012 — Keir Starmer QC and Nazir Afzal OBE
   Use for the CPS’s own explanation of what went wrong in grooming prosecutions and the issue of victim credibility/reliability.https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmhaff/494/121113.htm
4. Home Affairs Committee report, 2013 — Child sexual exploitation and the response to localised grooming
   Essential. It records the 2008 Rochdale disclosure, underwear containing DNA evidence, the CPS decision not to prosecute because the girl was not considered credible, Operation Span, and the finding that CPS credibility tests were “inappropriately cautious.” https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/68/6804.htm
5. Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board — Review of Multi-agency Responses to the Sexual Exploitation of Children, 2012
   Use for local-authority and safeguarding failures between 2007 and 2012, Operation Span background, and agency roles. It notes Operation Span was launched in December 2010 and that CPS was not represented at the review meeting, which the report calls an acknowledged gap. https://democracy.york.gov.uk/documents/s78816/Annex%20A.pdf
6. IICSA — Child sexual exploitation by organised networks, February 2022
   Use for national context: victim-blaming, failures to hear children, children in care, children with disabilities, schools/health/social care, profiling, disruption, investigation and prosecution.https://www.iicsa.org.uk/reports-recommendations/publications/investigation/cs-organised-networks.html
7. CPS, 13 June 2025 — Seven men convicted for sexually exploiting children in Rochdale
   Use for Operation Lytton/public CPS confirmation: abuse between 2001 and 2006, victims aged 13, both from vulnerable backgrounds, both known to social services, one in care, and grooming with gifts, money, alcohol or drugs. https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/seven-men-convicted-sexually-exploiting-children-rochdale
8. CPS, 1 October 2025 — Seven men jailed for raping and abusing girls in Rochdale
   Use for sentencing and names of the convicted men in the 2025 Rochdale case. https://www.cps.gov.uk/cps/news/seven-men-jailed-raping-and-abusing-girls-rochdale
9. GMP, 1 October 2025 — Seven men jailed for more than 170 years after non-recent CSE investigation
   Use for police-side framing of the 2025 convictions and Operation Lytton follow-up. https://www.gmp.police.uk/news/greater-manchester/news/news/2025/october/seven-men-jailed-for-more-than-170-years-following-gmp-investigation-into-non-recent-cse/
10. GMCA / Newsam & Ridgway Operation Span review, January 2024
    Use for the independent assurance review into Operation Span and non-recent CSE in Rochdale. Search result notes it found the Crisis Intervention Team had alerted GMP and Rochdale children’s social care to “dozens” of CSE cases before 2008. https://www.greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/media/9148/operation-span-report-january-2024-v3.pdf
11. Full Fact — Starmer and Rochdale prosecution claims
    Use as a caution source: it says Starmer headed the CPS but found no evidence he personally tried to block prosecutions. This helps avoid overclaiming while still criticising the CPS under his leadership. https://fullfact.org/online/starmer-muslim-grooming-prosecution-crime/

B. National grooming-gangs context

12. Casey Audit, 2026 — National Audit on Group-based Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
    Use for current national context: poor data, under-reporting, COCAD, offender/victim data gaps, and the grooming model involving “boyfriend” grooming, gifts, alcohol/drugs, violence and coercion.
13. Government response to Home Affairs Committee report, 2013
    Use for official government acknowledgement of the need to change police/CPS guidance, moving focus away from testing victim credibility and toward the credibility of the allegation.

C. Epstein / London flats material

14. BBC-linked article on The Stealing of Emily — “BBC Uncovers Epstein’s Abuse in Four London Flats”
    Use as your working article/lead sheet, not as the sole evidential basis. It summarises the BBC claim that Epstein housed women in four Kensington and Chelsea flats and that records included receipts, emails, bank records and Eurostar travel.
15. BBC investigation — Epstein housed abuse victims in London flats
    Your article links to the BBC piece. This should be treated as the primary media report for the four-flats claim, Eurostar tickets, London/Paris movements, and Met questions.
16. DOJ Epstein Library
    Use as the primary archive for released Epstein Files material. DOJ says the library contains materials responsive to the Epstein Files Transparency Act and was last updated on 23 April 2026.
17. DOJ press release, 30 January 2026 — 3.5 million responsive pages
    Use to establish the scale and official basis of the released Epstein records.
18. Met Police statement, 13 December 2025 — Epstein/Giuffre trafficking allegations
    Use for the Met’s position: it received non-recent trafficking allegations in 2015, interviewed Virginia Giuffre, liaised with US authorities and the CPS, and concluded international authorities were best placed to progress the matter.
19. Guardian / Independent summaries of the BBC Epstein findings, April 2026
    Use as secondary corroboration of the BBC’s reporting on four London flats, six women, Eurostar travel, and criticism of the Met’s earlier decision not to investigate.

D. Documents still worth requesting or locating

For the strongest evidential chain, the missing documents would be:

1. CPS charging advice and review notes for Ruby’s specific case.
2. GMP exhibit logs and chain-of-custody records for DNA/foetal-remains evidence.
3. Police interview schedules and ABE/video interview records.
4. Child protection conference minutes mentioning Ruby.
5. School safeguarding logs, exclusion records and SEN records.
6. Social services case files and referrals from the Crisis Intervention Team/Sunrise team.
7. Sexual health clinic records and any safeguarding referrals made from clinic attendance.
8. Court transcripts and sentencing remarks for Operation Span, Operation Doublet, Operation Ralph and Operation Lytton.
9. Licensing records for takeaways, taxis and premises linked to abuse locations.
10. Any CPS/GMP correspondence about why rape charges were or were not pursued where DNA evidence existed.

The most important distinction: Ruby’s testimony is evidence of her account, while CPS/GMP/court/social-care files are needed to prove the institution

Yes. That is the core allegation in Ruby’s statement:

she was a SEND / special needs child, she says she gave names, addresses, phone numbers and locations, and she says institutions still failed to act properly or use the evidence available.

Stronger wording would be:

Ruby’s testimony is not merely that she was abused. It is that she was a SEND child whose evidence was treated as inconvenient, unreliable or unusable — even when she says she gave authorities names, addresses, phone numbers, locations, and even when DNA evidence allegedly existed.

That raises a grave safeguarding question: were professionals protecting a vulnerable child, or were they discounting her because her additional needs, anger and trauma made her a difficult witness?

That is serious, evidenced from the victim statement, and legally safer than saying “they deliberately buried it” unless you have internal records proving intent.

Had that examination been carried out, he would, in my opinion, have seen that the system was being run in breach of the EU Adequacy Agreement through the use of EU servers. So what is this arrangement that, in my view, placed vulnerable or disabled children at even greater risk through Gary Daniels’ EGOV.UK.COM and EPEP.TV? It is a payment made by a local authority for the holding of a registration containing the details of those children, including a photograph and other information, in a form that is disturbingly akin to a dating app.

“If this material was relevant, why does it not appear on the record of the head of the investigatory unit, given that it could have led to scrutiny of the Education Acts and the way vulnerable children were removed from effective oversight?”

Local-media snippets say Jeffrey Epstein was “directly contacted about” or “directly alerted to the sale of” at least one of the Isle of Wight’s famous historic mansions. That supports interest in at least one Island property, not “all the housing.” The Riverside Centre on the Isle of Wight is publicly described as one of Community Action Isle of Wight’s entities, and official Isle of Wight Council material shows it being used as a venue for council/Virtual School and SEND-related events.Organisations At The Riverside – The Riverside Centre | Isle of Wight

The County Press story headline is “Jeffrey Epstein files linked to Isle of Wight mansion sale” or “Historic Isle of Wight mansion gets unexpected mention in Jeffrey Epstein files”; search and social snippets from the paper say Epstein was “directly contacted about” or “directly alerted to the sale of one of the Island’s most famous historic mansions.” one snippet also says the mansion was the Island’s “most famous and most scandal-soaked” historic mansion. Files from the Epstein Transpiracy Act provide informationThe Mark Lloyd email to Jeffrey Epstein dated 20 May 2015 appears in DOJ Volume 11 as EFTA02501625 that this Mansion house was named Appuldurcombe House, Wroxall Isle of White was being offered for £6 million, with restoration costs estimated at a further £8 million to £10 million. Perhaps the Question should be why was John Lloyd in contact with Epstein in the first place?

Is this opening up a string of properties and potential other homes owned by Epstein?

https://www.countypress.co.uk/news/25825515.jeffrey-epstein-files-linked-isle-wight-mansion-sale/

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• BBC Uncovers Epstein’s Abuse in Four London Flats
• Breach of  Article 3(2) of Directive (EU) 2017/1371) FOIA case 2025-1058-F
• FEDERAL ADMINISTRATIVE APPEAL AND FORENSIC STATEMENT OF FACTS
• Mandelson’s Appointment: Key Dates and Responsibilities Explained
• For FMB unit: [EXTERNAL] FOIA Appeal / Request for Clarification – Epstein Records (EFTA01656139–41)