The BBC has revealed that a British abuse victim was allegedly on board Epstein’s UK flight.

A BBC investigation found that around 90 flights linked to Jeffrey Epstein arrived and departed from UK airports, some carrying British women who say they were abused by the billionaire.

We have established that three British women suspected of being trafficked appear on Epstein’s flight records into and out of the UK and other documents relating to the convicted sex offender.

US lawyers representing hundreds of Epstein’s victims told the BBC they were “shocking” that there had never been a full British investigation into Epstein’s activities on the other side of the Atlantic.

Britain was one of the “hubs” of Epstein’s operations, one of the people said.

Testimony from one of the British victims helped convict Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell on child sex trafficking charges in the United States in 2021. But the victim has never been contacted by British police, her Florida-based lawyer Brad Edwards told the BBC.

The woman, given the name Kate at trial, was recorded as having taken more than 10 flights in and out of the UK paid for by Epstein between 1999 and 2006.

The BBC is not releasing further details about the women included in the documents. This is because of the risk that your identity may be revealed.

U.S. lawyer Sigrid McCawley said British authorities “did not look into the details of that flight, where he was, who he met at that moment, who he was on that flight with, and did not conduct a full investigation.”

The deadline to release all U.S. government files on the sex crimes financier under the Jeffrey Epstein Transparency Act is Friday.

But the flight log was one of thousands of documents from court cases and Epstein’s estate that have already been made public over the past year, revealing more about his time in Britain, including trips to royal residences.

The BBC examined these documents as part of its investigation to piece together Epstein’s activities in the UK.

It turned out like this:

• Incomplete flight records and inventories document 87 flights linked to Epstein, dozens more than previously known, arriving or departing UK airports from the early 1990s to 2018.
• An unidentified ‘woman’ was recorded among the passengers traveling to and from the UK.
• Fifteen of the UK flights took place after Epstein was convicted in 2008 of soliciting minors for prostitution, which should have prompted questions from immigration officials.

Epstein died in prison in 2019 before his trial on charges of sex trafficking of minors, but legal experts told the BBC that a British investigation could reveal whether people of British descent masterminded his crimes.

Two months ago the BBC sent public information about a British flight carrying passengers suspected of being trafficking victims to the Metropolitan Police, which has previously investigated allegations of Epstein’s activities in the UK.

We later sent the Met a detailed list of questions about whether it would investigate evidence about Epstein’s British victims who had been trafficked in and out of the UK.

The Met did not respond to our inquiries. On Saturday, it issued a wide-ranging statement saying it had “received no further evidence to support reopening the investigation” into Epstein and Maxwell’s human trafficking activities in the UK.

The Met said it would “evaluate new and relevant information as it comes to our attention”, including publicly available material in the United States.

Brad Edwards, an American lawyer who has represented Epstein’s victims since 2008, said “three or four” of his clients were British women “who were abused by Jeffrey Epstein and others on British soil”.

Other victims were recruited in Britain and trafficked to the United States, where they were abused, he said.

Mr Edwards said he was also representing women of other nationalities who say they were trafficked to the UK for abuse by Epstein and others.

Our analysis shows that Epstein used commercial and charter flights, as well as private planes, to travel to the UK and arrange for the transport of other people, including suspected victims of human trafficking.

The more than 50 flights involved his private jet, mainly to and from Luton Airport, with several flights from Birmingham International Airport and one arrival and departure each from RAF Marham and Edinburgh Airport in west Norfolk.

Limited records of commercial and charter flights taken or paid for by Epstein show dozens of additional trips, mainly via London Heathrow, but also Stansted and Gatwick.

In several logs from Epstein’s private plane, including one detailing his trip to England, the woman on board the plane is identified only as “the woman,” whose name is not known.

“He is absolutely choosing airports that he believes will make it easier to get in and out of the victims he is trafficking,” Mr McCawley said.

Private airlines were not required to provide passenger details to UK authorities prior to departure in the same way as commercial aircraft during the period covered by the documents we examined. The Home Office said it was “not subject to the same centralized record keeping”.

This loophole was resolved only in April of last year.

Records we have examined show that Kate, the British woman who testified against Maxwell, was on some of the commercial flights. She explained in court that she was 17 when Maxwell befriended her and introduced her to Epstein. Epstein sexually abused her at Maxwell’s central London home.

At her 2021 trial, she described how Maxwell gave her schoolgirl outfits to wear and asked her to find other girls for Epstein. In addition to the 12 flights to and from the UK, Kate told the court she flew to the US Virgin Islands, New York and Epstein Island in Palm Beach, Florida, where the abuse continued into her 30s.

Kate’s lawyer, Edwards, told BBC News that after Kate’s testimony she was never asked about her experience by British authorities, not even “one phone call.”

He said that if British police launched an investigation into Epstein’s activities and his enablers, Kate would be willing to help.

Bridget Carr, a human trafficking expert at the University of Michigan Law School, said human trafficking cases often require many people working together.

“It’s not just one bad person,” she said. “You don’t think about the accountants, or the lawyers, or the bankers, or all the bankers, and all the people who had to implicitly, sometimes explicitly, see what was going on.”

There are also questions about how Epstein was able to travel freely to Britain after being convicted in 2008 of soliciting a minor for prostitution. This means he would have to register as a sex offender in Florida, New York and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Epstein was released in 2009 after serving 13 months in prison. According to the documents, Epstein boarded a Virgin Atlantic flight from the United States to London Heathrow in September 2010, just two months after completing his house arrest sentence.

According to Home Office regulations at the time, foreigners sentenced to prison for more than 12 months should in most cases be refused entry.

But immigration attorney Miglena Ilieva, managing partner at ILEX Law Group, said there is no application process that asks about criminal convictions because U.S. citizens generally do not need a U.K. visa for short-term stays.

“It is at the discretion of the individual immigration officer to accept this person at the border,” she said.

The Home Office said it does not keep immigration and visa records older than 10 years, adding: “It is the government’s long-standing policy not to routinely comment on individual cases.”

According to U.S. authorities, Epstein entered the United Kingdom, France, Spain, and Saudi Arabia in the 1980s using foreign passports with photos and false names issued in Austria.

According to ABC News, Epstein also listed London as his residence when he applied for a replacement passport in 1985.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art said in a statement Saturday that it contacted “multiple potential victims” while investigating Virginia Giuffre’s 2015 claims that she was trafficked for sexual exploitation by Epstein and Maxwell.

Mr Giuffre also said Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor forced him to have sex with her on three occasions, including at Maxwell’s home in London in 2001 when she was 17. The former prince has consistently denied the allegations against him.

The Met said it had investigated Mr Giuffre’s claims and concluded that “no allegations of wrongdoing were made against British nationals” and that “other international authorities are best placed to pursue these claims”.

The decision was reviewed in August 2019, with the same results for 2021 and 2022, it said.

But for lawyer Sigrid McCawley, the message the Met is sending to victims is: “If the person you come to law enforcement and report is a powerful person… they will not be investigated.”