At Ghislaine Maxwell's sentencing hearing, U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan described Sarah Kellen as "a knowing participant in the criminal conspiracy" connected to Jeffrey Epstein's sex-trafficking network, and she indicated that Kellen was "criminally responsible" for aspects of that scheme. That characterization didn't come from a separate criminal conviction against Kellen, because there isn't one. To this day, Sarah Kellen has never been charged with any federal crime tied to Epstein's trafficking operation, and her story stands as yet another egregious abrogation of justice in the Epstein.
A Lieutenant in the Operation
According to Politico, Kellen was 22 years old when she began working for Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in the early 2000s. In lawsuits and victim interviews, she's repeatedly been given the dubious distinction of being Maxwell's "lieutenant," or second in command.
Epstein victim Courtney Wild was 14 years old, and still wearing braces, when she entered Epstein's Palm Beach mansion and Kellen escorted her upstairs to be molested by Epstein. Another victim testified that Kellen took nude photos of her before she was molested.
Victims and court documents describe Kellen scheduling massages, coordinating travel, and communicating with the victims who were brought to Epstein's homes. According to victim testimony, Epstein also ran a recruitment system among teenagers that was facilitated by Kellen, in which girls were paid $200 to conscript a new victim for Epstein.
Charged in Palm Beach, Then Quietly Erased
In 2005, a 14-year-old girl told her mother that she had been molested by Epstein, and her mother brought her to the Palm Beach Police Department. The girl came from a lower socioeconomic background, but she was nonetheless able to describe both the exterior and interior of Epstein's Palm Beach mansion. The Palm Beach Police Department then opened a one-year investigation into Epstein's activities.
By 2006, the PBPD was ready to charge Kellen with four counts of being a Principal to Unlawful Sexual Activity with a Minor and one count of being a Principal to Lewd and Lascivious Molestation. Officers also executed a search warrant on Epstein's home, where they found phone logs signed by Kellen that contained the names of teenage victims.
Then everything fell apart.
In 2007, Barry Krischer, the State Attorney for Palm Beach County, inexplicably overruled the PBPD and assigned the case to a grand jury. Assistant State Attorney Lanna Belohlavek was the special prosecutor of grand jury and, though the PBPD was aware of at least 12 Epstein victims, Belohlavek only called two of them to testify, and she viciously dismantled their credibility. The grand jury ruled that Epstein hadn't molested a single minor and indicted him on one count of adult pandering. Kellen was unscathed by the grand jury.
PBPD Chief Michael Reiter called the grand jury "the worst failure of the criminal justice system" in modern times, and he appealed to U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alexander Acosta to prosecute Epstein. Acosta impaneled a federal grand jury, which drafted a 60-count indictment against Jeffrey Epstein that named Kellen as a co-conspirator in several crimes.
The Non-Prosecution Agreement
At some stage in 2007, Acosta was told to stand down from prosecuting Epstein and his co-conspirators by the George W. Bush administration. Acosta then worked out a secret non-prosecution agreement with Epstein that allowed him to avoid federal sex-trafficking charges. Epstein served only 13 months in a county jail for one count of unlawful sexual activity with a minor and one count of adult solicitation. The Justice Department also worked out a non-prosecution agreement (NPA) with Epstein that gave all of Epstein's co-conspirators blanket immunity, and Kellen was the first Epstein co-conspirator mentioned in the NPA.
The Crime Victims' Rights Act requires that Epstein's victims be apprised of the adjudication of his case, but federal prosecutors contravened the CVRA, didn't notify the victims, and sealed the NPA. Victims didn't learn of the agreement's existence until July 2008, and a copy wasn't obtained until August 2008 during related litigation.
Civil Suits, Silence, and Reinvention
Starting in 2010, Kellen was subpoenaed and deposed in several civil lawsuits, and she repeatedly invoked her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. In 2015, she married NASCAR driver Brian Vickers.
In 2017, Epstein victim Sarah Ransome filed Jane Doe 43 v. Epstein et al. against Epstein, Maxwell, and Kellen, alleging sexual abuse and commercial sex trafficking. Ransome described Kellen as a "chief lieutenant" to Epstein, accusing her of acting as a scheduler for abuse, specifically booking flights and scheduling sexual assaults. The lawsuit was settled for an undisclosed amount in 2018.
After Epstein's death in jail in 2019 while he was awaiting his federal sex-trafficking trial, Kellen's name continued to surface in Epstein-related abuse and trafficking matters. In a 2020 interview with The Sun, Kellen said she considered herself a victim of Epstein, claiming that she had been "raped and abused weekly." That same year, she hired attorney Susan Necheles to work out a non-prosecution agreement with the Department of Justice for her, but for some inexplicable reason her NPA wasn't finalized.
In 2021, during the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, multiple witnesses referenced Kellen's role in facilitating Epstein's access to victims. That same year, Kellen and her husband Brian Vickers purchased a $6.3 million apartment in a Miami high-rise.
At Maxwell's June 2022 sentencing hearing, Judge Nathan described Kellen as "a knowing participant" in the conspiracy and "a criminally responsible participant" in Epstein's sex-trafficking scheme.
Where Things Stand
Sarah Kellen has never been charged with federal or state crimes related to Epstein's sex trafficking. Kellen and Vickers divorced this year, and she continues to live in her lavish $6.3 million Miami apartment.
Kellen has dodged the adage that crime doesn't pay, and her crimes were particularly heinous.
