A former Playboy Playmate alleges the FBI ignored her tips about sex offender Jeffrey Epstein for 15 years, even after Playboy founder Hugh Hefner called the bureau on her behalf, according to court documents.
The ex-Playmate, Audra Christiansen, told Hefner that she was sexually abused and trafficked by the disgraced financier in 2005, according to court records.
She requested that the Playboy publisher alert federal authorities due to his higher status, and he reportedly called the FBI several times.
She said the agency responded that it would follow up on her allegations but that it didn’t reach out to her until October 2020.
She also told NewsNation, in an article that appeared Friday, that she called the FBI again in 2020 “due to threats that were happening to our family.” She said she hired an attorney to try to get a meeting and got “still nothing from the DOJ or FBI.”
“For about fifteen years, the FBI did not investigate Ms. Christiansen’s tips or follow up on her allegations,” the legal complaint, first reported by Miami Herald journalist Julie K. Brown, reads.
Ms. Christiansen, now 46, said that shortly after meeting Epstein, “before she knew it she was naked and raped by Epstein” and then “trafficked for 10 years.”
She said her FBI report was altered to expose a uniquely identifying detail about her the same week she made her first public statement with other survivors. It took over three months and help from Reuters to get it re-redacted after calling “congressmen, my governor, my attorneys” with no luck, she said.
The alleged 2005 tip by Hefner, who died in 2017, is not corroborated by any FBI document currently public, resting solely on Ms. Christiansen’s account as relayed in the lawsuit.
The FBI “violated mandatory policies and protocols requiring it to investigate claims, like Ms. Christiansen’s, of child sexual abuse and trafficking,” according to court records.
The records add that by “failing to investigate credible tips, such as Ms. Christiansen’s allegations, the FBI created a foreseeable zone of risk to future victims of Epstein’s sex trafficking enterprise, including Plaintiffs.”
The suit ties Ms. Christiansen’s allegations to those of Maria Farmer, who in 1996 provided the earliest known criminal complaint to the FBI about Epstein’s conduct, arguing that both women trusted that the FBI was already handling the matter and did not pursue other law enforcement channels.
When Ms. Farmer reported the assault, the FBI “hung up” on her, according to a complaint.
This and another complaint also allege that JPMorgan Chase Bank flagged suspicious transactions tied to Epstein’s trafficking operations to federal authorities between 2006 and 2008, which the FBI allegedly ignored.
The Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded the original 2008 U.S. Attorney exercised “poor judgment.”
Neither lawsuit appears in the Justice Department’s official court records list in its Epstein files.
The allegation adds to a growing list of headaches for the Justice Department over its handling of the case involving Epstein, who died in 2019.
The FBI is already facing the lawsuit accusing it of ignoring tips dating back to Ms. Farmer’s 1996 report, and federal prosecutors are seeking to have that suit dismissed on procedural grounds, even as the department continues working through the release of millions of pages of Epstein-related files under the Epstein Files Transparency Act.
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