Letter to America

The long-awaited US government files on paedophile Jeffrey Epstein - thousands of pages of names, interviews, movements and previously sealed evidence - are set to be released today or tomorrow, ending years of legal delays, political manoeuvring and frantic efforts to keep them hidden.

- BY CHRISTOPHER BUCKTIN US Editor

Insiders say the material could expose the true scale of Epstein's network. For nearly two decades, America has promised full transparency. Now, with victims watching and the world's most powerful men bracing for impact, the moment has arrived.

YOUR institutions have spent years delaying, redacting, sealing, unsealing, resealing and hiding the Epstein files - but the day is almost here.

Seventeen years, it has taken to reach this moment.

Seventeen years of headlines, sweetheart deals, nondisclosure agreements, leaked flight logs and sealed testimonies.

Seventeen years of a scandal stretching from Manhattan townhouses, via private islands, to the corridors of power on both sides of the Atlantic.

Seventeen years and more of pain for all those girls and young women who were systematically abused by Epstein and his cohorts.

And yet, America, after all this time, only three people have faced real consequences.

And they are all British.

Ghislaine Maxwell is serving 20 years in a jail after being convicted of child sex trafficking.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor denies any wrongdoing after being accused of abuse by Virginia Giuffre, but has been publicly disgraced and stripped of his titles.