Julie K. Brown (born 1961) is an American investigative journalist with the Miami Herald best known for pursuing the sex trafficking story surrounding Jeffrey Epstein, who in 2008 was allowed to plead guilty to two state-level prostitution offenses.
[9][10][11] She began investigating Epstein in early 2017 and persisted in uncovering facts about the large number of accusers and the pressure campaign to silence them.
The secret deal that then-US Attorney Alex Acosta struck with Epstein made federal sex trafficking charges disappear, shut down an FBI probe that might have uncovered dozens of victims, and granted immunity to any possible co-conspirators, a clause that allegedly protected powerful men.
Geoffrey Berman, a federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, also commented at a news conference that his team had been “assisted by some excellent investigative journalism.”[1] But she tweeted in response "The Real Heroes Here were the courageous victims that faced their fears and told their stories".
In July 2020, Brown’s book, Perversion of Justice, based on her reporting on the Epstein case, was published by William Morrow and Company.
[12] Brown won a 2014 George Polk Award in Justice Reporting from Long Island University for "Cruel and Unusual," her series of articles on "the brutal, sometimes fatal mistreatment of Florida prison inmates with mental illnesses.