WHO'S WHO? - Alan Dershowitz graduated from Brooklyn College in 1959. Credit: Wikipedia/Creative Commons
BC Alum with Honorary Degree Allegedly Tied to Underage Sex Ring
Disclaimer: The views reflected in the following opinion editorial do not necessarily reflect the views of the many students, faculty, or staff members involved with or in connection to WBCR News.
By Finn Mayock
OPINION: Alan Dershowitz, distinguished criminal defense attorney and Brooklyn College graduate of the class of ‘59, is on the wrong side of history.
After graduating from Brooklyn College in 1959, Dershowitz went on to law school and became recognized for being one of the youngest law professors in Harvard University’s history. He became a prominent author and a legal analyst on CNN. The celebrity lawyer took on high profile cases such as the trials of O.J. Simpson and Mike Tyson. In 2001, Brooklyn College awarded him an honorary doctorate. There’s no doubt that Dershowitz is among the most famous and successful alumni that Brooklyn College has ever had. As a Harvard Law hopeful myself, Dershowitz is a name I admired, and one that initially attracted me to apply to Brooklyn College.
That admiration is gone.
A recent bombshell exposé published by the investigative team at The Miami Herald led by reporter Julie Brown has brought Dershowitz’s name back into the spotlight. He’s on a team of heavy-hitting lawyers defending Jeffrey Epstein, a Miami-based financier and friends with political elites like President Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. Allegedly, a lengthy FBI investigation alleged Epstein assembled a massive, international “cult-like” network of underage girls in the interest of sexual servitude at his number of residences. The extensive list of federal charges prepared against him, including child prostitution, could have resulted in a lifetime prison sentence. Instead, it was relegated to an incredibly minor sentence following a federal non-prosecution agreement and subsequent plea deal on state charges. Herald reporters uncovered a document from the U.S attorney attributing his reasoning for the non-prosecution agreement and lenient sentence to pressure from Epstein’s legal team, of which Dershowitz is a key member. The prosecutor who granted Epstein the non-prosecution agreement, former US Attorney Alexander Acosta, is now the Secretary of Labor.
As a result of his non-prosecution agreement, the damning results of the investigation were almost completely obfuscated. After pleading guilty to solicitation of prostitution with a minor, and other charges, his time served was brought down from a life sentence to a mere 13 months.
Not only was Dershowitz a member of Epstein’s powerhouse legal team, but he was also directly implicated by one of Epstein’s alleged victims of sexual assault in a 2015 affidavit. This particularly horrific abuse of the justice system found in the renewed investigation into Epstein is not focused on Dershowitz, and yet there are enough details about his relations with Epstein to the public that are immediately concerning. One of the survivors embroiled in this scandal, identified as Virginia Roberts, alleged in detail on the 7th page of a court-filed affidavit in a follow-up Crime Victim Rights Act (CVRA) suit regarding Epstein’s prosecution, as having sexual intercourse with Dershowitz on multiple occasions at the age of 16.
Dershowitz denied the accusations vehemently, both in court declarations and to the press. Dershowitz said to The Herald, “The only possible reason to accuse me in public and [them] in private is so she could get money.”
As revealed through the WBCR News Teams review of the FBI’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) archives, the FBI kept local newspaper records regarding Dershowitz’s legal strategy in defending Epstein that may have focused on discrediting the victims. His continued attacks against survivors of sexual assault do not reflect the conduct and social atmosphere that we would expect distinguished alumni from our college to represent.
Based on a litany of quotes, Dershowitz appears to assume that women often falsely accuse wealthy men of rape solely to obtain money, when research from the National Sexual Violence Research Center strongly contradicts this assertion. His behavior is disrespectful and disparaging to survivors of such traumatic events – and places his Alma Mater Brooklyn College in a negative light.
If we’ve learned from the #MeToo era and choose to believe the victim’s legally vulnerable affidavit, as we rightfully should, Dershowitz’s implication in Epstein’s sprawling pedophile ring seems to be genuinely damning. However, Dershowitz doesn’t seem to be a big fan of the #MeToo movement. In May, The Hill reported that Dershowitz had joined the legal team of the now-disgraced Harvey Weinstein. Jonathan Swan of Axios reports that Dershowitz remains counsel to Epstein, a now convicted sex offender.
But, this anti #MeToo sentiment is only a portion of the reprehensible views Dershowitz has professed since the early 70s. In one shocking statement uncovered by Jeet Heer of The New Republic, a younger Dershowitz is quoted in Montana’s Havre Daily News having spoken to Associated Press reporter Guy Darst. Dershowitz responded to the state of the Watergate proceedings in 1974 by saying, “I’m not happy seeing Richard Nixon’s gang being tried by blacks and liberals in the District of Columbia.”
In a ’91 article featured in The New York Times that questioned if the names of those who accuse others of rape should be printed in the media, Dershowitz said, “How can you publish the name of the presumptively innocent accused but not the name of the accuser? Feminists cannot have it both ways. They have persuaded us that rape victims should not be singled out for special treatment. Yet that is what many of them want from news organizations.”
In 2014, Dershowitz spoke out against stricter new policies protecting victims of sexual harassment at Harvard University. Dershowitz told The Boston Globe at the time that, “This is an issue of political correctness run amok.”
Most recently, the alum spoke to The Washington Examiner at length to discredit sexual assault survivor Julie Swetnick, who came forward during Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings. Dershowitz said that women who make what he implies to be false accusations of sexual assault “get away with it. They don’t go to prison.”
Alan Dershowitz certainly has a distinguished track record as a successful attorney, but his disrespectful statements about victims of sexual assault alongside the damning new allegations of being directly implicated in sexual assault warrant the retraction of any distinction from our college, especially an honorary doctorate. He is not worth risking the reputation with which universities and colleges are often credited when it comes to respected alumni. The statements and alleged actions of Alan Dershowitz regarding sexual assault are unbecoming of the conduct we expect from Brooklyn College students, staff and faculty both past and present. How is Brooklyn College supposed to respect and stand with the survivors of sexual assault when one of our best-known alumni seems to be degrading them?