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Years after her groundbreaking investigation into sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was published, Miami Herald reporter Julie K. Brown has finally been recognized by the Pulitzer Prizes.
Brown’s 2018 reporting on the sweetheart deal given to the former financier as he faced federal sex trafficking charges has had sweeping impact, leading to Epstein’s arrest, the prosecution and conviction of accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, and ongoing scrutiny of the Palm Beach billionaire’s ties to the powerful. Almost a decade after Perversion of Justice was published, Epstein remains a focus of attention internationally, amid ongoing revelations from the government’s release of the Epstein files.
But Brown was not recognized by the board that oversees journalism’s most prestigious prize — until now. On Monday, Pulitzer administrator Marjorie Miller announced that Brown was being awarded a special citation, noting that her work “revealed how prosecutors shielded Epstein from federal sex trafficking charges when he was first accused of abusing young women.”
“She went on to document and give voice to the scores of victims who had been groomed and abused by him and others in his circle,” Miller continued. “Her work, and the release of the government’s Epstein files, continue to reverberate around the world.”
Brown won a George Polk Award for her Epstein work in 2018 and expanded on her reporting in a 2021 book, also titled Perversion of Justice. In March, it was announced that Laura Dern would play her in a TV series.
In a Monday interview with her hometown paper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Brown described deciding to get into investigative journalism after surviving hard times as a child, and being drawn to “stories about the voiceless.”
She also talked about doubt as a motivator.
“Being on my own from a young age, I’ve had many lean years and times filled with a lot of self doubt,” Brown told the Inquirer. “I sometimes don’t even know how I survived this business. All I can say — to quote the great Jason Kelce — is hungry dogs run faster.”
The Herald, along with partner WLRN, was also named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in local reporting for a series revealing the deadly toll of the Brightline train.
