“As victims die, witnesses disappear, and files gather dust, the French State cannot pretend this is business as usual: this is a denial of justice in plain sight.” Homayra Sellier 

Paris, France – Innocence in Danger, a French child protection association defending minors who are victims of sexual violence, has filed a lawsuit before the Judicial Court of Paris against the French State for “denial of justice” in the French strand of the Jeffrey Epstein case.

The association denounces what it describes as glaring inertia, excessive delays, and a lack of transparency in the investigation opened in Paris in August 2019 following its own reports to the Public Prosecutor concerning the French connections of Epstein’s network. Epstein’s Paris apartment on Avenue Foch was searched only on 23 September 2019, five weeks after he died in custody in the United States, a delay Innocence in Danger calls both incomprehensible and deeply troubling.

Despite the international scope of the scandal, the association notes that the French authorities have given no public explanation for the choices made, the investigative acts carried out, or those that were never undertaken, and that the French ramifications of the network remain largely unexplored. The death in detention of modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel in 2022, officially deemed a suicide, did not lead to any visible acceleration of the case.

The assignation also highlights a troubling series of deaths among people linked to the case, including victims and key witnesses, and now the recent death of Daniel Siad, a central figure in the French dossier. Siad, 69, was the subject of five complaints for rape and human trafficking, was cited in more than a thousand documents in the file, and was described in the press as “the model scout suspected of sexual violence and of having directed young women towards the American pedocriminal Jeffrey Epstein.” The circumstances of his death on 22 July 2026 remain unclear.

Innocence in Danger stresses that these abnormally long delays have “dramatic consequences” for both the credibility of the justice system and the victims, who feel ignored despite the seriousness of the crimes they report. The association recalls, among others, the testimony of former Swedish model Ebba P. Karlsson, who accuses Siad of raping her in Cannes and of having taken her to Gérald Marie—then head of the Elite modeling agency—whom she also accuses of rape.

Legally, the action is based on the French Code of Judicial Organization and Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which requires that justice be delivered within a “reasonable time.” Under established French case law, excessive and unjustified delays in proceedings can constitute a denial of justice, engaging the liability of the State for defective functioning of the judicial service.

The association has expressly refused a simplified written procedure without a hearing and demands that the matter be examined in open court, in the name of transparency and accountability in a case involving serious sexual crimes against minors.

Homayra Sellier 

Innocence en Danger