A Missouri pastor who briefly managed Jeffrey Epstein’s private Caribbean island was suspended from her job after her association was publicly exposed — with the reverend defending her decision to work for him despite knowing his criminal past as a Christly act.
Rev. Stephanie L. Remington, 50, was suspended from Missouri’s United Methodist Church last week when leadership learned her name had appeared more than 1,800 times in the trove of Epstein files recently released by the Department of Justice, UM News reported.
Remington has not been accused of any crimes, and the Epstein files mention appeared to be mostly from communications about overseeing the pedophilic financier’s Little St. James Island in the US Virgin Islands.
She worked for Epstein on his island from Aug. 2018 to May 2019 — leaving her role just weeks before his fateful July 2019 arrest and suicide a month later — and insisted she “never” saw any nefarious behavior during her time.
“I never saw anything,” Remington told UM News. “I knew him for the last nine months of his life, well after he served time for the things that he was accused of doing.”
But Remington was aware of Epstein’s criminal history from ten years earlier — a 2008 guilty plea for to procuring a child for prostitution, which landed him just over a year in jail — and looked to her Christian teachings while apparently wrestling with whether to take the job.
“I felt that if I withheld relationship from this man because of his past, then I would be turning my back on every message of hope I have ever preached, every invitation to God’s unconditional love I have ever extended, and my calling to be a healing presence in the world for all people,” she wrote in a 2019 personal blog post.
And she doubled down on that position after her suspension.
“Jesus got into a lot of trouble for the company he kept, but he didn’t let that trouble pressure him into rejecting the people who, by their standards, did not deserve to be human,” she told UM News.
“Social death is just another kind of murder. He opened his heart and his mind to them, and they opened their tables and alabaster jars to him,” she added. “Is Jeffrey not among their kind?”
Remington also said Epstein was very kind to her when her father fell ill, a situation which led to her leaving the job.
That was one of the topics discussed in emails back and forth with Epstein and his staff, revealed in the files, while others involved logistics about work being done on the Little St. James house.
Little St. James was the nexus of much of Epstein’s illicit behavior. Claims of child rape have surrounded the island, while the pedophile routinely flew rich and powerful friends to the tropical getaway.
And though Remington insisted she never experienced anything untoward on the island during her few months working there, Remington said Epstein would frequently brag about his connections to both Bill Clinton and President Trump.
“Half of America wants to tie him to the Clintons. The other half wants to tie him to Trump,” Remington told UM News. “Their hunch is correct. Jeffrey was very proud to have direct lines to all his presidents.”
Remington could face penalties within the United Methodist Church, with the probe investigating whether she followed rules requiring clergy members to inform leadership about the scope of their employment.
She could not be reached for comment.
