In March 2005, Jeffrey Epstein took a photo with Jeffrey Epstein at a Wall Street event in New York in March 2005, who committed suicide in prison in 2019 . (Photo: Gallo Images/Getty Images)
- Ghislaine Maxwell is accused of recruiting a network of underage girls for the late American financier Jeffrey Epstein.
- The crimes Maxwell was accused of occurred between 1994 and 2004 and involved four unnamed women.
- Epstein died in a Manhattan jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges.
15 months after the British socialite was accused of recruiting underage girls for the late American financier Jeffrey Epstein, the jury selection process for the Gislain Maxwell sex crime trial began this week.
If the 59-year-old daughter of the late newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell was convicted of trafficking in minors in New York, she would face life imprisonment. Epstein was her former lover, more than two years ago Suicide in prison.
After Epstein’s death, the multimillion-dollar fund manager became friends with countless celebrities, including Prince Andrew of the United Kingdom, and prosecutors vowed to pursue accomplices, leading to Maxwell’s arrest in July 2020.
Since then, she has been detained in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where she has repeatedly complained about unsanitary and inhumane conditions.
“I have been beaten and abused for almost a year and a half,” she said in a comment published by the British Post on Sunday, adding that the guard interrupted her sleep and put light in her eyes.
“I am weak, I am weak. I have no physical strength. I am tired. I don’t even have shoes to fit my feet. They feed me rotten food. There are maggots in an apple. I am prohibited from exercising,” she said, complaining about her. There are rats in his cell.
The crimes Maxwell was accused of occurred between 1994 and 2004 and involved four unnamed women, two of whom were only 14 and 15 years old when they were sexually abused.
The prosecutor said that Maxwell became friends with the girls through shopping and trips to the cinema, and later coaxed them to perform nude massages at Epstein’s residences, during which he would have sex before giving them money.
U.S. government lawyers said that she sometimes participated in alleged abuses at her home in London and Epstein’s properties in Manhattan, Palm Beach, and New Mexico.
Epstein, 66, died in a Manhattan jail in August 2019 while he was awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges. The official New York coroner ruled that he committed suicide.
Read also | Ghislaine Maxwell challenges her claim of cultivating underage girls for Epstein
The face-to-face jury selection in Maxwell’s trial will begin on Tuesday, with a court debate on November 29. The trial is held in Manhattan’s federal court and is expected to last six weeks.
She pleaded not guilty to all six counts, including sex trafficking to minors. If all charges are convicted, she will face up to 80 years in prison.
The French-born Maxwell was also charged with two counts of perjury, which will be tried after her sex crimes trial.
The charge of perjury is related to her testimony in a defamation case filed by Epstein’s long-time plaintiff Virginia Giuffre in 2016.
Giuffre claimed that Epstein used to loan her out to have sex with his wealthy and powerful partners, including Prince Andrew.
As we all know, Andrew’s old friend Maxwell introduced the prince to Epstein.
Giuffre sued the royal family in New York, accusing him of having sex with her more than 20 years ago when she was 17 years old and a minor under US law.
It is expected that this civil lawsuit will be heard by a jury at the end of 2022.
Queen Elizabeth’s second son Andrew has not been charged with criminal charges and has repeatedly denied these charges.
Giuffre, 38, was not part of the criminal case against Maxwell.
The indictment focused on four women who were referred to as minor victims one, two, three and four.
-Plea guilty-
They are expected to testify that Maxwell ran a group of young women who were taken to the interstate to provide Epstein with sexual information, for which they received hundreds of dollars.
The defense argued that Maxwell was tried only because Epstein escaped justice.
They intend to challenge the accuser’s memory of events decades ago.
Epstein was convicted of paying a massage fee to a young girl in Florida in 2008, but according to a secret plea agreement with the then state prosecutor, she was only sentenced to 13 months in prison.
His suicide deprived dozens of accusers of their lives in court and sparked countless conspiracy theories, including that he was killed to protect powerful friends.
Since Maxwell was arrested in New Hampshire, she has been denied bail six times, and the judge believes that she is at risk of running away.
She is unlikely to testify in court.
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