The jet-setting socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who previously mixed with royalty, presidents, and billionaires, was given a 20-year prison term on Tuesday for aiding tycoon Jeffrey Epstein in abusing teenage children.
A group of women who fought for justice for years after an earlier generation of prosecutors failed to bring the predatory power couple to justice celebrated the harsh sentence as a win.
Epstein, who committed suicide in 2019 while awaiting prosecution, sexually assaulted children hundreds of times over the course of more than a decade, preying on helpless females as young as 14. Maxwell, his longstanding friend, was credited by the prosecution as being essential to his ability to accomplish this.
Maxwell did not respond other than to gaze to one side as the sentence was read aloud while donning a white mask and a blue prison suit in accordance with coronavirus regulations. When she entered the courtroom, the rattling of her leg shackles could be heard.
Even though the punishment was less severe than what the prosecution had requested, Epstein’s accusers nevertheless showed relief.
Ghislaine Maxwell in associate with Epstien
“It’s been an incredibly long road to justice for myself and for many other survivors,” said Sarah Ransome, one of Epstein’s accusers. “This is for the girls that didn’t have their say, the ones that weren’t here.”
A jury in December convicted Maxwell, 60, of sex trafficking, transporting a minor to participate in illegal sex acts and two conspiracy charges.
Judge Alison J. Nathan noted as she imposed the prison term and a $750,000 fine that Maxwell never expressed remorse for her crimes. The judge said she wanted the sentence to send an “unmistakable message” that nobody was above the law.
Addressing the court earlier, Maxwell stood at a lectern and said she empathized with the survivors and hoped her punishment would bring them peace. But she did not admit culpability and laid blame for the abuse on Epstein, saying meeting him was the “greatest regret of my life.”
She called him “a manipulative, cunning and controlling man who lived a profoundly compartmentalized life.”
The judge said Maxwell was being punished for her “heinous and predatory” crimes, not Epstein’s. She criticized Maxwell’s “pattern of deflection and blame.”
At the sentencing, four survivors spoke about their sexual abuse, including Annie Farmer, who briefly lost control of her emotions when she spoke to the judge.
She claimed that when she and her sister attempted to come out with their accounts of being molested by Epstein and Maxwell twenty years prior, they were stopped by the prominent pair due to threats and their clout with the authorities.
“We will continue to live with the harm she caused us,” Farmer said.
Inside a courtroom crowded with reporters, three of Maxwell’s siblings sat in a row behind her. Outside the courthouse, Kevin Maxwell said that his sister won’t give up on her legal battle, “and we as a family will be solidly behind her.”
Defense attorney Bobbi Sternheim promised to appeal. She said Epstein left Maxwell “holding the whole bag.”
“We all know that the person who should have been sentenced today escaped accountability, avoided his victims, avoided absorbing their pain and receiving the punishment he truly deserved,” she said.
Numerous women have accused Epstein of abusing them over the previous 17 years, and several of them have named Maxwell as the madam who recruited them.
Epstein was the target of accusations that first appeared in 2005. At the time, the FBI and local police had gathered evidence of widespread sexual wrongdoing with young girls.
Epstein was sentenced to 13 months in prison, the majority of which was spent in a work-release program, after entering a guilty plea to prostitution-related charges involving just one girl as part of a deal with federal and state prosecutors in Florida that was later criticized as being too lenient. He then had to sign up to become a sex offender.
Many women filed lawsuits against Epstein for claimed abuse in the years that followed. Virginia Giuffre, one of them, alleged that Epstein and Maxwell had also coerced her into having sex with other influential men, such as Prince Andrew of Britain. The accusations were refuted by each of those guys, and Giuffre ultimately reached an out-of-court settlement with Andrew.
After articles by the Miami Herald in 2018 drew fresh attention to Epstein’s actions, federal authorities in New York reopened the investigation into him. He was detained in 2019, but a month later, he committed suicide.
Maxwell was taken into custody at a New Hampshire estate eleven months after his passing. She has since been imprisoned in a federal prison in New York City.
Her trial did not focus much on Epstein and Maxwell’s connections to some of the most well-known figures in the world, but references to pals like Bill Clinton and Donald Trump demonstrated how the duo used their connections to impress their target.
Only a small number of Epstein’s accusers made charges that were the focus of the trial.
At Epstein’s estates in Florida, New York, New Mexico, and the Virgin Islands, four people testified that they were assaulted as teenagers in the 1990s and the early 2000s.
To preserve their privacy, three were only recognized in court by their first names or by pseudonyms: Jane, a television actress; Kate, a former British model; and Carolyn, a mother who is currently in drug rehab. The fourth was Farmer, the only accuser to use her real name in court following a public statement.
They talked about how Maxwell won them over with presents, conversation, and assurances that Epstein could utilize his resources and connections to help them realize their aspirations.
Then, according to their testimony, she directed them to give Epstein massages that got sexual while pretending everything was normal.
Carolyn testified that she was one of many impoverished teenagers who, in the early 2000s, lived close to Epstein’s Florida house and accepted an offer to massage him in exchange for $100 bills in what the prosecution referred to as “a pyramid of abuse.”
Carolyn testified to the jury that Maxwell made all the arrangements even though she was aware the girl was just 14 at the time.
Maxwell’s attorneys attempted to have her conviction overturned due to improper jury selection. One juror revealed in media appearances days after the verdict that he had been sexually abused as a youngster, something he had not previously reported to the court during jury selection. Attorneys for Maxwell argued that she deserved a second trial. An arbitrator disagreed.
The jury member listened calmly Tuesday as Maxwell’s sentence was determined.
Eight or more women wrote letters to the judge outlining the alleged sexual abuse they experienced.
Her older siblings, Anne Holve and Philip Maxwell, appealed to the court to request mercy and stated that their sister’s association with Epstein started soon after their father, British newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell, passed away in 1991.
Robert Maxwell, they wrote, subjected his daughter to “frequent rapid mood swings, huge rages and rejections,” which “led her to becoming very vulnerable to abusive and powerful men who would be able to take advantage of her innate good nature.”
Ransome — an accuser whose allegations weren’t included in the trial — testified about the lasting harm to her life, gazing directly at Maxwell several times.
“You broke me in unfathomable ways,” said Ransome, who twice tried to die by suicide. “But you did not break my spirit.”
