the british Ghislaine Maxwell, ex-lover and right-hand man of financier Jeffrey Epstein, was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Tuesday. after last December a court found her guilty of five charges related to the sex trafficking of minors, recruited for Epstein.
(Also read: ‘Ghislaine Maxwell is more evil than Jeffrey Epstein’: victim of abuse)
The New York prosecutor’s office had requested between 30 and 55 years in prison for the daughter of former British press mogul Robert Maxwell, for child sex trafficking for his ex-partner and friend Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in 2019 in a prison in this city. American before sitting on the bench.
Maxwell appeared in court Tuesday in New York wearing a gray shirt over a white long-sleeved T-shirt, with long hair that he nervously rearranged over and over during the morning hearing.
An hour and a half later, the court ordered a half-hour break before resuming the hearing that would dictate the sentence in the afternoon.
The jury found her guilty on Dec. 29 on five of the six charges against her, including child sex trafficking for Epstein.
(You may be interested in: Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice and his sexual abuse)
For the prosecution, his “responsibility” in the trafficking of minors and “the total lack of remorse” justified the request for a long sentence for this figure of the international jet set, educated in Oxford, and who since he was arrested in the summer of 2020 in the United States, he is in jail.
After the frustrated attempt to invalidate the trial, his defense, headed by the renowned criminalist Bobbi Sternheim, asked in mid-June for clemency for his client and a sentence of less than 20 years.
Maxwell said Tuesday in court that he recognized the pain of the victims, but did not apologize.
The version of his defense
Maxwell’s defense considers that his client was a victim of the nefarious influence exerted by both his father – “authoritarian, narcissistic and demanding” – and Epstein, whom he met after the death in mysterious circumstances of his father.
Maxwell was an expert scuba diver and helicopter pilot who founded the now-defunct environmental NGO TerraMar Project. It is unclear how she met Epstein. What was clear, according to the witnesses who paraded through the trial, is that for years the billionaire financed her luxurious life, even transferring money to buy a helicopter.
Maxwell, who has triple British, French and American nationality, and Epstein were a couple in the early 1990s before becoming professional collaborators and accomplices in his sexual crimes for nearly 30 years.
Both erected a network to attract dozens of young people from a vulnerable socio-cultural environment for the financier’s sexual satisfaction in exchange for money.
The relationship with the billionaire financier was “the worst mistake of his life,” according to the defense.
(Also: Ghislaine Maxwell, defendant in the Epstein case, asks for clemency in his sentence)
The relationship with the billionaire financier was the worst mistake of his life
At her trial in a Manhattan court last year, Maxwell was described as a “sophisticated predator” who knowingly acted to lure and seduce young people for the enjoyment of Epstein and his friends, including England’s Prince Andrew, at their Florida residences. , Manhattan or the Virgin Islands.
The witnesses “Jane”, “Kate”, “Carolyn” and Annie Farmer, 42, the only one who testified without a pseudonym, recounted their broken lives due to the forced sexual relations they had with Epstein when they were between 14 and 17 years old , often in the presence of Maxwell.
Virginia Giuffre, one of the victims of the Maxwell-Epstein couple who denounced Prince Andrew of England of sexual abuse when he was a minor, released on Friday, according to the Law & Crime Production network, a statement in which he accuses Maxwell of being the one who led to the pederast.
“For me, and for many others, you opened the door to hell for us. And then, Ghislaine, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, you used your femininity to betray us and got us all into this,” reads the post.
*With information from AFP and EFE
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