Ghislaine Maxwell, in a plea for mercy two weeks before she was convicted in her sex trafficking case, blamed her actions on parental and relationship cruelty. her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier she is accused of helping to recruit and abuse minors. girls.
“She had a difficult, traumatic childhood with an overbearing, narcissistic, and demanding father,” her attorneys wrote Wednesday night to a Manhattan federal judge, who will rule. judgment on June 28.
“It left her vulnerable to Epstein, who she met shortly after her father’s death,” the lawyers said. “It was the biggest mistake she made in her life and the one she didn’t and will never repeat.”
Mrs. Maxwell, 60 years old, is convicted on December 29 after a month-long trial on five of the six charges she faces. The most serious sentence is sex trafficking of a minor, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 40 years. The other two charges carry maximum sentences of 5 and 10 years.
The judge, Alison J. Nathan, ruled in April that she would not convict Ms. Maxwell of the remaining two charges she was convicted of because they overlap with conduct covered by other charges. . There is no minimum sentence.
In their brief filing in Federal District Court, Ms. Maxwell’s attorneys asked Judge Nathan to deliver the sentence of less than 20 years recommended by the court’s probation division. They argued that Ms. Maxwell had spent most of her life victimizing two men, both of whom were dead.
The story takes place in a rare world of boarding schools and mansions on two continents.
The lawyers wrote, Ms. Maxwell became anorexic as a toddler and was so ignored that she stood in front of her mother as a 3-year-old to declare, “Mom, I exist.”
Lawyers charged Ms. Maxwell’s father, British media mogul Robert Maxwell, who died after falling off the boat in 1991, hit by mounting debt, by a series of gothic family mistakes, from lengthy absences to ruthless dinner table puzzles with wrong answers.
Once, after 13-year-old Maxwell stuck a poster of a horse on a freshly painted wall in her bedroom, the attorneys wrote, Robert Maxwell, indignantly struck her hand with a hammer, causing it to bruise. serious purple. and painful for weeks.
The attorneys wrote that their client now faces a sentence because of her relationship with Epstein decades ago, in the 1990s and early 2000s.
“Witnesses at the trial testified that Ms. Maxwell facilitated the abuse of Epstein,” the lawyers wrote, “but Epstein was always central: Epstein was the mastermind, Epstein was the abuser. and Epstein orchestrated the crime for his personal satisfaction.”
Ms. Maxwell’s arrested in New Hampshire in July 2020 after years of investigations and litigation centered on Mr. Epstein. He was arrested in July 2019 and charged with the exploitation and sexual abuse of dozens of girls and women at his estate in Palm Beach, Fla., his mansion in Manhattan, and other properties. other location.
Mr. Epstein, 66 years old, is was found dead in his cell a month later, after hanging himself with a sheet, medical examiner’s verdict. He is awaiting a separate trial on sex trafficking charges.
In their summary sentencing, Ms. Maxwell’s lawyers argued that prosecutors only came to her attention after “strong media and public opinion” following Epstein’s death while being arrested by the Justice Department. and the Department of Detention and Detention.
“The government faces a state of emergency to ease the new pain of Epstein’s accusers and repair the tarnished reputations of the DOJ and BOP,” the lawyers wrote.
“There will be no trial for Epstein and no vindication and public justice for his accusers,” they said. “The government now has one big hole to fill: Epstein’s empty chair.”
At Maxwell’s trial, prosecutors presented a case that lasted more than 10 days focusing on the testimony of four accusers, all of whom are adults.
Two women said Mr. Epstein had sex with them when they were 14 years old. One woman said that Ms. Maxwell was occasionally present at the meetings; the other testified that Ms. Maxwell had directly sexually harassed her, touching her breasts.
“Maxwell was a sophisticated predator who knew exactly what she was doing,” Alison Moe, an assistant US attorney, told the jury in a terminating argument. “She manipulates her victims and she prepares them for sexual abuse.”
The government is expected to submit a motion for sentencing with Judge Nathan next week.
Ms. Maxwell’s attorneys, in their brief, also reiterated long-standing arguments that she endured harsh conditions after being denied bail and detained in a detention center. incarcerated in Brooklyn. They said, for 22 months, she was locked in an isolated cell, 9 x 7 feet long, and under constant video surveillance.
They say her “special conditions of solitary confinement” justify a “tough credit.”
Ms. Maxwell’s lawyers wrote that after Ms. Maxwell’s conviction, she was transferred to the prison’s general residence, where Oxford University graduates worked orderly, completing a number of educational courses. and “ is passionate about providing a variety of supports to the women in her unit , including GED tutoring . ”
However, while in the general population, the lawyers said, she was also “the target of a credible death threat from a fellow inmate.”
An inmate on Ms. Maxwell’s property, the lawyers wrote, told at least three other inmates that she had been offered money to kill Ms. Maxwell and that she had planned to strangle Ms. Maxwell in her sleep. . The inmates who carried out the threat were transferred to another unit, “presumably to protect Ms. Maxwell,” the lawyers said.
The incident could not be independently confirmed and Nicholas Biase, a spokesman for the US attorney’s office, declined to comment on the claim.
“This incident reflects a devastating reality,” the defense attorneys wrote, “that there are many inmates who would not hesitate to kill Ms. Maxwell – whether for money, fame or simply ‘street credit’ ‘.”
