MANHATTAN (CN) — Federal prosecutors asked a judge to sentence Ghislaine Maxwell to between 30 and 55 years in prison for her role in recruiting and grooming underage girls for sex abuse by Jeffrey Epstein.
“As part of a disturbing agreement with Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell identified, groomed, and abused multiple victims, while she enjoyed a life of extraordinary luxury and privilege. In her wake, Maxwell left her victims permanently scarred with emotional and psychological injuries,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing submission filed just before midnight on Wednesday evening. “That damage can never be undone, but it can be accounted for in crafting a just sentence for Maxwell’s crimes."
Maxwell, 60, was convicted by a New York federal judge on five of six counts this past December. While the U.S. Probation Office called for a 20-year prison term in its final presentence investigation report, federal prosecutors say the court should go as high as the statutory maximum penalty of 55 years in prison.
Maxwell pleaded not guilty to facilitating and participating in Epstein’s abuse of teenage girls during a 10-year period from around 1994 to 2004. Survivors of the abuse and other witnesses named Maxwell as a direct participant in and facilitator of a sex ring wherein teenage girls were induced to give Epstein massages that later escalated into recurring and escalating sexual episodes, including masturbation, penetrative sex and “orgies” with other adults.
The sentencing submission from the prosecution says Maxwell’s participation in recruiting and grooming underage girls was essential to the Epstein’s predatory abuse. “Years of sexual abuse, multiple victims, devastating psychological harm: none of this could have happened without Maxwell," the wrote. "A Guidelines sentence is necessary to reflect the gravity of the offense conduct and the pain and trauma the defendant inflicted upon her many victims.”
Judge Alison Nathan presided over Maxwell’s federal trial last year but has since been confirmed to the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. She will sentence Maxwell in U.S. District Court on Tuesday, June 28.
At the hearing, victims of Epstein and Maxwell’s sex trafficking and abuse are expected to deliver victim impact statements, through both oral and written submissions.
Prosecutors say there are no grounds for leniency, disputing the allegations of the defense memo that Maxwell has endured extraordinary suffering during her time in jail awaiting trial and in the months since.
Maxwell’s lawyers have requested a prison sentence of four to five years, claiming she lost hair and weight while enduring death threats, stress and poor nutrition among other harsh conditions.
But prosecutors say such claims are belied by Maxwell’s appearance at trial. “The defendant is perfectly healthy, with a full head of hair," they wrote.
Earlier in the sentencing memo, prosecutors noted that Maxwell “has enjoyed remarkable privileges as a high-profile inmate that vastly exceed the benefits accorded to the average inmate. It is unsurprising that a woman who had led a life of incredible luxury should complain about her life as a prisoner, but that fact does not come close to meriting leniency at sentencing, much less the extraordinary degree of leniency the defendant seeks.”
As for the claim that Maxwell suffered “a credible death threat” in the South Brooklyn jail where has been detained, the government says an internal probe of the purported threat revealed it to be more speculative than credible: an inmate had apparently said to someone in passing, “I’d kill her if someone paid me a million dollars," or something to that effect.
Moreover, this remark was immediately by someone who overheard it it, and the inmate who uttered it was transferred out the housing unit.
Another sticking point for the the government when it comes to sentencing is what they call Maxwell’s “complete failure to address her offense conduct and her utter lack of remorse."
"Instead of showing even a hint of acceptance of responsibility, the defendant makes a desperate attempt to cast blame wherever else she can," the brief states.
Maxwell’s attorney asked Judge Nathan last week to reject the Probation Office’s recommendation of 20 years imprisonment, saying that it puts Maxwell in “the same sentencing range that Jeffrey Epstein would face for the same offenses, even though he was indisputably the more culpable offender.”
While details about Epstein and Maxwell's romantic involvement over the years is murky, prosecutors showed that Epstein paid her more than $30 million for her complicity in the sex ring.
The sole count against Maxwell on which she was acquitted, enticement of an individual under the age of 17 to travel with intent to engage in illegal sexual activity, applied only the victim who took the stand this past month under the pseudonym Jane.
In April 2022, Judge Nathan upheld Maxwell’s sex trafficking convictions but also dropped three conspiracy counts she ruled to be multiplicitous. Maxwell was denied a retrial meanwhile after one of her jurors admitted that he failed to disclose his own past childhood sexual abuse during the jury selection process.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York charged Epstein on July 2, 2019, with sex-trafficking conspiracy and sex trafficking. Epstein was found dead the following month on August 10, 2019, in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, half a block east of the courthouse where Maxwell’s trial would be held in December 2021.
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