MANHATTAN (CN) — A New York jury returned a guilty verdict Wednesday in the sex trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, convicting the British heiress of recruiting vulnerable teenage girls for predatory sexual abuse by the late millionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
She was convicted on five of six counts related to the sex ring, offering what attorneys for dozens of women have framed as a measure of justice robbed from them when Epstein was found dead in August 2019 — ruled to have hanged himself in his jail cell while awaiting federal charges that came over a decade after the cushy plea deal in Florida that massively limited his initial criminal exposure.
Another year would follow before U.S. authorities closed in on Maxwell, whom prosecutors portrayed as Epstein's "right hand" and the "lady of the house" at his opulent properties that included a townhome on Manhattan's Upper East Side, a New Mexico ranch, a mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, and an entire island in the Caribbean.
References to Maxwell were recurrent at a victims impact hearing convened in the weeks after Epstein's death, as 22 women who survived stints in Epstein's global sex ring called for the arrest of the pedophile financier's co-conspirators.
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. These charges 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 jury acquitted Maxwell on count 2, enticement of an individual under the age of 17 to travel with intent to engage in illegal sexual activity, which applied only the victim who took the stand this past month under the pseudonym Jane.
All three witnesses who testified against the defendant said Maxwell's presence normalized the sexual incidents, and that she touched their breasts during some of those sexualized massages at Epstein’s properties. During cross-examination of Jane, Maxwell's defense seized on inconsistencies between her trial testimony and previous statements she had made to the FBI. Jurors asked for that testimony during deliberations and ultimately spared Maxwell the five-year maximum sentence that count 2 carried.
Throughout the trial, Maxwell appeared composed, occasionally even cheerful. She also enjoyed visible support in the front row of the limited courtroom gallery seating by way of a rotation of siblings and her confidante Leah Saffian. The defendant has been jailed all the while at a federal detention facility in Brooklyn since her arrest in July 2020. She turned 60 on Saturday, December 25, and faces decades in prison as well as a separate trial on two additional perjury counts related to a 2016 deposition.
"A unanimous jury has found Ghislaine Maxwell guilty of one of the worst crimes imaginable — facilitating and participating in the sexual abuse of children — crimes that she committed with her long-time partner and co-conspirator, Jeffrey Epstein," U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement Wednesday evening. "The road to justice has been far too long. But, today, justice has been done."
When attorneys delivered summations the Monday before Christmas, speaking for two hours each, the trial had just entered its fourth week — a dramatic shortening of proceedings initially expected to take six weeks and go into mid-January 2022. The closing statement from prosecutors painted Maxwell as an essential player in a decadeslong scheme of luring and grooming girls into Epstein’s trap of abuse. Maxwell’s defense focused meanwhile on granularly disputing the credibility of her accusers' memories and testimony.
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