After 40 hours of deliberations spread over five days, Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted on Wednesday, December 29, 2021. As AFP reported, a New York court found her guilty of five out of six counts of sex crimes, especially the most serious: trafficking in young people underage girls for the benefit of the former American financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Incarcerated since her arrest in the summer of 2020 in the northeast of the United States, the former British socialite of 60 years, appeared since the end of November in federal court in Manhattan, in particular for having provided minors to her former companion for that he sexually abused it from 1994 to 2004. Epstein died in prison in 2019.
The daughter of British press mogul Robert Maxwell has pleaded not guilty and has spoken only once at trial to reiterate that she is innocent. The “unanimous jury found Ghislaine Maxwell guilty of one of the worst crimes imaginable – facilitating and taking part in the sexual assault of children“, thundered Manhattan Federal District Attorney Damian Williams. He denounced”crimes perpetrated with his partner and lifelong accomplice, Jeffrey Epstein“, who committed suicide in a New York prison in August 2019, even before being tried for sex crimes.
And Prince Andrew in all of this?
Regretting that the “justice has taken too long“, the prosecutor greeted the”courage of young girls who have become women“, four victims who testified against Ms. Maxwell.” Jane “,” Kate “,” Carolyn “and Annie Farmer, 42, the only one to speak without a pseudonym, exposed parts of their lives damaged by sexual relations forced with Epstein – including sex massages – when they were between 14 and 17, often in Maxwell’s presence.
“Very disappointed with the verdict“, his lawyer Bobbi Sternheim announced to the press his intention to appeal. No date has yet been set for the sentence, but Ghislaine Maxwell faces decades in prison.
All eyes are now on another close to Jeffrey Epstein: Prince Andrew, the son of Queen Elizabeth, who is the subject of a complaint in New York for “sexual assault”. Last summer, the American and forty-something Virginia Giuffre, one of the young girls exploited by the Epstein / Maxwell duo, indeed seized the justice to denounce the sexual assaults she allegedly suffered from Prince Andrew when ‘she was a minor. Accusation denied by the Briton. The complaint is expected to be examined in late 2022 in a civil court in New York.