Wednesday, September 18, 2024 - Ghislaine Maxwell's 2021 conviction for helping the late financier Jeffrey Epstein s3xually abuse teenage girls has been upheld by a US appeals court.
The decision was issued by the Manhattan-based 2nd US
Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday, September 17.
Maxwell, 62, has been serving a 20-year prison sentence
after being convicted on five charges for having recruited and groomed four
underage girls for Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 2004.
During her trial, jurors were told details of how she helped
entice vulnerable teenagers to Epstein's various properties.
Judge Alison Nathan said at sentencing that Maxwell was
'central' to Epstein's heinous crimes, not a 'proxy.'
'Ms Maxwell worked with Epstein to select young victims who
were vulnerable and played a pivotal role in facilitating sexual abuse,' the
judge said.
The disgraced socialite has been incarcerated since July
2020, despite numerous attempts from her defence counsel to have her released
on bail.
Maxwell's appeal focused on a 2007 non-prosecution agreement
between Epstein and federal prosecutors in southern Florida, which she
said barred her from being prosecuted in Manhattan 13 years later.
Her lawyer argued that references in Epstein's agreement to
the 'United States' signalled the government's intent to bar prosecutions
nationwide of 'potential co-conspirators' including four named in the
agreement. Maxwell was not among them.
A prosecutor countered that mentioning the United States was
a throwaway reference, and Epstein's agreement was intended to bind only
prosecutors in southern Florida.
In addition, Maxwell argued in her appeal that prosecutors
scapegoated her because Epstein was dead and the public demanded that someone
else be held accountable.
She also said her trial was tainted because one juror did
not disclose that he had been sexually abused as a child.
In January, it was revealed that Maxwell had been telling
her fellow inmates in prison to ignore reports on the case and instead promised
she would write a memoir giving 'the truth.
A source claimed that Maxwell, a close associate of Epstein
for years, claimed 'the documents in the news are all false or misinformation'
and 'the truth will only come out when her book does.'
The insider said: 'She's bragging about how great it will be
but it sounds like the same old lies she has told a thousand times.
'She really thinks she hasn't done anything wrong and that
her charges will be dropped when people read it.'
In a self-serving prison interview last year, she denied
knowledge of the dead financier's crimes, insisting she regretted ever meeting
him and had no idea he was 'capable of evil.'
Epstein died by suicide at age 66 in 2019 in a Manhattan
jail cell, five weeks after being arrested and charged with sex trafficking. He
pleaded guilty in 2008 to a Florida state prosecution charge and served 13
months in jail, an arrangement now widely considered too lenient.
His victims have since recouped hundreds of millions of dollars
from his estate and from banks accused of handling transactions that financed
his sexual misconduct.
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