Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers have pleaded for leniency and a jail term “well below” 20 years for the disgraced British socialite when she faces sentencing for sex trafficking and child abuse offences.
Maxwell, 60, was found guilty in December last year of grooming girls as young as 14 for sex with billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein and joining in some of the abuse herself.
With sentencing set for June 28, Maxwell’s legal team has argued she should not be treated as a “villain” and urged the judge not to punish her as a “proxy for Epstein” who was the principle abuser.
They claim Maxwell’s life is in danger behind bars, argue she no longer poses a risk to anyone, and blame violence and control from her father - the late press baron Robert Maxwell – for leaving her “vulnerable to Epstein”.
The US probation department has recommended a sentence of 20 years to Judge Alison Nathan, but Maxwell’s lawyers argue a jail term of four to five years would be appropriate.
“Ms Maxwell cannot and should not bear all the punishment for which Epstein should have been held responsible”, they said in written submissions.
“Ms Maxwell has already experienced a hard time during detention under conditions far more onerous and punitive than any experienced by a typical pre-trial detainee, and she is preparing to spend significantly more time behind bars.
“Her life has been ruined.”
Insisting she is “not an heiress, villain, or vapid socialite”, Maxwell’s lawyers argue she wants to “do good” in the future.
“Ms Maxwell is not a dangerous criminal or a habitual offender. She is someone who wants nothing more than to live a normal family life – something she was denied because of her association with Epstein and will now almost certainly never have”, they said.
“The public does not need to be protected from Ms Maxwell and such considerations should have no weight in determining her sentence.”
Her mitigation pleas include an alleged threat on Maxwell’s life from a fellow prisoner who has “told at least three other inmates that she had been offered money to murder Ms Maxwell and that she planned to strangle her in her sleep.”
Turning to her “difficult, traumatic childhood with an overbearing, narcissistic and demanding father”, the legal team raise an alleged incident of violence from her past.
“Ghislaine vividly recalls a time when, at age 13, she tacked a poster of a pony on the newly painted wall of her bedroom. Rather than mar the paint with tape, she carefully hammered a thin tack to mount the poster.
“This outraged her father, who took the hammer and banged on Ghislaine’s dominant hand, leaving it severely bruised and painful for weeks to come.”
Maxwell was convicted after a three-week trial of grooming teenagers for sex at Epstein’s luxury properties in New York, Palm Beach and New Mexico between 1994 and 2004.
While Maxwell protested her innocence, victims told the New York court how they were lured to Epstein’s opulent world, groped by the socialite, and exposed to sexual activity on a regular basis.
Epstein killed himself in prison while awaiting trial, and Maxwell argues it would be a “travesty of justice” for her to be sentenced “as if she were a proxy for Epstein simply because Epstein is no longer here”.
Lawyers claim her upbringing “made her vulnerable to Epstein, whom she met right after her father’s death. It is the biggest mistake she made in her life and one that she has not and never will repeat.”
And Maxwell’s pleas have been bolstered by support from her siblings, who wrote: “We witnessed our father taking Ghislaine under his wing whereby she became over dependent on his approval and vulnerable to his frequent rapid mood swings, huge rages and rejections.
“This led her to becoming very vulnerable to abusive and powerful men who would be able to take advantage of her innate good nature.
“It is striking that Ghislaine did not show any perverse behaviour before she met Epstein. Nor did she show any after leaving him, which she eventually managed to do.”
They claimed: “The effect of our father’s psychologically abusive treatment of her, foreshadowed Epstein’s own ability to exploit, manipulate and control her.”
Maxwell, once a fixture on the London social scene, has been held in prison since her arrest in July 2020. She could face up to 55 years in prison for the charges on which she was convicted.
