“It is the greatest regret of my life to have met Jeffrey Epstein,” millionaire Ghislaine Maxwell said yesterday in court, minutes before being sentenced to 15 years in prison for allowing the serial abuse of underage women for a decade.
And added that Epstein “should have been here before all of you”, in reference to the fact that his millionaire close friend committed suicide in jail awaiting trial in Manhattan in August 2008, while she remained a fugitive, until her arrest in July 2020.
But “Today is not about Epstein. It is up to me to be sentenced in the last instance”, added yesterday the former socialite of 60 years with triple British, French and American, linked to Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Prince Andrew and other powerful men who flew in Epstein’s private planes.
“To all the victims who came to court and those who are outside , I am sorry for the pain you experienced”
Ghislaine Maxwell
“To you, to you, to all the victims who came to court and to those who are outside, I’m sorry for the pain you experienced,” Maxwell said. “I hope that my sentence and the harsh imprisonment will bring them closure.”
Maxwell spoke yesterday in federal court in Manhattan, confronted his victims and admitted that he was “guilty of helping” Epstein to commit the crimes, before Judge Alison Nathan sentenced her to 20 years behind bars for helping him to prepare minors to sexually abuse them. Maxwell, Epstein’s ex-girlfriend, was also ordered to pay a fine of $750,000 Dollars.
The accusers expected a longer sentence for Maxwell, who also apologized to her loved ones for causing them pain, saying that it “tortures” her every day. “It is my sincerest wish to everyone in this courtroom and everyone outside the courtroom that this day brings an end to a terrible chapter,” she said. “To those who spoke here today and to those who did not, may this day help you journey from darkness to light.”
Testimony during last year’s trial revealed that Maxwell instructed young victims on how to please Epstein from the mid-1990s 1990, forcing them into repeated rapes and sexual assaults in their mansions in Palm Beach (Florida), Manhattan and the remote “Zorro” ranch in New Mexico. Epstein’s sickening routine of abuse usually began under the guise of a massage.
Maxwell sometimes participated in the abuse and took sexually explicit photos of Epstein’s victims for her satisfaction, the police said. complainants.
A photo presented at the trial showed Epstein and Maxwell resting in the Scottish castle of the Queen of England. The so-called “Madame” lost repeated bail requests while awaiting trial, despite posting tens of millions of dollars as collateral.
She was found guilty last December of five of the six counts against him, after Federal Court jurors deliberated for 40 hours over six days. Yesterday’s conviction marks a major turning point in the life of a multimillionaire woman, educated in Oxford and close to international personalities who have been affected by the case, such as former presidents Trump and Clinton, the filmmaker Woody Allen, the model Naomi Campbell and especially Prince Andrew of England.
The scandal erupted with the arrest of Epstein in New York in July 2019 and led to the resignation of the then Secretary of Labor, Alex Acosta, because it was he who, as a prosecutor in Miami, negotiated a plea deal with the millionaire philanthropist when he was first charged in 1990.
Epstein committed suicide five weeks after being detained. In parallel, the police were looking for his ex-girlfriend Maxwell, who was a fugitive until July 2020. He then pleaded “not guilty” and has been under strict suicide watch in his New York cell, where he has reported being a victim of alleged abuse.