What do we make of Ghislaine Maxwell, the high-society figure accused of relishing her role as brothel madam and child-sex pimp?
What drives a woman to act as vassal to a monster with an insatiable appetite for young flesh? A beast who was once her lover? Like Erysichthon of myth, the more Jeffrey Epstein ate the more he wanted. His hunger fuelled more hunger.
Daddy was Robert Maxwell, the bombastic, bullying newspaper baron and one of the biggest power brokers in British politics. Even Margaret Thatcher, a political opponent, praised his “sense of direction and decision” — very similar, she noted, to her own.
Oxford-educated Ghislaine was “Daddy’s girl”, the youngest of nine children. Maxwell’s glamorous, charismatic daughter would accompany Captain Bob to swanky society events such as Elton John’s birthday and the Cannes Film Festival.
In 1991, when Ghislaine was 30, tragedy struck the family. Robert Maxwell’s body was discovered floating off the Canary Islands. He had disappeared off the back of the Lady Ghislaine, the luxury four-storey yacht he had named after her. Daddy’s girl was inconsolable.
After his mysterious death Maxwell was exposed as a lying, crooked psychopath. He had stolen hundreds of millions of pounds from employee pension funds to prop up his wobbly empire. The Maxwell name was in shreds, synonymous with corporate villainy. The post-mortem on the family fortune found the money was all a charade.
Robert Maxwell wouldn’t be the last supersized slimebag Ghislaine would become attached to, as we know from her long association with Epstein.
As oil slicks go, Epstein was the Exxon Valdez, a former hedge-fund manager who started on Wall Street and amassed a vast fortune.
The oilygarch had bragging rights to a seven-storey stone townhouse that was considered the largest private residence in Manhattan. His portfolio included a gaudy pink waterfront mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, and a Gulfstream jet. Possibly his most prized possession was the private paradise of Little St James in the US Virgin Islands Its owner called it “Little St Jeff”. (Locals nicknamed it “paedophile island”.)
Bill Clinton flew on Epstein’s jet, dubbed the “Lolita Express”. Prince Andrew, who reportedly knew Epstein from the 1990s, has been accused of having sex with an underaged girl “loaned out” by Epstein several times.
Epstein’s good pal Donald Trump told New York Magazine in 2002: “I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
The name Ghislaine Maxwell comes up repeatedly as the woman who procured girls for Epstein and his rich and famous buddies. Sometimes, her accusers say, she would take part in the sex acts.
Epstein was already a convicted sex offender when he was arrested by New York federal prosecutors in July 2019 and charged with sex trafficking.
A few weeks later he was found dead in his federal jail cell in Manhattan. The New York City medical examiner’s office ruled his death a suicide by hanging.
Epstein’s death didn’t let Maxwell off the hook. Prosecutors went ahead with charges of sex trafficking and other crimes, covering a period from 1994 to 2004, and now she faces her accusers in a Manhattan court.
The first part of this sordid tale goes back more than 15 years. In 2006 Epstein was charged with organising a large network of underaged girls in Palm Beach for sex acts at his mansion after one of the girls’ mothers went to the police, who began interviewing young victims.
Former Palm Beach county police detective Joe Recarey told a journalist in 2018: “The common interview with a girl went like this: ‘I was brought there by so-and-so. I didn’t feel comfortable with what happened, but I got paid well, so I was told if I didn’t feel comfortable, I could bring someone else and still get paid’.”
Facing a 53-page federal indictment, Epstein could have ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life — that is if he wasn’t rich and powerful.
During massages Epstein paid extra for oral sex and intercourse. The teens got a fee if they brought him other girls. Epstein preferred girls who were white, prepubescent and from vulnerable backgrounds. One victim was a petite, blonde 14-year-old still with braces.
They all told a depressingly familiar story. Epstein would be clad in a towel. He would lie face down on a massage table, order the girl to strip partially or fully, and tell her to massage his feet and backside. Then he would turn over and have them massage his chest, often instructing them to pinch his nipples, while he masturbated.
At times he would try to penetrate them with his fingers or use a vibrator. He would go as far as the girls were willing to let him, including intercourse.
Pupils at Royal Palm Beach High School soon heard about the $200 to $300 (R3,000 to R4,500) they could earn by fulfilling the sexual desires of a pervy old man.
“He told me he wanted them as young as I could find them,” said one of the witnesses. “If I had a girl to bring him at breakfast, lunch and dinner, then that’s how many times I would go a day. He wanted as many girls as I could get him. It was never enough.”
He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side
— Donald Trump
Another victim said Epstein didn’t like her because her breasts were too big. A victim told police that during one session, Epstein, unable to control himself, held her down on a massage table and penetrated her.
Most of the teens were vulnerable. One girl had watched her stepfather strangle her eight-year-old stepbrother.
Prosecutors and Epstein’s powerhouse defence reached a sweetheart agreement that once again demonstrated that rich perverts could also pervert justice.
Epstein served just 13 months in the county jail. He was housed in a private wing of the Palm Beach county jail and allowed work-release privileges that enabled him to leave the jail six days a week, for 12 hours a day.
Epstein’s victims were largely forgotten for a decade, but 10 years after his conviction there were two significant developments that would change everything.
Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown conducted a year-long investigation into Epstein, tracking down more than 60 women who said they were victims of abuse.
“He’s sort of like a Nazi who fled to South America,” gossip columnist George Rush told Vanity Fair. “He was living in peace, like Dr Mengele in Paraguay, literally on his own island. I think he got too relaxed. It just seemed like he had got away with so much, and that the world had moved on.”
Brown’s explosive investigation came two years after a New York Times exposé on producer Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement. Numerous women also accused comedian Bill Cosby of sexual assault. Celebrities and ordinary women alike were no longer ashamed to tell their stories of sexual abuse at the hands of powerful figures.
Epstein was arrested for child-sex trafficking when returning from a trip to Paris in 2019. “Epstein is accustomed to having an entourage meet his private jet at the airport; he’s just not used to it being made up of FBI agents,” noted The Atlantic.
Despite the financier’s death, the state decided to proceed with its case against Maxwell. She is accused of conspiring with Epstein in a sex-trafficking scheme involving at least four underage girls.
The British socialite is accused of “grooming” young girls for Epstein and participating in some of the sex abuse herself.
Maxwell’s lawyers claim she’s the scapegoat for Epstein’s crimes and that the women’s memories of events from nearly 30 years ago have been “contaminated” by media accounts and their own desire to receive millions of dollars from Epstein’s estate.
Defence lawyer Bobbi Sternheim said in her opening statement on November 29: “Ever since Eve was tempting Adam with the apple, women have been blamed for the bad behaviour of men, and women are often villainised and punished more than the men ever are.”
Prosecutor Lara Pomerantz countered that Maxwell and Epstein were “partners in crime” and that the British socialite played a “central role” in luring girls as young as 14 into the financier’s world, where they were subject to sexual abuse.
“Make no mistake: she knew exactly what Epstein was going to do to those children when she sent them inside those massage rooms.”
If guilty she could spend 40 years in jail.
One witness told the court she told Maxwell she was 14 before giving Epstein a sexual massage at his home. Again, her story was depressingly familiar.
A witness, identified as Carolyn, recalled how Epstein would touch her breasts and buttocks, and masturbate until he ejaculated.
“Something sexual happened every single time,” Carolyn, who chose not to reveal her last name, told jurors.
She testified about a difficult upbringing, saying her mother was a drug user and alcoholic and her grandfather sexually abused her when she was four. Carolyn also said she became a cocaine addict, and dropped out of school in grade 7.
Now in her mid-30s, Carolyn said she was introduced to Epstein in 2002. Another accuser brought her to Epstein’s house in Palm Beach, where the pair were greeted by Maxwell.
They massaged Epstein for about 45 minutes, and she looked on after Epstein turned over and began having sex with the other girl. Carolyn said three $100 bills were left for her on a bathroom sink.
Carolyn said she returned to Epstein’s home after the initial encounter because she needed money to buy drugs.
Maxwell would sometimes call her to schedule appointments, and Maxwell once invited her to travel to an island.
“I told her that I was too young and there was no way in hell my mom was going to let me leave the country,” Carolyn said.
Carolyn also said Maxwell once touched her while she was preparing to massage Epstein.
“I was fully nude and she came in and she felt my boobs and my hips and my buttocks and said that… I had a great body for Mr Epstein and his friends,” Carolyn said.
Another witness claimed Maxwell pressured her into giving Epstein sexual massages when she was still a teenager and told her she was “one of his favourites”.
Shocking testimony came from a former house manager of Epstein’s Florida mansion, Juan Alessi, 71. He painted a picture of tyranny and entitlement. He told the court that from the day she arrived, Maxwell told him she was going to be the lady of the house.
“She right away took over and she mentioned to me she was going to be the lady of the house,” he told the court.
Alessi said Maxwell ran the household like a five-star hotel. He had to make sure Epstein’s fleet of vehicles had $100 bills in every car and he was forced to clean their sex toys.
He found “large dildos and vibrators” after massages and “porn tapes and a black leather costume” in Maxwell's bathroom.
Maxwell wrote up a 58-page book of rules for him. “Jeffrey doesn’t like to be looked in his eyes… look at another part of the room and never directly to him.” Maxwell instructed him to only speak to Epstein if he asked him a direct question.
In one entry, Maxwell wrote, “Remember that you see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing, except to answer a question directed to you.”
Toothpaste and shaving cream had to be more than half-full, tissues replaced when they fell below one third, the razor blade swapped out after every use.
Alessi had to ensure a gun was placed in a bedside table drawer, shutters were closed, and that reading glasses, eye masks, and “Jeffrey Epstein large and small notepads” were on both bedside tables.
Alessi said his job included setting up massage appointments and alerting Maxwell when they were arranged.
Epstein always closed the doors to his bedroom and bathroom when he was getting massages there.
Epstein was getting three massages a day by the time Alessi left the job in 2002, up from just one a day in 1991, he said. “It was a massage in the morning, a massage in the afternoon and a massage after the movies,” Alessi said. “They were scheduled to come anytime, at 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock at night.”
While Alessi said he saw “many, many females” at the mansion and that “most of them appeared to be in their late 20s,” he recalled two who were underage.
He was sent to pick a girl up from school to bring her to the mansion. “She appeared to be young, 14, 15,” Alessi said. “She was strikingly beautiful, beautiful eyes, long brunette hair. Very pleasant.”
Now in her 40s, the woman testified under the pseudonym “Jane”. She said she had sexual contact with Epstein “more than once”.
She was also asked if anyone else was in the room when the contact took place. “Ghislaine Maxwell,” Jane said, pointing to the defendant.
In 2019 columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote in The New York Times: “Jeffrey Epstein is the ultimate symbol of plutocratic rot.”
We are about to find out exactly what role Ghislaine Maxwell played in the life of a King Midas who destroyed those he touched. Nothing exceeds like excess.
— Additional sources, Reuters, Bloomberg
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