Former British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced on Tuesday, June 28, to twenty years in prison for the sex crimes of which she was convicted at the end of December. Prosecuted on six counts of sex crimes, five of which were upheld and in particular the most serious: trafficking in underage girls for the benefit of American financier Jeffrey Epstein.
“Today’s sentence holds Ghislaine Maxwell responsible for committing heinous crimes against children. It sends a strong message: no one is above the law and it’s never too late for justice.”said Damian Williams, federal prosecutor at the Manhattan court, where Judge Alison Nathan delivered her judgment, in a statement.
At sentencing, Mr.me Maxwell for the first time expressed his “Sympathy for all the victims” in that case. Between 1994 and 2004, she had notably provided minors to the latter, who was her former companion, for him to sexually abuse. Epstein died in prison in 2019.
Incarcerated since 2020
Aged 60, the daughter of press magnate Robert Maxwell, who also has American and French nationalities, risks ending her life incarcerated in New York, where she has been detained for two years. During the trial, the prosecution had portrayed her as “sophisticated predator” who knowingly acted to attract and seduce young girls, sometimes as young as 14, and deliver them to Epstein in his residences in Florida, Manhattan or New Mexico.
Arriving outside the gigantic South New York courthouse on Tuesday morning, one of the Maxwell-Epstein couple’s accusers, Sarah Ransome, said: “Yes, Ghislaine must die in prison”. “I have spent the last seventeen years in my own prison for what she, Jeffrey [Epstein] and all the accomplices made me. I have been raped several times. Sometimes I was raped three times a day (…). There was a constant influx of girls who were raped over and over again”said the young woman, who was not a civil party to the trial of Mme Maxwell.
Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers had filed a request for clemency in mid-June for a sentence of less than twenty years. The legal texts and case law provide for up to fifty-five years of imprisonment and the prosecutors had said they were counting on at least thirty years for his ” responsibility “ and his “complete lack of remorse” for his sex crimes.
M’s lawyerme Maxwell, Bobbi Sternheim, had again called for a postponement of the sentencing on Saturday because his client had been placed ” under surveillance “ in prison because of a risk of “suicidal”. “Without justification”according to the defense.