It was in 1994: young Jane was 14 years old. She was attending a summer camp in Florida, chatting with friends at a picnic table, when she was approached by a man and a woman, him in his 40s, she in her 30s. They talked to him about funding him a scholarship and at the end of the conversation, Jane left them her phone number. “It was the start of a nightmare that would last four years. What Jane didn’t know was that they were sexual predators ”, explained Monday, September 29, the Federal Deputy Attorney General of Manhattan, Lara Pomerantz.
Jane’s real surname has not been revealed, but she is one of the alleged victims of Jeffrey Epstein, the sexual predator of minors found in New York City in his cell in the summer of 2019, and his partner. Ghislaine Maxwell, 59 years old. Accused of having been the tout of her lover who became a “partner in crime”, the daughter of magnate Robert Maxwell has been tried since Monday by a federal court in Manhattan. Imprisoned in New York since the summer of 2020, she has never been released on bail, her triple nationality (American, French and British) increasing the risk of flight. She faces seventy years in prison at the end of a trial which is expected to last six weeks.
“The accused trafficked underage sex”, accused Deputy Prosecutor Pomerantz in her opening remarks, explaining that the couple were targeting young girls raised alone by their mother, in financial difficulty, and who believed that meeting with Epstein would allow them to achieve their dreams. “The accused was decisive in this scheme”, according to Lara Pomerantz, since Ghislaine Maxwell “Recruited” the girls, the “Manipulated” talking about sex and making them think it was normal for what was going to happen to them, preparing them for the sexual assault or rape they were going to suffer in the so-called “massage” room, sometimes participating in it.
“Jane was 14 years old. She was a child ”
“She knew exactly what she was doing. She was dangerous. She was preparing young girls to be attacked by a predator ”, summed up the accusation. “Jane was 14 years old. She was a child ”, while the two accused were twice his age. “And Jane was not alone”, continued prosecutor Pomerantz, detailing the fate of three other plaintiffs, the last of which was recruited by a young woman recruited by the couple, Virginie Giuffre. Now 38 years old, she is at the origin of the first revelations of the Epstein scandal but she is not a party to the trial.
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