Ghislaine Maxwell sentencing: Victim ‘Kate’ delivers powerful impact statement
A sex abuse survivor who delivered a powerful impact statement at Ghislaine Maxwell’s sentencing provided a sobering reason as to why there should be “zero tolerance” for child groomers.
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A sex trafficking survivor who testified against Ghislaine Maxwell has invoked the overturning of abortion right protections in her sobering victim’s impact statement.
Maxwell was yesterday sentenced to 20 years in prison with five years supervised release for recruiting and trafficking underage girls for late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse. Judge Alison Nathan also ordered her to pay a $US750,000 fine (A$1.08m), which her legal team said she is unable to afford.
“Kate”, who used an alias, was one of four accusers who testified against Maxwell – saying that in 1994 she dressed her as a schoolgirl for sex with Epstein and branded her a “good girl” – at her trial last year.
On Tuesday, she returned to the stand to read her victim’s impact statement at Maxwell’s sentencing hearing in a Manhattan federal court.
“The many acts that were perpetrated on me by Epstein including rape, strangulation and sexual assault would have never occurred had it not been for the cunning and premeditated role Ghislaine Maxwell played,” Kate said.
“What happened to me at that young age changed the course of my life drastically, forever”
“I witnessed on numerous occasions, over many years, Ghislaine Maxwell trying to recruit other girls and making consistent and insistent demands on me and others to do the same.
“There was never any ambiguity or doubt about her having full knowledge of what was to take place once she recruited girls.”
In the years following the abuse, she struggled with drug addiction, panic attacks and nightmares, and she told of feeling “unable to trust my own instincts in choosing romantic relationships”.
The British former model also referenced the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade by the US Supreme Court which will effectively see abortion criminalised in about 26 states without exceptions for victims of rape or incest.
She described the present as “a time when women’s rights have been so carelessly discarded” and said if we can’t stop women from being forced to “bear their rapist’s child”, then we must show “zero tolerance” to the people who groom and sexually abuse them.
Roe v Wade prevented the US government from banning abortions until the point of foetal viability, at about 24 weeks of pregnancy. On Friday, the court voted 6-3 – along partisan lines – to scrap that precedent.
“Abortion presents a profound moral question,” Justice Samuel Alito, a conservative, wrote in his majority opinion.
“The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion.
“The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. We now overrule those decisions and return that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”
The ruling sparked massive protests in major US cities, including Washington D.C., New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Boston.
Today is a very solemn moment for the United States.
— President Biden (@POTUS) June 24, 2022
The Supreme Court expressly took away a Constitutional right from the American people that it had already recognized. They simply took it away. That's never been done to a right that is so important to so many Americans.
As a result of the ruling, abortion rights will now be determined by individual states. Almost half of the country’s states have or will pass laws that ban abortion while others have enacted strict measures regulating the procedure.
Some dormant state laws will be reactivated that will make it illegal to have an abortion even in cases of rape or incest. Anyone who performs an abortion in states that criminalise it will be charged with a felony and face up to 15 years jail time.
The judge granted requests from a total of eight women to give victim impact statements either in writing or in person at Maxwell’s sentencing on Tuesday.
They included Prince Andrew’s accuser Virginia Roberts, Giuffre, Annie Farmer, Elizabeth Stein, and Sarah Ransome.
“Kate,” said Maxwell’s “final insult” was her lack of remorse after being found guilty. She said Maxwell had endless opportunities to stop the abuse.
“You could have put an end to the rapes, the molestations, the sickening manipulations that you arranged, witnessed and even took part in,” Kate said in court.
While testifying in the trial had been “both terrifying and re-traumatising”, Kate added: “I do not, however, regret it for one moment.”
Maxwell remained stoic as she listened to several women read their victim impact statements before taking the stand for the first time, and responding to them.
“It is hard for me to address the court after listening to the pain and anguish expressed her today,” Maxwell said.
“The terrible impact on the lives of these women is difficult to hear and absorb. I want to acknowledge their suffering. I empathise deeply with all the victims in this case.”
Maxwell said her “association with Epstein and this case will forever and permanently stain me”.
“It is the greatest regret of my life that I ever met Jeffrey Epstein,” she added.
Maxwell, 60, was convicted in December of recruiting and grooming young girls to be sexually abused by the late billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein at his mansions and estates in Manhattan, New Mexico, Florida and the Virgin Islands between 1994 and 2004.
A jury found her guilty on five of six counts, the most serious being for sex trafficking minors. Two of the counts were later dropped for being redundant.
Epstein, who pleaded guilty in 2008 to state prostitution charges, was indicted on federal sex trafficking charges in July 2019. He died by suicide, aged 66, in his jail cell one month later while awaiting his own sex crimes trial in New York.
Maxwell – who has been jailed in a notorious New York prison since her arrest two years ago – told the court that she’s “had a lot of time to think” and that she’d come to the realisation that Epstein had “fooled all of those in his orbit”.
“Jeffrey Epstein should have been here before all of you,” Maxwell said at the podium, her legs shackled.
“It is not about Epstein, ultimately. It is for me to be sentenced.”
Maxwell acknowledged that she had been convicted of helping Epstein but stopped short of taking responsibility for her role in the sex-trafficking of young women.
“To you, all the victims … I am sorry for the pain that you experienced,” she continued.
“It is my sincerest wish to all those in this courtroom and to all those outside this courtroom that this day brings a terrible chapter to the end, to an end. And to those of you who spoke here today and those of you who did not, may this day help you travel from darkness into the light.”
Maxwell acknowledged that she had been convicted of helping Epstein but stopped short of taking responsibility for her role in the sex-trafficking of young women.
“I am sorry for the pain that you’ve experienced,” Maxwell said.
“I hope my conviction … brings you closure.”
She intends to appeal her conviction, her lawyer Bobbi Sternheim told reporters outside court.
Ms Sternheim said she has resisted speaking before the sentence was delivered “out of respect for the court” but said “the mask (is now) off”. She claimed that her client had been “vilified,” “pilloried” and “tried and convicted in the court of public opinion.”
“Even before she steeped into this courthouse, she was being tried and convicted in the court of public opinion,” she said.
Ms Sternheim said that jurors had treated Maxwell as a proxy for Epstein, who she described as “clever and cunning to the end”.
Ghislaine Maxwell has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking minors. Her lawyer Bobbi Sternheim told reporters outside court that Jeffrey Epstein was “cunning until the end†and left her client Ghislaine Maxwell “holding the whole bagâ€. She will appeal. pic.twitter.com/zrV63r4zUs
— Megan Palin (@Megan_Palin) June 28, 2022
“Jeffery Epstein left Ghislaine Maxwell holding the whole bag,” she continued.
“We all know the person who should have been sentenced today escaped accountability, avoided his victims, avoided absorbing their pain, and receiving the punishment he truly deserved.
“We recognise that the public at large has little sympathy or compassion for inmates, of course until they themselves or their families have brushes with the law and find themselves thrust into the criminal justice system.”
US Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement tweeted by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York that “today’s sentence holds Ghislaine Maxwell accountable for perpetrating heinous crimes against children.”
“This sentence sends a strong message that no one is above the law and it is never too late for justice,” he said.
Maxwell’s sentencing came just days after her lawyers said she had been placed on suicide watch and asked for the sentencing to be postponed.
The US Probation Office earlier recommended that Maxwell be sentenced to 20 years in prison, while federal prosecutors asked for her to be sentenced to between 30 and 55 years in prison calling her crimes “monstrous” and saying she played an “instrumental role in the horrific sexual abuse of multiple young teenage girls.”
In a filing, prosecutors said Maxwell “enjoyed a life of extraordinary luxury and privilege” while preying on troubled young girls, prosecutors for the Southern District of New York wrote in the sentencing submission.
“In her wake Maxwell left her victims permanently scarred with emotional and psychological injuries,” the filing says.
Maxwell’s lawyers argued she should receive no more than five years and three months.
In handing down her sentence, Judge Nathan said Maxwell failed to accept responsibility for her role in the crimes or show remorse.
“Today’s sentence will attempt to acknowledge the harm that Ms Maxwell has caused,” Nathan said.
The court has no jurisdiction over where she is incarcerated. Instead it is up to the Bureau of Prisons, an organisation which Ms Maxwell’s lawyers have been publicly complaining about for months.
It is possible they will push for her to be transferred to a low-security women’s prison at Danbury, Connecticut, the setting for the TV series Orange Is The New Black, according to reports.
Since her arrest in July 2020, Maxwell has been housed in Brooklyn’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center. Her legal team argued that she should serve less than five years in prison because of the treatment she has already been subjected to by the media, prison guards, and inmates.
Her legal team has argued that their client has been subjected to “discriminatory and punitive” treatment, including solitary confinement, “unjustified sleep deprivation” and “excessive” strip searches where Ms Maxwell’s “breasts and genitalia were touched in a rough and reckless manner”.
The Oxford-educated daughter of the late British press baron Robert Maxwell and former international jetsetter grew up in wealth and privilege as a friend to royalty.
Her circle included Britain’s Prince Andrew, former US president and real estate baron Donald Trump, and the Clinton family.
Prosecutors in her trial said Maxwell was “the key” to Epstein’s scheme of enticing young girls to give him massages, during which he would sexually abuse them.
In February, Prince Andrew settled a sexual abuse lawsuit with Virginia Giuffre, who said she had been trafficked to the royal by Epstein and Maxwell.
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