Ghislaine Maxwell to call evidence from an expert on false memory

Maxwell will call on the expert used in Harvey Weinstein’s trial as her lawyers seek to undermine her alleged abuse victims.

Ghislaine Maxwell is accused of grooming women for Jeffrey Epstein. Picture: AFP

Ghislaine Maxwell will be allowed to call a leading expert on “false memories” who testified at Harvey Weinstein’s trial as her lawyers seek to undermine the testimony of her alleged victims.

Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist at the University of California, will testify on the “workings of human memory” and discuss how people can develop “false memories” when exposed to later influences or suggestions, Maxwell’s lawyers have said in a letter to the court.

She would explain how someone with no apparent memory of sexual abuse could later develop such a memory, after being exposed to news reports, television shows and documentaries, they said. Individuals could develop a false memory of sexual abuse which they describe “with confidence, detail and emotion”.

Prosecutors asked a judge to bar some of her testimony, arguing that the opinions she would offer were “unreliable”.

A court sketch of Ghislaine Maxwell standing before US District Judge Alison J. Nathan with her defense team of Bobbi Sternheim, Christian Everdell, Laura Menninger, Jeffrey Pagliuca during a pre-trial hearing. Picture: Reuters

Judge Alison Nathan has now announced an order that “denies in part and grants in part” the government’s motion, allowing Loftus to testify under limitations.

Those remain unclear as the order has been filed under seal, subject to redactions proposed by prosecutors and Maxwell’s defence lawyers.

The British socialite is accused of recruiting and grooming under-age girls for Epstein. She denies the charges.

This month prosecutors were granted permission to call Lisa Rocchio, a psychologist, saying she would testify on the methods by which “perpetrators of sexual abuse of minors frequently use manipulation or coercion short of physical force as part of a strategic pattern, often referred to as grooming, to make the minor vulnerable to abuse”.

They said she would testify how this could prevent a minor victim “from understanding their experience as abuse” and that “the presence of another individual can facilitate sexual abuse of minors” – a vital element for prosecutors who allege that Maxwell, 59, effectively groomed victims for Jeffrey Epstein.

In response, Maxwell’s defence team has asked to call Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist, who would question her suggestion that a third party could be involved in grooming of minor victims.

“There is no generally accepted theory of grooming by third parties,” they said, in a letter to the judge. “Ms Maxwell is not accused of soliciting sexualised massages for herself. Instead, the claim appears to be that Ms Maxwell recruited and groomed minors to provide sexualised massages for Mr Epstein, which would amount to grooming-by-proxy.”

They said that Dietz was aware of “nothing to support a theory of grooming by proxy”.

In her order, the judge indicated that Dietz would also be allowed to testify, subject to limitations. Judge Nathan is to hold a final pre-trial hearing today before the trial begins next week.

As legal arguments play out, Maxwell’s family is lodging a complaint with the United Nations over her treatment at the Metropolitan Detention Center, the Brooklyn jail where she has been held effectively in solitary confinement since last July.

Denied bail four times, her lawyers have complained that a rotating phalanx of guards watch her around the clock – a regimen they say has been ordered in response to the scandal over the death of Epstein, who took his own life while in custody.

Her brother Ian Maxwell told the BBC yesterday that the family will seek to lodge a complaint with the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to hold America accountable for “the way it is choosing to discriminate against my sister”.

The complaint, expected to be filed today, would claim that she is being treated worse than “a terrorist on death row”.

It reiterates many of the complaints her lawyers have made in letters to the judge, that the debilitating conditions of her detention are jeopardising her ability to properly prepare for her trial.

The Times