Team Maxwell fear verdict is already in

The socialite’s lawyers worry that jurors will find little about their client to like, sparking speculation about a deal with prosectors.

Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. Picture: AFP

After the press baron Robert Maxwell died 30 years ago this month, his children made their way out of his shadow and kept clear of the public eye.

Now as Ghislaine Maxwell faces trial, accused of grooming children for the financier Jeffrey Epstein, the family has emerged once more to fight an unlikely battle for hearts and minds, protesting her innocence and railing against a justice system that has incarcerated her in one of New York’s toughest jails.

On social media they decry her treatment, while also assailing wrongful convictions and racism in American policing, interspersing these statements with homespun advice to followers about sharing Thanksgiving recipes.

Maxwell, 59, has spent 500 days in solitary confinement, the family declared on Twitter at the weekend, saying this contravened the “Nelson Mandela rules” adopted by the UN general assembly in 2015.

Her brother Ian, 65, who has led the effort, has said he plans to bring her case before the United Nations himself. For the first time in decades, he has submitted to television interviews, asking American audiences to see his sister as one of them.

“Imagine yourself arrested and imprisoned in solitary confinement, deprived of bail for nine months, unable to properly prepare your defence, the identity of your accusers unknown and you can’t even see your family,” he says in a video address on Real Ghislaine, a website maintained by the family.

He argues, as do her lawyers, that Maxwell is being prosecuted in lieu of Epstein, her friend and former employer who took his own life in August 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking. Police reports from the initial investigations into Epstein do not mention Ghislaine Maxwell, Ian said.

Prince Andrew and Virginia Roberts at Ghislaine Maxwell's townhouse in London, Britain on March 13 2001 Picture: Supplied

Yet for all the concerns of her family, one big worry for her legal team, according to the Mirror, is that the jury will find her “wholly unlikeable” – as did dummy panels drawn from the Southern District of New York, from where the jury will be chosen. They were shown video of her and thought she was “arrogant” and “suspicious”, while “lacking credibility”,” according to her legal team.

The feedback has caused such concern in Maxwell’s camp that they have allegedly held talks with prosecutors about brokering a deal.

Maxwell does, at least, know the names of the four alleged victims who will testify against her. The prosecutors have identified them to her lawyers in voluminous disclosures in advance of her trial, which begins on November 29, though their names remain redacted in publicly available court documents.

The prosecutors have asked that they be referred to only by their first names or a pseudonym, that court artists refrain from drawing them too precisely and that defence attorneys avoid mentioning details during cross-examination that might identify them.

One, who has chosen to waive her anonymity, is Annie Farmer, a psychologist who says she was brought to Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico when she was 16 years old, in 1996. He had posed as a patron to her sister Maria, an aspiring artist. Farmer’s mother had allowed her younger daughter to travel to “Zorro Ranch” on the understanding that there would be other students there and Maxwell would serve as a chaperone, she told The New York Times in 2019.

Arriving, she found she was the only person there besides Maxwell and Epstein. Prosecutors say that while she was there Maxwell “began her efforts to groom” her “for abuse by Epstein” by giving her “an unsolicited massage” in which she was topless, and by encouraging her to massage Epstein.

The first alleged victim in the case is said to have been 14 years old when she met Maxwell in 1994. Prosecutors say Maxwell befriended her and that she and Epstein took her to a cinema and on shopping trips. They say Maxwell attempted to “normalise inappropriate and abusive conduct” by undressing in front of her, and by taking part in “group sexualised massages of Epstein” in which both Maxwell and the teenager would “engage in sex acts with Epstein”. Within a year of meeting her, Epstein was sexually abusing her and Maxwell was “present for and involved in some of this abuse”.

Maxwell is said to have met another alleged victim in London. Prosecutors say Maxwell “groomed and befriended her”, knowing that she was under the age of 18, and encouraged her “to massage Epstein, knowing that Epstein would engage in sex acts with [her] during those massages”.

Another alleged victim was added to the case in March, broadening its time frame from the mid-90s to include a period from 2001 to 2004. Prosecutors said Maxwell had met her when she was 14 and “groomed her” by discussing sexual topics in front of her. They say she was required to give Epstein massages at his mansion in Palm Beach and was paid hundreds of dollars each time, sometimes by Maxwell. They say both Epstein and Maxwell encouraged her “to recruit other young females to provide sexualised massages to Epstein”.

Maxwell’s lawyers, in a pre-trial motion, argue that the alleged victim “did not identify Ms Maxwell as someone who recruited her, groomed her, or otherwise interacted with her in Palm Beach, Florida, or any other location”. They add that she identified another person “as someone she interacted with and who took nude photographs of her at Mr Epstein’s direction” and that lawsuits she later filed against Epstein do not mention Maxwell. They say she only identified Maxwell from a series of photographs in June this year and that the method was unfair: Maxwell’s photograph differed from the others in that it looked like a mugshot, they say.

The new span of the case against Maxwell immediately raised questions that her friend, the Duke of York, would be mentioned during the trial, as it now covered a period in which one of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Giuffre, claims that she was “lent out” to Prince Andrew “for sexual purposes”. The duke denies the allegations.

Giuffre has filed a civil lawsuit against the duke, but she does not appear to be part of the case against Maxwell.

Jury selection is to begin today for a trial that could run until mid-January.

The Times