British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, accused of serving to procure underage women for disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse, returns to courtroom Monday to face expenses that might deliver as much as 80 years in jail.
Maxwell, 59, has spent the final 16 months awaiting trial in solitary confinement on the Metropolitan Detention Middle in Brooklyn. Final week she was denied bail for the fourth time, regardless of claims from her attorneys that she has been subjected to bodily and emotional abuse by jail guards, unsanitary dwelling circumstances and inedible meals.
Prosecutors dismissed the claims as “rhetoric and anecdotes higher suited to tabloids than briefs. The place authorized arguments may be discovered, they’re cursory and unpersuasive.”
Maxwell pressed her claims additional in an interview with the Daily Mail printed Saturday.
“I’ve been assaulted and abused for nearly a yr and a half,” she advised the British tabloid. “They feed me rotten meals. One apple had maggots in it.”
The death of Jeffrey Epstein: Fact, fiction, confusion and a warden reassigned
She described a “pleasant rat” that routinely sat subsequent to her on an open sewer as she went to the bathroom.
“I advised the guards, however nothing was carried out till the rat popped out and charged a guard, who screamed in terror,” Maxwell stated. “Lastly, the sewer drain was coated.”
Kristie Breshears, a spokeswoman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, advised USA TODAY that for privateness, security and safety causes she couldn’t talk about circumstances of confinement for a specific inmate. However she wrote in an e-mail that the bureau “takes allegations of workers misconduct critically.”
“Incidents of potential prison exercise or misconduct inside BOP services are completely investigated for potential administrative self-discipline or prison prosecution,” Breshears wrote.
Maxwell additionally advised the Day by day Mail she was “terrified the overwhelmingly damaging protection will poison my jury pool” and lead to a responsible verdict regardless of proof she stated proved her innocence.
“I stay up for having my day in courtroom to show I performed no half in Epstein’s crimes,” she stated. “I’m harmless.”
Epstein, 66, was indicted in July 2019, accused of sexually exploiting and abusing dozens of underage women at his mansions in Manhattan, Palm Seashore, Florida, and elsewhere from the Nineties to 2005. The fees, together with intercourse trafficking and conspiracy, may have landed Epstein in jail for many years. However he killed himself in his Manhattan prison cell a month later.
Prince Andrew won’t face any action from British police following sexual assault allegations
Maxwell was arrested in July 2020 on expenses that embody transporting a minor for the needs of prison sexual exercise and conspiring to entice minors to journey to have interaction in unlawful intercourse acts. Maxwell, who denies the accusations, has been in custody ever since.
“Maxwell was amongst Epstein’s closest associates and helped him exploit women who had been as younger as 14 years previous,” stated Audrey Strauss, appearing U.S. lawyer for the Southern District of New York, on the time.
Jury choice in her case begins in earnest this week in a Manhattan federal courtroom, with opening statements tentatively set for Nov. 29. Choose Alison Nathan has repeatedly rejected a proposed $28.5 million bail package deal, saying Maxwell was a flight danger.
The Epstein-Maxwell saga has reached into British royalty. Police introduced final month, nonetheless, that they are going to not take action against Prince Andrew after a evaluate prompted by an Epstein accuser who claims the prince sexually assaulted her.
Virginia Giuffre claims she was trafficked by Epstein to have intercourse with Andrew in London in 2001, when she was 17 and a minor underneath U.S. legislation. She is suing the prince, who has denied the declare.
The Maxwell household has lengthy been headline information in Britain. Maxwell’s father, Czech-born British media baron Robert Maxwell, fell to his dying from a yacht in November 1991. Weeks later it got here to mild that he had raided his firm pension funds to prop up his sagging monetary empire.
Two of Ghislaine Maxwell’s brothers, Ian and Kevin, had been later acquitted of fraud expenses for his or her alleged roles of their father’s firms.
Contributing: The Related Press
