Ghislaine to front jury over sex claims

After more than 500 days in jail on remand, pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell will attempt to convince a New York jury that she is innocent of child sex trafficking allegations.

The charges involve the recruitment and abuse of girls as young as 14 and, according to her own defence team, sex acts of a “morally reprehensible, or even repugnant” nature.

If she is convicted of all six charges, Maxwell, 59 (inset), faces more than 80 years behind bars and will almost certainly die in an American jail.

The trial, one of the most eagerly anticipated criminal cases in years, is to hear evidence from at least four women, including a former Londoner, who claim that they were victims of Maxwell from 1994 to 2004.

Maxwell’s lawyers will almost certainly seek to undermine the credibility of her accusers by claiming that they are motivated by money. Pre-trial court filings allege that the four women have received “millions of dollars” from a compensation fund set up for Epstein’s victims after the tycoon killed himself in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial.

Maxwell has claimed in the past that Annie Farmer, the only accuser to waive her right to anonymity, fabricated her allegations because of a “desire for cash”.

Farmer, a psychologist who says she was abused at Epstein’s ranch in New Mexico when she was 16, previously sued Maxwell and the late financier’s estate in civil proceedings. During that action, one of Maxwell’s lawyers wrote: “The fact that plaintiff seeks money from the estate and from Ms Maxwell in the millions of dollars at the same time she is a government witness in an upcoming criminal trial on the same topic is reason enough to suspect that her newly asserted memories of abuse without corroboration are not based on the truth or a desire for ‘justice’, so much as her desire for cash.” Farmer strongly rejects the claim.