Maxwell: I do flush the loo frequently
GHISLAINE Maxwell has denied not flushing the toilet in her jail cell – insisting that she does so ‘frequently’.
The UK socialite, 59, who is accused of procuring girls for paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, said she flushes it often ‘to avoid plumbing problems’, as directed by her guards.
Maxwell said through a letter from her lawyer that if the toilet pipes go unused ‘gases escape from the drains’ which cause a ‘pervasive stench’. She blamed the smell at the detention centre in New York on overflowing toilets in the cell block above hers.
The letter from lawyer Bobbi Sternheim came the day after prosecutors alleged Maxwell’s cell stank because she did not flush the toilet.
They claimed that guards ordered Maxwell to clean her cell ‘in response to the smell and the dirtiness’. The dispute marks a bizarre escalation in a row about conditions in prison since the daughter of crooked newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell was arrested last year.
In the letter, Miss Sternheim said problems with the smell at Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn ‘long pre-date’ Maxwell’s stay.
She quipped that she wanted to ‘flush out the persistent unsanitary conditions at the MDC’ and wrote: ‘At times the stench in Miss Maxwell’s isolation cell has been overwhelming.’
Miss Sternheim added that ‘to suggest she willingly lives in squalor is absurd’ and alleged that guards use cleaning as a ‘punishment’.
She wrote: ‘The MDC – especially the East Building where Miss Maxwell is held – is permeated with mould and vermin.’
Maxwell denies bringing underage girls to Epstein and committing perjury. Wealthy Epstein, 66, an ex-boyfriend of Maxwell, was arrested in 2019 for sex trafficking of minors. He died in jail in what was deemed to be suicide.