Was Maxwell an Epstein enabler or just a pawn?
Ghislaine Maxwell spent the first half of her life with her father, a ragsto-riches billionaire who looted his companies’ pension funds and died mysteriously. She spent the second with another tycoon, Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself while charged with sexually abusing teens.
After a life of scandal and luxury, Maxwell’s next act will be decided by a U.S. trial.
Starting today, prosecutors in New York will argue that Maxwell, 59, abetted Epstein’s crimes with girls as young as 14. A key question: Was Maxwell an unwitting pawn of Epstein’s manipulations or a knowing opportunist?
Ian Maxwell said his sister is paying “a blood price” to a justice system intent on holding someone responsible for Epstein’s crimes.
Ghislaine Maxwell, 59, grew up in a 51-room English country mansion where high-society parties were punctuated by trumpeters and fireworks.
Her father, born Jan Ludvik Hoch, was born to Yiddish-speaking parents in what is now southwestern Ukraine. Escaping the Holocaust, he ultimately joined the British Army and transformed himself into Robert Maxwell.
Maxwell built on his military connections to found a publishing empire that ultimately included the British tabloid The Daily Mirror, the New York Daily News and the book publisher Macmillan.
While at the University of Oxford, Ghislaine Maxwell began building high-profile contacts. She later worked for her father and became his U.S. emissary after he bought the Daily News.
Later that year, Robert Maxwell fell off his yacht and drowned in what some saw as an accident and others a suicide. Investors would discover his wealth was an illusion: He had diverted millions of pounds from pension funds to prop up his empire.
Soon after his death, Ghislaine Maxwell was photographed sitting next to Epstein during a memorial.
In sworn testimony for an earlier civil case, Ghislaine Maxwell acknowledged she dated Epstein but said she later became his employee.
In 2005, Epstein was arrested in Palm Beach, Florida, accused of hiring multiple underage girls to perform sex acts. He pleaded guilty to a charge of procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and served 13 months in jail.
Years of civil litigation followed, in which women accused Epstein and Maxwell of sexual abuse. Prosecutors charged Epstein with sex trafficking in 2019, but he killed himself in jail before trial.
The indictment against Maxwell is based on accusations from four women who say she recruited them to give Epstein massages that progressed into sexual abuse. Maxwell sometimes participated in the sexual encounters and was involved in paying at least one accuser, prosecutors allege.
Maxwell has remained mostly silent about the Epstein allegations, but in a 2016 deposition, she said she learned about them “like everybody else, like the rest of the world, when it was announced in the papers.’’
With Epstein gone and no apparent recordings of alleged incidents, a jury will soon decide who it believes.