It’s all Daddy’s fault, claims Ghislaine in plea for mercy
As socialite’s lawyers blame her downfall on traumatic upbringing...
GHISLAINE Maxwell has blamed her disgraced father and her shamed boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein for her downfall in a plea for mercy before she is sentenced for child sex crimes.
The privately educated British socialite says she had a ‘difficult, traumatic childhood with an overbearing, narcissistic, and demanding father’ – newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell.
This, her US lawyers say, made her ‘vulnerable to Epstein, whom she met right after her father’s death’ in 1991.
Playing the victim card before she is sentenced for sex trafficking on June 28, Maxwell, 60, also reveals that her late father – whom she spoke glowingly about after his death and who reportedly spoiled her – subjected her to corporal punishment during her childhood.
One incident she ‘vividly recalls’ happened when she was 13, when her furious father banged her hand with a hammer for tacking a picture of a pony on her bedroom wall.
Maxwell’s lawyers also say she and her siblings would receive regular dressing downs from their father at Sunday lunchtime, when he would put them ‘ on trial’ and then ‘explode, threaten and rant’ at them until they were ‘reduced to a pulp’.
Robert Maxwell also blocked her attempt to marry her first romantic interest because he disapproved of her engagement, it is said.
‘A family reconciliation coinciding with Ghislaine’s 20th birthday devolved ( sic) into a miserable Christmas. Mr Maxwell was at his absolute worst, making Ghislaine the scapegoat du jour,’ her lawyers write.
Maxwell’s lawyers said she had been the target of a ‘credible death threat’ from a fellow inmate who claims to have been offered money to ‘strangle’ her in her sleep.
They also asked the judge to disregard a probation department recommendation of a 20-year prison term for her sex trafficking conviction.
Calling for Maxwell to be jailed for barely four years for her crimes, they say she ‘is not an heiress, villain, or vapid socialite’.
‘She has worked hard her entire life. She has energy, drive, commitment, a strong work ethic, and desire to do good in the world.’
But Maxwell’s victims, many of whom are expected to be in court in New York to see her sentenced, are likely to be unhappy with the lack of an apology from their tormentor.
Maxwell, who declined to give evidence at her trial, intends to appeal against her convictions after she is sentenced. Her lawyers said she deserved leniency, calling it ‘a travesty of justice for her to face a sentence that would have been appropriate for Epstein’, who took his own life in 2019.
‘Epstein was the mastermind, Epstein was the principal abuser, and Epstein orchestrated the crimes for his personal gratification,’ the lawyers wrote.
‘Indeed, had Ghislaine Maxwell never had the profound misfortune of meeting Jeffrey Epstein over 30 years ago, she would not be here.’
Maxwell met financier Epstein shortly after her father died after falling off a yacht amid allegations he had illegally looted his businesses’ pension funds.
The sentencing submission also cast Maxwell as the sole target by US prosecutors to fill ‘Epstein’s empty chair’ after the tycoon’s suicide, saying four other women were named as co-conspirators or accomplices of Epstein during a prosecution of him in Florida over a decade ago, but charges were not pursued against any of them.
Prosecutors will submit their own arguments in advance of sentencing. Oxford-educated Maxwell was convicted in December of recruiting teenage girls for her and Epstein to sexually abuse.
‘A desire to do good in the world’