Ghislaine is running half-marathons and doing Pilates in jail – and even hopes a hearing next week may see her FREED
The Daily Mail talks to disgraced socialite’s ever-loyal brother Ian Maxwell and reveals . . .
THE last time Ian Maxwell saw his sister, Ghislaine, was a month ago and she was looking ‘really good’, he says. ‘She looked and sounded absolutely like the sister I know. Her hair is dark and glossy, her complexion is good and she’s keeping fit.’
This new-found vigour and ebullience is partly down to regular Pilates and yoga sessions, alongside a regimented, long-distance running schedule. Her most recent race was a gruelling half-marathon (13.1 miles), an impressive feat for anyone, but all the more so for a 62-year-old — especially one who’s spent the past three and a half years in jail.
The race took place recently at Tallahassee low security prison in Florida, where Ghislaine is serving a 20-year sentence for conspiring with her ex-boyfriend, the disgraced late financier Jeffrey Epstein, to recruit, groom and sexually abuse underage girls.
She competed alongside 19 other inmates — ‘white collar’ criminals, fraudsters and those serving time for drug offences — running multiple laps of the prison yard.
It was an event organised by prison staff to make the environment ‘more liveable’ for detainees. And, while it’s not known where she ranked at the finishing line, Ghislaine is unlikely to have been lagging at the back.
For Ghislaine is, as everyone who’s been in contact with her for the past few months agrees, feeling cautiously optimistic and totally focused on her hearing at the U.S. Court of Appeal in New York on Tuesday.
In an exclusive interview with the Mail, businessman Ian Maxwell, 68, one of Ghislaine’s six surviving siblings, all of them children of the notorious media magnate Robert Maxwell and his French-born academic wife Elisabeth, describes how he talks often with his sister via video link.
HE DISPUTES reports that her incarceration has left her bitter, beaten and withdrawn. Nothing could be further from the truth, he says. Her spirit is ‘undimmed’.
‘She’s strong and resilient and I hope her appeal succeeds because she still has much to offer and much to do and I hope she’ll be given that opportunity,’ he says.
It’s a ringing endorsement by a loving and loyal brother ahead of Ghislaine’s bid to clear her name and secure her freedom.
However, it’s unlikely to cut much ice with the dozens of girls and young women who were victims of the sex trafficking ring orchestrated by her and the millionaire businessman Epstein.
As we all know, the sordid enterprise led to Epstein’s mysterious ‘suicide’ in prison in 2019, Ghislaine’s arrest the following year, and their associate and friend Prince Andrew’s disgrace and withdrawal from royal public life.
Few will forget the infamous photograph of Andrew taken in 2001, his arm round the waist of accuser Virginia Guiffre, with a smiling Ghislaine in the background.
Guiffre went on to accuse Epstein and Ghislaine of trafficking her, aged 16, under the guise of hiring her as a massage therapist, and later being paid to have sex with the Prince — something he has always vehemently denied.
The appeal is certainly another landmark in the extraordinary case of a woman who was once feted in society circles worldwide, but whose downfall was meeting, and falling for, the sinister and captivating Jeffrey Epstein.
‘It is not an edifying story,’ agrees her brother. ‘Epstein was not a pleasant man and Ghislaine is on record as saying the greatest regret of her life is that she ever met him or went with him. But it’s in the past and we’ve got to concentrate on the future.’
The thrust of Ghislaine’s appeal centres on two main issues, according to her lawyer Arthur Aidala, who is also representing Harvey Weinstein in his appeal to overturn his rape conviction.
First, there was a plea deal, agreed with Epstein back in 2008, when he first faced charges of procuring underage girls for prostitution, which should have prevented anyone else facing court for his crimes. Second, a problem with a juror has come to light which her defence team argues should render her conviction unsafe. ‘When Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty in Florida and got eight months in jail, there was a document submitted by the Department of Justice which said if he pleaded guilty neither he nor anyone considered a co-conspirator or an accomplice would be charged,’ Aidala told the Mail.
‘Ghislaine should have been covered by that and should not have been charged. It was a violation of a non-prosecution agreement.’
The second issue, Aidala explains, relates to a jury member who disclosed in media interviews after the verdict that he had been a victim of sexual assault. ‘He failed to disclose during jury selection that he had been a victim of childhood sexual abuse and he shouldn’t have been on the jury.’
Ian Maxwell puts the heart of the appeal more succinctly. ‘She didn’t get a fair shake-down,’ he says. And her 20-year sentence, he adds, was ‘savage’.
Ghislaine is, according to her lawyer, totally invested in her appeal and has a strong grasp of the legal issues. When he travelled from New York to consult with her in person two weeks ago, Aidala says he found her with a ‘pile of paperwork, 2ft to 3ft tall’ which she knew inside out. ‘It was
transcripts from the trials, the motion papers, the judge’s decision, other cases that are in her favour — she really knows her stuff,’ he says. ‘She knows the intricacies of the issues. She’s an absolute pleasure to work with.
‘When you talk to her, it’s basically like speaking to a fellow attorney — she knows the ins and outs, the strong points and the weak points.
‘She doesn’t have rose-coloured glasses on. She knows it’s an uphill battle to get an appellate court to overturn a verdict, especially one that has already received a lot of publicity, but she has a very positive attitude.
‘It’s unusual for someone to have such a grasp of a complex case like this. But she’s focused and motivated and that motivates us. It definitely puts fire in our belly.’
Ghislaine, who was privately educated at the Princess of Wales’s old school, Marlborough College, and studied modern history at Oxford University, was convicted of sex trafficking teenagers and of multiple counts of conspiracy after a month-long trial in New York in 2021.
JUrOrS heard how she’d procured girls as young as 14 for her former boyfriend and boss, with victims describing how they were lured by her into Epstein’s circle to be sexually abused by him and by his powerful friends.
Ghislaine, however, denied all knowledge of Epstein’s crimes. Speaking at her sentencing, she described Epstein as a ‘manipulative, cunning and controlling man’ who fooled everyone in his orbit, including her. She said she was ‘sorry’ for the pain his victims experienced. ‘It is the greatest regret of my life that I ever met Jeffrey Epstein,’ she said.
The case was widely seen as the reckoning that Epstein — who apparently killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019, aged 66, while awaiting his own sex trafficking trial — never had.
Ghislaine was initially held at the Metropolitan Detention Center, in New York, where her lawyers complained that conditions were ‘reprehensible’. They claimed Ghislaine was subjected to such invasive surveillance that it ‘rivals scenes of Dr Hannibal Lecter’s incarceration’ from the film The Silence of the Lambs.
They also alleged that she was deprived of water, fed food infested with maggots, and held in a ratinfested, and sewage-swamped cell, where guards prevented her from sleeping.
‘She was without doubt tortured when she was in there,’ says her brother. ‘She was in isolation, she had to stay in the middle of a very small cell with no natural darkness. Lights were shone on her face every 15 minutes, allegedly to ensure that she had not somehow injured herself, which was absurd. That process went on for something like 16 to 18 months.
‘When she was brought to trial, she was in four-point shackles, so had to shuffle along. I don’t think she was in a fit state to face trial.’
Life improved somewhat in July 2022, however, when she was moved to the low-security Tallahassee jail in Florida. Although a step up, it is hardly Club Med, says Aidala. ‘It’s a horrible place and nobody would ever call it cushy,’ he says. ‘Even for the people who work there, it’s a tough environment to be in.’
Government inspectors found mouldy bread, rotting food, rodents, and leaks in windows and ceilings plugged with sanitary towels, according to a recent Justice Department watchdog report.
There have, however, been reports that Ghislaine — or prisoner 02879-509 as she’s officially known — has managed to carve a liveable existence for herself.
ALONGSIDE the exercise classes, running races and preparing for her appeal, she works in the prison library. Fluent in four languages, she has also managed to forge allegiances with fellow cons by helping those with poor English with their legal paperwork.
Ghislaine will not be in court on Tuesday, when a panel of three judges will listen to arguments from both her legal team and the prosecution.
Any decision will not be known for weeks or even months, and could go in any direction. If the judges accept that she was covered by the non-prosecution document, she could be released.
If they accept that the juror should not have been on the jury, they could order a retrial, meaning she could apply for bail while she awaits another court date. Or it could be that her appeal is denied in all respects, and she stays in Tallahassee.
In that case, her earliest possible release date is July 2037, when she will be 76. A source in New York says Ghislaine’s former society friends will be watching the appeal process with interest.
‘She remains an unsympathetic figure in social circles in New York and London,’ says the source. ‘People are hurt and disappointed by what they see as her deceitful and illegal behaviour. She’s dead in social circles. Nobody is waiting to hear from her. She’s not on anybody’s A-list.’
Famed New York publicist and gossip columnist r. Couri Hay says: ‘Although Ghislaine Maxwell is still a topic of discussion in London and New York social circles, there’s not, to my knowledge, a long line of people making the trip to Florida to see her in prison.
‘People are always going to be curious about Ghislaine because what happened remains a huge scandal in social circles. They will be interested in the outcome of her appeal and to see if she does drop the other stiletto on Prince Andrew or on any other of her powerful and famous male friends.’
SO IS that a realistic prospect? Should Prince Andrew be nervous about the outcome of Tuesday’s appeal hearing?
‘I don’t think my sister has anything to say on this subject at all,’ says her brother, discreetly. ‘She is where she is. He is where he is. And, right now, she’s solely focused on this appeal.
‘Andrew...he must get on with his life as best he can.
‘The only thing that one could say is that the common accuser of both Ghislaine and Andrew is Virginia Giuffre and it is a fact that she has not appeared in a court to be cross-examined on the many, many inconsistencies in her account over the years — from her age to whom she allegedly had sexual relations with. None of that has been put to the test in a cross-examination.
‘If this woman was so credible, why wasn’t she deployed at my sister’s trial?
‘I can’t account for why Andrew paid what he paid,’ says Ian. (In 2022, Prince Andrew settled, with no admission of liability, a civil claim brought by Guiffre, paying an undisclosed amount to her and to a charity she set up to help victims of sex trafficking.)
‘There are many views — that he was compelled, that he didn’t want to embarrass his mother. It’s done. He’s paying a hell of a price. He’s been cancelled — there’s no other way of looking at it.’
Ghislaine is the only person who has been charged and imprisoned, but many people believe there were other female enablers in Epstein’s circle, along with famous and powerful men who were involved in the abuse and have not faced charges.
‘As a family, we are concerned about Ghislaine and not concerned about other people who might be arrested and brought to book,’ says her brother.
‘We are hopeful the appeal will succeed and Ghislaine will get a result. I would love to see her back in the UK. She is my younger sister and she has been coping with an extraordinarily difficult ordeal. I miss her very much.’
But what of a memoir? Could we be seeing Ghislaine’s prison diaries hitting the bookshops if she’s released in coming months?
Ian laughs and says he has not discussed any book with his sister: ‘All I can say is that if she did come to write it, it would be an interesting memoir, no question.’
No question indeed.