Ghislaine learning Russian in prison ‘to stay sane’

CONVICTED child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell is learning Russian behind bars, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The 60-year-old disgraced British socialite, whose lawyers launched an appeal for a retrial last week, is fluent in three other languages – French, Italian and Spanish – but is studying Russian ‘to maintain her sanity’.

Maxwell, who was found guilty last month of five counts of child sex trafficking and faces up to 65 years in jail when she is sentenced in June, is in solitary confinement at New York’s Metropolitan Detention Centre.

Teaching herself with CD course on a laptop

She is on suicide watch, allowed only paper clothing and is not allowed books. ‘She can’t even have a pen and paper,’ an insider said. ‘The conditions are appalling. She’s checked every 15 minutes throughout the day and night. They shine a flashlight into her cell all night which makes it impossible to sleep.’

The prison governor lets her use a laptop for a few hours a day to learn Russian using a CD language course. The source added: ‘It’s helping her to keep her mind focused. Studying is helping maintain her sanity.’

Maxwell was convicted of recruiting girls for paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself in jail in 2019.

Her lawyers claim she was prosecuted ‘by proxy’ for his crimes, and want a retrial after two jurors admitted using their own experience of being sexually abused to sway other jurors.