MAXWELL MUST FACE HER FATE BEHIND BARS
Robert Maxwell was a crook who was so desperate to beat Rupert Murdoch in the media mogul stakes that he stole £440 million from the Mirror’s pension fund. When he failed to prop up his ailing businesses, and realised he was about to be publicly disgraced, he chucked himself off his yacht, leaving others to pick up the pieces.
They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Thirty years on, his youngest daughter, Ghislaine, is behind bars awaiting sentencing in Brooklyn, New York, convicted of sex-trafficking minors for the billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
The new BBC documentary series House of Maxwell has highlighted – yet again – the extraordinary things that the rich and privileged somehow get away with for years.
Ghislaine was 30 when she moved to America to escape the shame of her father’s crimes. A fully-fledged grown-up, who was responsible for her choices.
Being rich and powerful was everything to her, so she hooked up with her father’s former business associate Epstein, and set about organising him scores and scores of young girls, while he provided the lifestyle she craved.
The notion that she didn’t know what she was doing is utter nonsense.
Using well-worn lies about how her rich friend could further their careers, she lured girl after girl – some as young as 14 – into situations where Epstein could abuse them.
Her posh English accent and expensive clothes made them feel they could trust her. Epstein, who took his own life in jail while awaiting trial in 2019, simply couldn’t have done it without her.
A US judge has just refused her bid for a retrial after one of the jurors in the original one failed to disclose he’d been abused as a child. Ghislaine Maxwell needs to be sentenced, as expected, in June. She deserves to go to prison for a very long time.
The only shame is that Epstein, just like her dad, evaded justice.