The defense of Ghislaine Maxwell, tried in New York for sex trafficking, sought Thursday to discredit an alleged victim of this former British socialite who was the partner of American financier Jeffrey Epstein, accused of sex crimes and died in prison in 2019.
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Before the jury in Manhattan Federal Court, Ms. Maxwell’s lawyers began calling witnesses, hoping to convince their client that their client played no criminal role with the wealthy Epstein.
Ghislaine Maxwell, 59, – British, American and French and daughter of press mogul Robert Maxwell – is accused of providing from 1994 to 2004 to her former companion and collaborator underage girls so that he could exploit them sexually.
The one who is accused of being a “tout” has been detained in New York since the summer of 2020, a year after the suicide in prison of the financier, who had deprived dozens of victims of trial. She pleads not guilty to all counts, for which she faces life imprisonment.
She has not expressed herself once at her trial, where she seems rather at ease, in particular by exchanging with her lawyers.
The latter had Cimberly Espinosa, 55, testify in the morning, who was recruited in 1996 as an assistant to Epstein’s legal team, before working after a month with Ms Maxwell until 2002.
Ms Espinosa tried to discredit one of the four alleged victims of Epstein who was the first to testify on November 30 under the pseudonym “Jane” by recounting that she was coaxed at the age of 14 by the couple Epstein-Maxwell , before he sexually abuses her.
According to Ms. Espinosa, “Jane” came to Epstein’s office regularly, and her “relationship” with the financier fell under the “love” register.
Still according to the same testimony, the mother and the brothers of “Jane” were also frequently invited at Epstein’s, in particular in Manhattan, the young girl being regarded as member of “the family” and treated “with the greatest respect”.
At the time, did the Epstein-Maxwell couple behave inappropriately towards minors? “Never,” Ms. Espinosa said.
“Jane” had told the Manhattan court of the sexual assaults she said she had been the victim of by the couple from 1994: “I was frozen with fear (…), I was terrified and I felt disgusting. I was ashamed, ”she testified, often in tears.
Ms. Maxwell’s defense also brought in a psychologist specializing in “truncated memories”, Elizabeth Loftus, who noted that the victims’ testimonies were a quarter of a century old and therefore likely to be inaccurate.
“The older the event, the more likely people are to have impaired memory,” said the psychologist who testified at the Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby sex crimes trials.
Four women – “Jane”, “Kate”, “Carolyn” and Annie Farmer, 42, the only one to speak without a pseudonym – have exposed in the last two weeks part of their lives damaged by sex they say constraints with Epstein, while they were minor and often in the presence of Ghislaine Maxwell.
Annie Farmer recounted the same scenario as the three other women: a warm first meeting with Mrs. Maxwell who proposed to these 14 to 17-year-old girls, fragile and penniless, to meet Epstein under the pretext of helping them financially.
After a first invitation to a villa in Palm Beach (Florida), New Mexico or New York, the young girls were encouraged by Ms. Maxwell to undress, then to give Epstein massages which ended irreparably in sexual acts. .
Relationships have for some lasted for years with the couple, and one of the witnesses revealed that she was paid $ 300 for each act of sex.
The main argument of Ms Maxwell’s lawyers is that their client is appearing only because the real culprit, Jeffrey Epstein, committed suicide in prison in the summer of 2019, aged 66.
The multimillionaire was convicted in Florida in 2008 for paying young girls for massages. But he had only served 13 months in prison following a confidential agreement with the prosecutor at the time.
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