Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell will serve a 20-year prison sentence after a Manhattan jury found her guilty of sex trafficking.
Before the turn of the decade, it was clear that the financier Jeffrey Epstein had been engaged in a long sex trafficking scheme that saw him provide a high-profile client list with access to underage girls.
But since he was found dead in his prison cell, the attention of law enforcers has turned to the woman who helped him arrange this network of sexual abuse, his ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.
And while the revelations from their respective cases have proved embarrassing for some of the more infamous people they’ve associated with , it seems that the consequences for this long-term criminal enterprise are now resting squarely on Maxwell’s shoulders.
Although Epstein facilitated and was known to perpetrate the sexual abuse experienced by the girls caught up in his web, prosecutors and victims made it clear that Maxwell’s role in this enterprise was significant.
The Guardian reported that these survivors (which included Annie Farmer and anonymous women known as Jane, Kate and Carolyn) experienced abuse from Epstein and his clients when they were between the ages of 15 and 17, but that Maxwell was present for some of it.
And even when that wasn’t the case, it was always Maxwell who introduced them to Epstein.
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Based on her comments and handling of their bodies, it was clear to them that Maxwell had been scouting their suitability as involuntary sex workers.
Not only would she judge how appropriate their bodies were for this, but also compelled them to give massages after massage therapists had supposedly cancelled their appointments.
Judging by the graphic details of what would then happen, massages were never all those were supposed to be.
As another woman named Sarah Ransome said in her victim impact statement read in Manhattan federal court, “Maxwell is today the same woman I met almost 20 years ago — incapable of compassion or common human decency.”
For that reason, Maxwell was charged with multiple counts of sex trafficking, as well as a long list of other charges.
According to The Guardian , these included conspiracy to entice individuals under the age of 17 to travel in interstate commerce with intent to engage in illegal sexual activity.
In addition, there were similar charges relating to conspiring to transport and then actually transporting those individuals.
For these crimes, the prosecution recommended 30 to 55 years in prison, while her defense argued for a term under the 20-year sentence recommended by federal probation officials.
But after all was said and done, Maxwell would end up being sentenced to 20 years in prison after the jury found her guilty on the charges mentioned.
As Buzzfeed News reported, Judge Alison J. Nathan’s rationale for why the sentence she set fell below the government’s recommendations were that while Maxwell’s own crimes were “heinous and predatory,” any further prison time would be seen as an attempt to prosecute Epstein by proxy.
The judge didn’t feel as though Maxwell should be “punished in place of Epstein or as a proxy for Epstein.”
h/t: Buzzfeed News , The Guardian
