NEW YORK — A judge on Friday declined to overturn former British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking conviction for aiding in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of teenage girls.
Manhattan Federal Court Judge Alison Nathan upheld Maxwell’s Dec. 29 conviction on three out of five counts. She found that federal prosecutors proved at trial that Maxwell engaged in a decadelong scheme with the deceased financier to groom minors for his sexual abuse.
“(The) jury’s guilty verdicts were supported by the witness testimony and documentary evidence presented at trial,” reads Nathan’s order.
A jury heard from four women during the monthlong trial who said Maxwell arranged for them to be sexually abused by Epstein, usually under the guise of therapeutic massages, starting when they were as young as 14.
Nathan said that the jury reasonably concluded Maxwell guilty of transporting a minor for sex, even though she wasn’t found to have traveled with the teen. The charge carries up to 40 years in prison.
“On one occasion when she was fifteen, (the victim) recounted, she had trouble getting on a commercial flight because she did not have proper identification. However, (Maxwell) ‘made it happen’ for her by making a call and helping her get on the flight,” the judge wrote.
“Jane also testified that (Maxwell) was present on some occasions when Epstein sexually abused Jane in New York when she was under the age of seventeen,” Nathan’s ruling continues. “The Court concludes that this evidence, taken together, was sufficient for the jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that (Maxwell) knowingly transported Jane to New York with the intent to engage in sexual activity illegal under New York law, or at minimum, aided and abetted Epstein in doing so.”
Nathan found three counts against Maxwell covered the same conduct and said she would affirm just one of them. The minor victory could reduce the time the one-time darling of New York’s high society gets when the judge sentences her in June.
Prosecutors at trial described the Oxford-educated daughter of a publishing mogul as a “sophisticated predator” whose presence served to silence alarm bells that might otherwise go off when a middle-aged man is interested in teenage girls.
Former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump and Britain's Prince Andrew were among the influential figures whose names came up during witness testimony. The queen’s second son has since settled with prominent Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre, who says Epstein and Maxwell forced her to sleep with him in 2001 when she was being trafficked for sex.
Maxwell has been detained at the federal jail in Brooklyn since her summer 2020 arrest. Epstein, 66, killed himself inside a jail cell at the now-shuttered Metropolitan Correctional Center in August 2019, a month after his arrest on sex trafficking charges.
Maxwell’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment.
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