Ahead of receiving a 20-year prison sentence, Ghislaine Maxwell told the court she was a ‘victim of helping Jeffrey Epstein’ and that she empathizes ‘deeply’ with the young girls she was convicted of sex trafficking.
‘Your honor, it is hard for me to address the court after listening to the pain and anguish expressed today,’ Maxwell said in a New York City federal courthouse Tuesday.
The former British socialite took the stand after five of the women who accused her of helping Epstein abuse them between 1994 and 2004 delivered emotional statements to the court.
Maxwell noted that the impact on the lives of so many women was hard to hear, and that she wanted to ‘acknowledge their suffering.’
She then added: ‘I acknowledge with that I have been a victim of helping Jeffrey Epstein commit these crimes.’
‘I believe that Jeffrey Epstein was a manipulative, cunning and controlling man who lived a profoundly compartmentalized life and fooled all of those in his orbit,’ Maxwell said.
Maxwell then said that it should have been Epstein standing before them. Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell back in 2019 while awaiting his own sex trafficking trial.
‘He should have stood before you in 2005, again in 2009 and again in 2019. … All the many times he was accused, charged and prosecuted. but today it is not about Jeffrey Epstein ultimately,’ she said.
‘To you, all the victims … I am sorry for the pain that you experienced.’
Maxwell added that she hopes her ‘harsh conviction’ will bring the victims ‘pleasure.’
‘It is my sincerest wish to all those in this courtroom and to all those outside this courtroom that this day brings a terrible chapter to the end, to an end. And to those of you who spoke here today and those of you who did not, may this day help you travel from darkness into the light,’ she told the victims before concluding her statements.
After her statements, US District Judge Alison Nathan handed down a 20-year sentence and $750,000 fine, concluding that Maxwell ‘directly and repeatedly and over the course of many years participated in a horrific scheme’ to traffic and abuse girls.
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