Ghislaine In The Dock For The Most Explosive Trial Of Decade

She’s armed with Harvey Weinstein’s expert and has set aside millions for the trial — but will that save the former socialite? As proceedings get under way, Daniel Bates reports from Manhattan

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At 9.30am New York time today, a woman known as inmate 02879-509 walked into courtroom 318 of the federal court in Manhattan. With US Marshals standing guard she stood to face distinguished judge Alison Nathan and confirm her name: Ghislaine Maxwell. What will happen over the next six weeks of Maxwell’s trial will determine the fate of a woman who is either the victim of an appalling act of prosecutorial mistreatment or one of most notorious child sex traffickers in modern times, depending on who you believe. Prosecutors claim that Maxwell was the top recruiter of underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein, the late billionaire paedophile she once dated. Maxwell claims she has been made a “substitute” for Epstein after he hanged himself in a New York prison in 2019, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

The trial is a mixture of power, sex and scandal which has spawned dozens of documentaries, podcasts, books and millions of words of newsprint. At the centre of it all is Maxwell, 59, the British socialite and daughter of the late and disgraced newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell. In the Nineties and early 2000s, the period that covers her alleged criminality, she was friends with Prince Andrew and flew round the world with Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.