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Ghislaine Maxwell to be sentenced in Epstein sex abuse case

Published

3 years ago

8 minute read

NEW YORK (AP) — Ghislaine Maxwell, the jet-setting socialite who once consorted with royals, presidents and billionaires, is set to be sentenced Tuesday for helping the wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse underage girls.

The 11 a.m. sentencing in New York is the culmination of a prosecution that detailed how the power couple flaunted their riches and prominent connections to lure vulnerable girls as young as 14, and then exploit them.

Prosecutors said Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial, sexually abused children hundreds of times over more than a decade, and couldn’t have done so without the help of Maxwell, his longtime companion and onetime girlfriend.

“Maxwell’s conduct was shockingly predatory. She was a calculating, sophisticated, and dangerous criminal who preyed on vulnerable young girls and groomed them for sexual abuse,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

In December, a jury convicted Maxwell of sex trafficking, transporting a minor to participate in illegal sex acts and two conspiracy charges. Prosecutors say she deserves 30 to 55 years in prison.

Maxwell, 60, has denied abusing anyone. Her lawyers have asked U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan to impose a sentence of no more than five years.

“The witnesses at trial testified about Ms. Maxwell’s facilitation of Epstein’s abuse, but Epstein was always the central figure: Epstein was the mastermind, Epstein was the principal abuser, and Epstein orchestrated the crimes for his personal gratification,” they wrote in a court filing.

Epstein and Maxwell’s associations with some of the world’s most famous people were not a prominent part of the trial, but mentions of friends like Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Britain’s Prince Andrew showed how the pair exploited their connections to impress their prey.

Over the past 17 years, scores of women have accused Epstein of abusing them. Many described Maxwell as acting as a madam who recruited them to give massages to Epstein.

The trial, though, revolved around allegations from only a handful of those women.

Four testified that they were abused as teens in the 1990s and early 2000s at Epstein’s mansions in Florida, New York, New Mexico and the Virgin Islands.

Three were identified in court only by their first names or pseudonyms to protect their privacy: Jane, a television actress; Kate, an ex-model from the U.K.; and Carolyn, now a mom recovering from drug addiction. The fourth was Annie Farmer, who identified herself in court by her real name after speaking out publicly.

They described how Maxwell charmed them with conversation and gifts and promises that Epstein could use his wealth and connections to help fulfill their dreams.

Then, they testified, she led them to give massages to Epstein that turned sexual and played it off as normal.

Carolyn testified that she was one of several underprivileged teens who lived near Epstein’s Florida home in the early 2000s and took up an offer to massage him in exchange for $100 bills in what prosecutors described as “a pyramid of abuse.”

Maxwell made all the arrangements, Carolyn told the jury, even though she knew the girl was only 14 at the time.

The allegations against Epstein first surfaced publicly in 2005. He pleaded guilty to sex charges in Florida and served 13 months in jail, much of it in a work-release program as part of a deal criticized as lenient. Afterward, he was required to register as a sex offender.

In the years that followed, many women sued Epstein over alleged abuse. One, Virginia Giuffre, claimed that Epstein and Maxwell had also pressured her into sexual trysts with other powerful men, including Prince Andrew. All of those men denied the allegations and Giuffre ultimately settled a lawsuit against Andrew out of court.

Federal prosecutors in New York revived the case against Epstein after stories by the Miami Herald in 2018 brought new attention to his crimes. He was arrested in 2019, but killed himself a month later.

Eleven months later after his death, Maxwell was arrested at a New Hampshire estate. A U.S., British and French citizen, she has remained in a federal jail in New York City since then as her lawyers repeatedly criticize her treatment, saying she was even unjustly placed under suicide watch days before sentencing. Prosecutors say the claims about the jail are exaggerated and that Maxwell has been treated better than other prisoners.

Her lawyers also fought to have her conviction tossed on the grounds of juror misconduct.

Days after the verdict, one juror gave media interviews in which he disclosed he had been sexually abused as a child — something he hadn’t told the court during jury selection. Maxwell’s lawyers said she deserved a new trial. A judge disagreed.

At least eight women have submitted letters to the judge, describing the sexual abuse they said they endured for having met Maxwell and Epstein. Four of them plan to make oral statements at sentencing, including two women — Annie Farmer and Kate — who testified at the trial.

In letters to the judge, six of Maxwell’s seven living siblings pleaded for leniency.

Anne Holve and Philip Maxwell, her eldest siblings, wrote that her relationship with Epstein began soon after the 1991 death of their father, the British newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell.

They said Robert Maxwell had subjected her daughter to “frequent rapid mood swings, huge rages and rejections.”

“This led her to becoming very vulnerable to abusive and powerful men who would be able to take advantage of her innate good nature,” they wrote.

Prosecutors called Maxwell’s shifting of blame to Epstein “absurd and offensive.”

“Maxwell was an adult who made her own choices,” they wrote to the court. “She made the choice to sexually exploit numerous underage girls. She made the choice to conspire with Epstein for years, working as partners in crime and causing devastating harm to vulnerable victims. She should be held accountable for her disturbing role in an extensive child exploitation scheme.”

Larry Neumeister And Tom Hays, The Associated Press

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conflict

Hamas, Palestinians paraded dead babies coffins through streets before handover to Israel

Published on February 22, 2025

By

MXM logo  MxM News

Quick Hit:

Hamas paraded the caskets of Israeli hostages, including what they claimed were the bodies of a mother and two young children, through the streets of Gaza before handing them over to the Red Cross. Videos show crowds cheering as armed terrorists carried the coffins as part of a prisoner exchange with Israel.

Key Details:

  • Videos from Khan Younis, Gaza, show Hamas and other terrorists parading four caskets, including those of two young children, before handing them to the Red Cross.
  • Crowds cheered as the terrorists, armed and unmasked, carried the coffins, with celebratory music playing in the background.
  • The deceased were identified as members of the Bibas family, including the youngest hostages from the October 7 attack.

 

Diving Deeper:

During a ceremony in Khan Younis, Gaza, Hamas paraded the caskets of Israeli hostages through the streets, including what they claimed were the bodies of a mother and her two small children. The display occurred before the remains were handed over to the Red Cross as part of a prisoner exchange agreement with Israel. Crowds of Gazans were seen cheering and celebrating as the coffins were carried by armed terrorists.

Videos from the event show masked militants loading a casket into a Red Cross aid truck, while another militant, adorned with symbols of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, filmed the procession. Another video shows adults and children waving and celebrating as Hamas fighters, armed and in trucks, paraded through the streets. Reuters footage also captured members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLFP) helping carry a casket, highlighting the involvement of multiple terrorist factions in the display.

Hamas presented the bodies as those of the Bibas family, who were captured during the October 7 attack. The children, aged four years and less than one year, were among the youngest hostages taken during the brutal assault that triggered the ongoing 15-month conflict. The fourth body was identified as 83-year-old Oded Lifshitz, according to Jewish News Syndicate. Hamas has repeatedly blamed the deaths on Israeli airstrikes, though no evidence was provided to support the claim.

Israel and Hamas are currently observing a temporary ceasefire agreement, facilitating the exchange of civilian hostages for Palestinian prisoners. Despite the ceasefire, Hamas has continued to celebrate the October 7 attacks, which resulted in the largest mass killing of Jewish people since the Holocaust. During the ceremony, a stage displayed a poster depicting Israel as a “Nazi Army,” underscoring Hamas’s longstanding agenda of hostility towards the Jewish state.

The shocking parade of caskets, accompanied by celebratory music and cheering crowds, has drawn international condemnation and further underscored the brutal nature of Hamas’s actions. As the exchange process continues, the emotional toll on the families of the victims remains immeasurable.

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Health

RFK Jr: There’s no medical justification for vaccinating one-day-old babies for Hepatitis B

Published on February 22, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

‘Hepatitis B is sexually transmitted from having sex with multiple partners in gay sex, or from sex workers, or intravenous drug use,’ explained the new HHS head. ‘Why would you give that to a baby?’

In a widely-viewed video shared on social media, the new U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., asserted that the majority of vaccines — including those he sees as unjustifiably being mandated for infants — have been developed primarily to create profits for Big Pharma.    

“Most of the vaccines after 1989 were added not for public health reasons but for pharmaceutical profit reasons,” said Kennedy.    

“Why are we vaccinating one-day-old babies for Hepatitis B?” he asked. 

“Hepatitis B is sexually transmitted from having sex with multiple partners in gay sex, or from sex workers, or intravenous drug use,” he said, reemphasizing, “Why would you give that to a baby?” 

According to Kennedy, Pharmaceutical giant Merck was directed by both the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) to develop the Hepatitis B vaccine for “those vulnerable populations.”    

He explained that when those populations showed little interest in the vaccine, “Merck went back to the agencies and said ‘You told us to develop this vaccine, but nobody’s buying it.”  

“The CDC said, ‘Don’t worry’” recounted Kennedy, “we’ll just recommend it for children and we’ll force everybody to buy it.”     

“So, that’s how it got on the [childhood vaccine] schedule,” he said, declaring, “There’s no medical justification.”   

There’s no downstream liability, there’s no front-end safety testing – that saves them a quarter billion dollars – and there’s no marketing and advertising costs, because the federal government is ordering 78 million school kids to take that vaccine every year.  

What better product could you have? And so there was a gold rush to add all these new vaccines to the schedule that we don’t need. Most of these vaccines are unnecessary. Many of them are for diseases that are not even casually contagious.  

It was a gold rush, because if you get onto that schedule, it’s a billion dollars a year for your company.  

And in many cases, NIH is earning the royalties. 

According to Kennedy, more obscene than the huge profits being horded by Big Pharma are the vast number of negative side-effects from all those untested vaccines. 

“Neurological diseases” have “exploded,” he said. 

“ADHD, sleep disorders, language delays, ASD, autism, Tourette’s syndrome, ticks, narcolepsy. These are all things that I never heard of,” said Kennedy. “Autism went from one in 10,000 in my generation according to CDC data to one in every 34 kids today.” 

Kennedy is known for vehemently opposing vaccines without proper knowledge for those taking them, a stance he adopted after the mothers of vaccine-injured children implored him to look into the research linking thimerosal to neurological injuries, including autism. He went on to found Children’s Health Defense, an organization with the stated mission of “ending childhood health epidemics by eliminating toxic exposure,” largely through vaccines. 

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