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Category: Ghislaine Maxwell Trial – Topic Closed

Ghislaine Maxwell is a British socialite known for her association with financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell founded a non-profit group for the protection of oceans, The TerraMar Project, in 2012. The organisation announced cessation of operations on 12 July 2019, a week after the sex trafficking charges brought by New York federal prosecutors against Epstein became public.

In 2020, Maxwell was charged by the US federal government with the crimes of enticement of minors and sex trafficking of underage girls. The US Virgin Islands Department of Justice announced on 10 July 2020 that Maxwell was also under investigation in the Caribbean territory. Maxwell had a romantic relationship with Epstein for several years in the early 1990s and remained closely associated with him for decades. The nature of their relationship remains unclear.

In a 2009 deposition, several of Epstein’s household employees testified that Epstein referred to her as his “main girlfriend” who also hired, fired, and supervised his staff, starting around 1992. She has also been referred to as the “Lady of the House” by Epstein’s staff and as his “aggressive assistant”. In a 2003 Vanity Fair profile on Epstein, author Vicky Ward said Epstein referred to Ghislaine Maxwell as “my best friend”. Ward also observed that Maxwell seemed “to organize much of his life”.

Maxwell is known for her longstanding friendship with Prince Andrew, and for having escorted him to a “hookers and pimps” social function in New York. She introduced Epstein to Prince Andrew, and the three often socialised together. In 2000, Maxwell and Epstein attended a party thrown by Prince Andrew at the Queen’s Sandringham House estate in Norfolk, England, reportedly for Maxwell’s 39th birthday. In a November 2019 interview with the BBC, Prince Andrew confirmed that Maxwell and Epstein had attended an event at his invitation, but he denied that it was anything more than a “straightforward shooting weekend”.