The spotlight must now turn to the rich men
Ghislaine Maxwell trafficked girls for
Gaby
Hinsliff
The woman who procured girls for Jeffrey Epstein and
his friends will die in prison – but most of the men involved still walk free
Thu 30 Dec 2021 18.20 GMT
Ghislaine
Maxwell is going to jail, and for a very long time indeed. Prince Andrew’s good
friend of many decades, and Donald Trump’s regular guest at his Florida
retreat, has been convicted of grooming and trafficking girls for sex in a
verdict that will reverberate through the highest reaches of the transatlantic
establishment. No more invites to Balmoral for the woman who turned vulnerable
teenagers into rich men’s sexual playthings, and no more hobnobbing with
friendly newspaper editors either. No more private jets or haughty instructions
to staff to keep their mouths shut, even as they were picking up discarded
vibrators from the bedroom floor. And presumably no more public sympathy of the
kind Rachel Johnson expressed recently in the Spectator, fondly recalling
Ghislaine’s “naughty eyes” as she flirted with a young Boris Johnson at Oxford,
back in the days when none of them had ever heard of the paedophile Jeffrey
Epstein. For all that Maxwell’s lawyers sought to paint her accusers as
gold-diggers chasing damages from Epstein’s estate, the lesson many will draw
from this case is that the rich are far more often protected by their money and
connections than rendered vulnerable by them.
Well, now
the world can finally see the seedy billionaire and his predatory girlfriend
for what they were. Much like the guilty verdict handed to Harvey Weinstein
almost two years ago, the result goes some way to restoring faith in the
battered principle that nobody should be above the law. Yet there’s something
profoundly unsatisfying about it nonetheless. That the woman who procured girls
for Epstein and his wealthy friends will now die in prison, while the men
involved remain either free to live their lives or (in Epstein’s case) beyond
the reach of any mortal judge, provokes a nagging sense of unfinished business.
It goes
without saying that Ghislaine Maxwell is not the victim here. Although her
lawyers made much of the fact that Epstein’s prison suicide left her to carry
the can for his crimes, suggesting rage at him had been unfairly projected on
to her, the prosecution argued more convincingly that she was in fact critical
to the enterprise. A lone middle-aged man asking teenage girls to visit his
ranch is creepy, but the same invitation from a couple feels respectable, even
benevolent. From an early age, we drum into children the idea that if they’re
lost or scared they should seek help from a police officer first and, failing
that, a woman. The girls Maxwell lured into her boyfriend’s clutches were reassured
by an older woman’s presence and it’s the betrayal of that female trust that
feels so monstrous. While these vulnerable teenagers looked to her for support,
she was grooming them for sexual exploitation, normalising the perverted
anything-goes culture inside his mansion. Strip away the yachts and the
servants and all the other trappings of a billionaire lifestyle, and there is
frighteningly little separating Maxwell from that tiny but grotesque pantheon
of female offenders seemingly so desperate to be loved that they collude in
their partners’ abusive fantasies, even to the point of helping persuade
someone else’s daughter into a car.
We may
never know whether Maxwell got her own kicks from this twisted game or whether
she was simply too damaged to resist it, conditioned perhaps as friends have
suggested by a childhood in the shadow of her bullying father, the late tycoon
Robert Maxwell. But the “poor little rich girl” thesis sits uneasily with some
of the stories her accusers told in court, which imply a woman accustomed to
dealing with problems as only the rich can: by paying someone to make them go
away.
Kate, who
was 17 when she first met the couple, recalled Maxwell complaining about
Epstein’s voracious sexual appetite and asking “if I knew anybody who could
come and give Jeffrey a blowjob because it was a lot for her to do”, much as
she might seek recommendations for a butler or a pool boy – except in this case
it was imperative they be young. Carolyn, who was 14 when she was first paid to
give Epstein one of his infamously sexualised massages, described how Maxwell
felt her breasts and bottom much as if she were checking over livestock for
sale, and concluded she had a “great body for Mr Epstein and his friends”. And
it’s on those nameless “friends” that the spotlight must now fall.
First and
most obviously in the firing line are the men against whom direct allegations
have been made, chief among them Prince Andrew. Virginia Giuffre, who is
currently attempting to bring a civil suit against the prince accusing him of a
sexual assault he has vehemently and repeatedly denied, can only be encouraged
by a verdict she welcomed with a pointed tweet, arguing that “Maxwell did not
act alone. Others must be held accountable.” Whether her lawsuit succeeds or
fails, however, the unmasking of his good friend Ghislaine as a convicted sex
trafficker makes it almost impossible to envisage a way back to royal
ribbon-cutting duties for the prince.
But there
are plenty more high-profile men who flew on Epstein’s planes, enjoyed his
lavish parties, even stayed overnight in one of those mansions hung with tacky
erotic art, and say they saw nothing amiss. Was he simply so discreet that
nobody could possibly have suspected a thing? Or could it be that a
predilection for teenage girls simply didn’t seem all that shocking, inside a
rich man’s world where trading in an ageing first wife for someone barely older
than your daughter is no big deal?
Meanwhile,
in the US, there are disturbing questions to answer about a long, oddly
flat-footed investigation into Epstein that left victims fearing they would
never get their day in court and conspiracy theorists emerging to fill a
judicial vacuum. That Maxwell held her tongue even when she eventually came to
trial, refusing to testify in her own defence in a way that meant she could be
asked no incriminating questions about the household names peppering the
victims’ testimony, has only encouraged the latter.
Some still
hope she might share whatever she knows now, given the conviction has left her
with nothing much to lose. The family’s decision to appeal makes that unlikely
at least in the near future, and it remains to be seen whether a woman who has
traded on her connections all her life is capable even now of turning on them.
But she cannot be the only one who knows more than she is telling about that
tainted circle through which so many powerful men have moved. Justice is surely
neither done, nor seen to be done, until all their dirty little secrets are
out.
Gaby
Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
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