Ghislaine Maxwell more evil than Epstein, says
Virginia Giuffre
Alleged victim says socialite preyed on vulnerable
girls, and her conviction is a bittersweet moment
Kevin
Rawlinson
Thu 30 Dec
2021 13.19 GMT
Ghislaine
Maxwell’s crimes were even worse than those of the sexual predator for whom she
trafficked girls because she used her ability to gain the girls’ confidence to
drag them into a world of abuse, an alleged victim has said.
Virginia
Giuffre, who claims she was trafficked by Maxwell’s boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein,
but who did not give testimony in the case that concluded on Wednesday, said
Maxwell and Epstein had taken a part of her childhood that she could never get
back.
“I have
been dreaming of this day for the last 10 years, not knowing that it was going
to come,” she told New York magazine’s the Cut. “It’s a bittersweet emotion
because I have been fighting for so long.”
Maxwell was
convicted on sex trafficking charges that carry a total prison sentence of as
long as 65 years. Epstein, the convicted child sexual abuser on whose behalf
she acted, killed himself in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on allegations
of sexual offences against hundreds of girls.
Giuffre
said part of the pattern of the abuse perpetrated by Epstein and Maxwell was
the mix of charm and power they could wield. Epstein had powerful friends –
such as Prince Andrew, whom she also accuses of sexual abuse – and could
convince girls he “owned” the local police department, she said. But Maxwell
was capable of exploiting their weaknesses to draw them in.
She said
Maxwell gained her confidence by promising to help her achieve her dream of
becoming a massage therapist if she came to work for Epstein. Instead, she
said, it was the start of her ordeal at his hands.
She told
the Cut that Maxwell used her “womanly abilities to make me feel comfortable”,
adding: “The deceit hurts even more because I fell naively into her trap. I
mean, she is poised. She looks sophisticated. She didn’t raise any hairs on the
back of my head.”
Giuffre
said Maxwell had seen her reading a book about massage therapy and, armed with
that knowledge, was able to gain her confidence.
“The thing
about predators is they seek the vulnerable, find out what they want, and
promise them a dream. That’s how they work. Cages and chains come in all
different shapes and sizes. I wasn’t tied to a radiator or anything, like
you’ve seen in movies. My shackles were Epstein and Ghislaine’s wealth and the
powerful people they knew.”
She called
Maxwell the “devil’s righthand man”, adding: “She’s definitely worse than
Epstein. She used that charm, that wit, that smile to come off as somebody you
want to trust … She’s worse to me, more evil than Epstein. What Ghislaine did
to so many of us, it’s unforgivable.”
Wednesday’s
guilty verdicts showed that “no matter how rich or how connected you are, you
can still be held accountable”, she said.
A lawyer
representing 20 people who have accused Epstein and Maxwell said the verdicts
were a warning to sexual predators that their crimes would be punished.
“This does
send a message to other sex predators and those who would conspire to
sex-traffic underage girls to them that this will be taken very seriously,
charges may be filed against you, you may be prosecuted and you may end up
getting sentenced to prison for the rest of your life, as may be the case with
Miss Maxwell,” Gloria Allred told BBC Breakfast on Thursday.
“Beware and
do not conspire with or become a sexual predator yourself, because underage
girls are very vulnerable. They are easy to take advantage of and it is taken
very seriously when they are preyed upon by adults who do know better.”
The Duke of
York, the Queen’s second son, is facing a civil lawsuit brought by Giuffre in
the US over claims – which he vehemently denies – that he had sex with her when
she had been sexually trafficked by Epstein as a 17-year-old. Allred said it
was now a matter of having to “wait and see” whether the case gets to trial.
Lisa Bloom,
a US lawyer who also represents several of Epstein’s survivors, said Andrew
should be “quaking in his boots” after Wednesday’s verdicts. She told Mail
Online: “Because this shows that a jury is willing to come back with a guilty
verdict even if the accusers are not perfect, as no human being is. Even if
there were grounds for cross-examination, which there were, they looked to the
essence of the story and they found that Ghislaine Maxwell was guilty of sex
trafficking.”
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