Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell ( ghee-LAYN, -LEN; born 25 December 1961)[5][6] is a British former socialite and convicted sex offender.[7] She was found guilty in 2021 of child sex trafficking and other offences in connection with the financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein,[8] and was sentenced to 20 years in prison on 28 June 2022.[9]
Born in France, Maxwell was raised in Oxford. In the 1980s she attended Balliol College, Oxford, and then became a prominent member of London's social scene. Maxwell worked for her father, Robert Maxwell, until his death in 1991; she then moved to New York City, where she continued living as a socialite and had a relationship with Epstein. In 2012, Maxwell founded a non-profit group for the protection of oceans. Following sex trafficking allegations being brought by prosecutors against Epstein in July 2019, the organisation announced cessation of operations the same month.[10] Maxwell is a naturalised US citizen and retains both French and British citizenship.[1]
On 2 July 2020, Maxwell was arrested and charged by the federal government of the United States with the crimes of enticement of minors and sex trafficking of underage girls, related to her association with Epstein.[11] She was denied bail as a flight risk, with the judge expressing concerns regarding her "completely opaque" finances, her skill at living in hiding, and the fact that France does not extradite its citizens.[12] On 29 December 2021, she was convicted on five out of six counts, including one of sex trafficking of a minor.[2][3][4] She faces a second criminal trial for two charges of lying under oath about Epstein's abuse of underage girls.[13][14][15] Maxwell was placed on suicide watch on 24 June, just before her sentencing date scheduled for 28 June 2022.Early life
Ghislaine Maxwell was born in 1961, in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, France,[16] the ninth and youngest child of Elisabeth (née Meynard), a French-born scholar, and Robert Maxwell, a Czechoslovak-born British media proprietor. Her father was from a Jewish family, and her mother was of Huguenot (French Protestant) descent. Maxwell was born two days before a car accident that left her fifteen-year-old brother Michael in a prolonged coma until his death in 1967.[17] Her mother later reflected that the accident had an effect on the entire family, and surmised that Ghislaine had shown signs of anorexia while still a toddler.[17] Throughout childhood, Ghislaine lived with her family in Oxford at Headington Hill Hall, a 53-room mansion, where the offices of Pergamon Press, a publishing company run by Robert Maxwell, were also located.[10][16][18] Her mother said that all her children were brought up as Anglicans.[19] She studied first at Oxford High School for Girls in North Oxford and then, aged nine, was enrolled at Edgarley Hall boarding preparatory school in Somerset, followed by Headington School at age thirteen.[20] Maxwell attended Marlborough College to study for A-Levels, before going on to earn a degree in Modern History with Languages from Balliol College, Oxford in 1985.[20][5][21]
Maxwell had a close relationship with her father and was reportedly his favourite.[10][22][23] According to Tatler, Maxwell recalled that her father installed computers at Headington in 1973 and her first job was training to use a Wang 2200 and later programming code.[24] The Times reported that he did not permit Ghislaine to bring her boyfriends home or to be seen with them publicly, after she started attending Oxford University.[25][6]Career
The Dancing Hare yacht, formerly known as the Lady Ghislaine
Ghislaine Maxwell was a prominent member of the London social scene in the 1980s.[26] She founded a women's club named after the original Kit-Cat Club[23][27] and was a director of Oxford United Football Club during her father's ownership.[28][29] She also worked at The European,[30] a publication Robert Maxwell had established. According to Tom Bower, writing for The Sunday Times, in 1986 Robert Maxwell invited her to the naming in her honour of his new yacht the Lady Ghislaine, at a shipyard in the Netherlands.[31] Maxwell spent a large amount of time in the late 1980s aboard the yacht, which was equipped with a Jacuzzi, sauna, gym and disco.[32] The Scotsman said Robert Maxwell had also "tailor-made a New York company for her".[33] The company, which dealt in corporate gifts, was not profitable.[25][31][34]
The Sunday Times reported that Ghislaine Maxwell flew to New York on 5 November 1990 to deliver an envelope on her father's behalf that, unknown to her, was part of "a plot initiated by her father to steal $200m" from Berlitz shareholders.[31]
After Robert Maxwell purchased the New York Daily News in January 1991, he sent Ghislaine to New York City to act as his emissary.[25][35] In May 1991, Maxwell and her father took Concorde on business to New York, from where he soon departed for Moscow and left her to represent his interests at an event honouring Simon Wiesenthal.[36]
In November 1991, Robert Maxwell's body was found floating in the sea near the Canary Islands and the Lady Ghislaine.[37] Soon afterwards, Ghislaine flew to Tenerife, where the yacht was berthed, to attend to his business paperwork.[25] Ghislaine attended her father's funeral in Jerusalem alongside Israeli intelligence figures, president Chaim Herzog, and prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, who gave his eulogy.[38][39] Although a verdict of death by accidental drowning was recorded, Maxwell has since said she believes her father was murdered,[40] commenting in 1997: "He did not commit suicide. That was just not consistent with his character. I think he was murdered."[41] After his death, Robert Maxwell was found to have fraudulently appropriated the pension assets of Mirror Group Newspapers, a company that he ran and in which he held a large share of ownership, to support its share price.[42] Pension funds in excess of £400m were said to be missing, and 32,000 people were affected.[43] Two of Maxwell's brothers, Ian and Kevin, who were the most involved with their father in daily business dealings, were arrested on 19 June 1992 and charged with fraud related to the Mirror Group pension scandal.[44] The brothers were acquitted three and a half years later in January 1996.[45]
Ghislaine Maxwell moved to the United States in 1991, shortly after her father's death.[22][23] Maxwell was provided with an annual income of £80,000 from a trust fund established in Liechtenstein by her father.[46][47] By 1992, she had moved to an apartment of an Iranian friend overlooking Central Park. At the time, Maxwell worked at a real estate office on Madison Avenue and was reported to be socialising with celebrities.[48] She quickly rose to wider prominence as a New York City socialite.[23][49]Relationship with Jeffrey Epstein
Accounts differ on when Maxwell first met American financier Jeffrey Epstein. According to Epstein's former business partner, Steven Hoffenberg, Robert Maxwell introduced his daughter to Epstein in the late 1980s.[50] The Times reported that Maxwell met Epstein in the early 1990s at a New York party following "a difficult break-up with Count Gianfranco Cicogna Mozzoni" (1962–2012) of the CIGA Hotels clan.[51]
Maxwell had a romantic relationship with Epstein for several years in the early 1990s and remained closely associated with him for more than 25 years until his death in 2019.[23][49][52] 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.[53] She has also been referred to as the "Lady of the House" by Epstein's staff and as his "aggressive assistant".[54] In a 2003 Vanity Fair profile on Epstein, author Vicky Ward said Epstein referred to Maxwell as "my best friend".[55] Ward also observed that Maxwell seemed "to organize much of his life".[55]
Politico reported that Maxwell and Epstein had friendships with several prominent individuals in elite circles of politics, academia, business and law, including former Presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, attorney Alan Dershowitz, and Prince Andrew, Duke of York.[56]