Ghislaine Maxwell, the associate of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, currently awaiting trial in a Brooklyn detention center, was brought up on two fresh charges of trafficking on Monday, as per NBC News. The new accusations involve a fourth victim: a 14-year-old girl allegedly recruited by Maxwell to perform sex acts, which she wound up doing between 2001 and 2004.
According to the new federal indictment, the as-yet-unidentified girl was groomed by Maxwell to perform sex acts with Epstein. She was allegedly paid hundreds of dollars for each appointment, and, according to the charges, “brought multiple females, including girls under the age of 18, to provide sexualized massages for Epstein at his Palm Beach Residence.” Maxwell also, the indictment claims, “sought to normalize inappropriate and abusive conduct by, among other things, discussing sexual topics in front of [the victim] and being present when [the victim] was nude in the massage room of the Palm Beach residence.”
The new charges are part of an ongoing case against Maxwell, who has already been accused of participating in the abuse of three other underage victims in the 1990s. Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to all charges. Her trial is scheduled for July, about a year after she was arrested in a remote New Hampshire mansion, having evaded authorities since December of 2019, when authorities first began their investigation into her alleged activities. She has been denied bail, having been seen as an extreme flight risk, and she currently occupies a building across the river from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan, where Epstein is alleged to have committed suicide.
(Via NBC News)