Assistant in Evil?

Monday begins in New York the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, the 59-year-old girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, the American financier who committed suicide in prison in 2019. It will undoubtedly be a controversial process.

Epstein was a wealthy, influential man with connections to the highest echelons of American society. He knew both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, was friends with the British Prince Andrew and had many contacts in the American film world. It would have been better if he had been the first person to stand trial in this case, because the most responsible person. Ghislaine Maxwell, his assistant in evil, now appears in his place – if the allegations are true.

Four of their female victims will testify – only using pseudonyms. The women were minors when the offenses were committed between 1994 and 2004. According to them, Ghislaine acted as a sort of mediator; she recruited them and prepared them for sex with Epstein, in which she herself sometimes participated. There are said to be many more victims – Epstein had already been convicted of sexual abuse in 2008 – but for legal reasons, the trial has focused on four cases.

Ian Maxwell, a brother of Ghislaine, has called it “the most overrated trial of the century.” According to him, the trial is intended to “break” his sister, which will not succeed “because she fully believes in her innocence and will do her utmost to prove it.” Because Epstein is gone, Ghislaine must hang, this brother thinks.

A number of fascinating details struck me as I delved into various publications on this case. So revealed The New York Times recently that Epstein had made a failed suicide attempt as early as July 2019. He was found in the morning with a bed sheet tied around his throat.

Curiously, the following days he managed to convince a prison psychologist that he had no serious plans for suicide. He called himself “a coward” who hated pain. “I wouldn’t do that to myself.” But two weeks later, on August 10, he tried again, again with a bed sheet, and this time it worked.

There should have been a second inmate in his cell, but the staff failed to see to it. Epstein was also allowed to call on the night of his suicide. With his mother, but she had been dead for years; Later it turned out that he had called a friend. In short, so much went wrong in his surveillance that the question has been raised whether he had any help in his suicide.

Long untraceable by the police, Maxwell was finally arrested in a house on a large, inaccessible estate in Bradford, New Hampshire, which she had paid for in cash and in secret. She tried to run away when the police rang the bell. Justice has discovered that she was paid $20 million from Epstein between 2007 and 2011.

She complains vehemently about the way she is being treated in her Brooklyn prison. Warders would be watching her, she gets bad food and there was a rat in her toilet. “A living hell,” she calls it.

She will have to stay there for a very long time if she is found guilty.