Former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein and alleged sex trafficking conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, seems to have recently slipped from the headlines. What happened to the fallen socialite? Well, despite being relatively under the radar, Ghislaine Maxwell is nowhere near clear of her crimes.
Currently, the woman accused of grooming underage girls for sex trafficking is locked inside a Brooklyn Jail. An allegedly decrepit jail, at that. On August 13th, Ghislaine Maxwell’s bid to dismiss her sex tracking indictments was turned down by a U.S. judge.
The longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein claimed her case should be judged similar to the recent overturning of Bill Cosby’s 2018 sexual assault conviction. However, the Manhattan judge asserted that the two cases are in no way identical and will be treated accordingly.
U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan announced she was not bound by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s June 30th decision to free Bill Cosby, and that Maxwell hadn’t been guaranteed she wouldn’t be prosecuted, as the Pennsylvania court said Cosby had.
Nathan also denied Ghislaine Maxwell’s claims that prosecutors waited too long to charge her with sex trafficking between 2001 and 2004, saying Congress’s 2006 elimination of the statute of limitations applied after the alleged crimes.
In Bill Cosby’s case, he was freed after Pennsylvania’s highest court declared a 2005 agreement not to charge him with drugging & assaulting Andrea Constand determined he shouldn’t have been criminally charged a decade later.
The 59-year old British socialite has pleaded not guilty to the eight-count indictment, which involves her alleged selection & grooming of underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking crimes from 1994 to 2004.
Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers attempted to compare her case to Cosby’s because she had been immunized under Epstein’s 2007 nonprosecution agreement (NPA) with federal prosecutors in Florida, in exchange for pleading guilty to state prostitution charges.
However, Judge Nathan said the cases weren’t identical and what happened to Bill Cosby won’t apply to her case. She remained with her April verdict that Epstein’s agreement doesn’t bind Manhattan prosecutors or shelter accused co-conspirators.
Cosby’s case “focused on whether prosecutors were required to honor a promise that the court found to be clear in the absence of a formal plea agreement,” Nathan wrote.
“Even if this Court agreed with the analysis in [Cosby’s case], that opinion sheds no light on the proper interpretation of the NPA in this case,” she added.
So, what’s happened to Maxwell and where is she now? Maxwell is staying in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, also known as the MDC. Ever since her arrest in July 2020, Maxwell’s lawyers have filed legal complaints that she’s facing mistreatment & severely poor conditions at the MDC.
Other complaints from the sex trafficking associate include “sustaining hair loss,” given meals with microwaved plastic melted onto the food, that drinking water was in fact “not drinkable,” is “in de facto solitary confinement,” gets her mail months late, isn’t given the chance to review evidence before her trial, and is living in a cell filled with the odor of clogged toilets.
“The MDC — especially the East Building where Ms. Maxwell is held — is permeated with mold and vermin,” her attorney Bobbi C. Sternheim wrote in one letter to the judge managing the case. “Cockroaches and rodents are plentiful and glue tracks have been placed in Ms. Maxwell’s day area to help remediate the problem.”
Ghislaine Maxwell isn’t the only celebrity criminal to do time at the MDC. R. Kelly is also currently located at the Brooklyn MDC while awaiting his ongoing sexual assault trial. The jail has also housed stars such as Tekashi 6ix9ine, Martin Shkreli, Keith Raniere, and Michael Cohen.
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What did you think happened to Ghislaine Maxwell? Should she stay at the MDC in Brooklyn? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Elizabeth Rios is a film enthusiast, travel lover, and classical literature fiend.
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