A New York jury found Ghislaine Maxwell guilty of sex-trafficking charges stemming from her years-long relationship with a convicted sex offender.
The verdict came on Wednesday after a three-week trial in which prosecutors described the man as a predator who worked with the man to prey on vulnerable women. Her defence said that she was unfairly made to be his scapegoat. She was found guilty on five of the six charges.
Advocates for accusers thought the trial was the best chance to get an accounting of the Epstein saga and get some measure of justice after the financier died by suicide in a New York jail cell in August 2019.
Damian Williams, US attorney for the southern district of New York, said in a statement after the verdict was announced that the road to justice has been too long. Justice has been done today.
Four women who were as young as 14 years old claimed that they were sexually abused by Epstein when he gave them sexualised massages.
Prosecutors said that Maxwell joined the abuse. They said that the British socialite was essential to the scheme because she helped recruit the girls and win their trust while providing a veneer of respectability to the outside world. She was paid a lot of money.
Her lawyers said that the accusers had altered their memories in order to get a large amount of compensation from the victims fund. They said that Maxwell was a victim of one of the era's great conmen and unaware of his activities despite their close relationship.
Laura Menninger told jurors in her closing argument that Ghislaine Maxwell was not Jeffrey Epstein. She is being tried for being with Jeffrey Epstein. Maybe that was the biggest mistake of her life, but that was not a crime.
Menninger accused prosecutors of maligning her client as "Cruella de Vil and The Devil Wears Prada all wrapped into one".
Donald Trump and Bill Clinton were acquaintances of the mysterious financial advisory business owned by the college dropout, and he was also friends with superstars of business, academia and politics.
The trial gave a glimpse into the extravagant lifestyles of the two men, which included a squadron of private jets and estates in Palm Beach and Manhattan, a New Mexico ranch and a private Caribbean island. One of the massage tables was brought into the courtroom.
It didn't illuminate his contacts with some of the powerful men who have since been tarnished by their associations with Epstein, including Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, and Leon Black, the private equity man.
The daughter of a British press baron and a swindle artist made contact with a New York businessman in the early 1990s, and they soon became a formidable team.
Florida police began to investigate reports that a wealthy Palm Beach man was sexually abusing girls from local schools. In 2008 he was granted a secret deal that allowed him to plead to lesser charges of prostitution and serve 13 months in jail.
The case was revived by federal prosecutors in Manhattan after an investigative report in the Miami Herald. After stepping off his private jet at an airport, he was arrested. A year later, he was arrested at a large home in New Hampshire.
In one of the most emotional moments of the trial, a witness identified as Carolyn described her upbringing in a broken home, with an alcoholic mother and absent father, and how an older girl brought her to the Palm Beach home when she was 14 with the promise of earning some cash.
Carolyn and her boyfriend would use the money from the sexualised massages to buy drugs over the next two years. She called the English woman who helped arrange the dates because she couldn't say her first name. At the time, her boyfriend described her as a child.
Carolyn said that her soul was broken during her testimony.
Jane said that she was driven to the Mar-a-Lago club to meet Trump.
The trial papers were shuffled on the desk in front of her by her lawyers. The siblings sat in the front row of the court.
The government has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt, so there is no need for me to testify, said the woman. She only spoke to the court.
