Madeleine Hubbard – A judge on Monday sentenced Ghislaine Maxwell to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking and other charges in connection with her recruiting and grooming minors for the pleasure of then-boyfriend financier Jeffrey Epstein.

A jury found the British socialite guilty in December on five counts, including the trafficking of a minor.

The 60-year-old Maxwell worked “as partners in crime” with her Epstein, prosecutors said during the trial.

They said that from 1994 to 2004, Maxwell groomed women as young as 14 to be abused sexually by Epstein, a convicted pedophile who died in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting federal sex trafficking charges.

Manhattan federal prosecutors urged a judge last week to sentence Maxwell to at least 30 years in prison.

Maxwell’s attorneys asked for a lesser sentence and suggested that their client was prosecuted as a stand-in for Epstein. The lawyers also blamed her actions on Epstein and her father, late British media mogul Robert Maxwell.

The prosecution said her defense showed an “utter lack of remorse.”

New York District Attorney Damian Williams said: “Instead of showing even a hint of acceptance of responsibility, the defendant makes a desperate attempt to cast blame wherever else she can.”

A judge denied her request for a mistrial in April after finding out that one of the jurors was a victim of sexual abuse.

SF Source Just The News Jun 2022