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Closing arguments in Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial are set to begin on Monday, before the jury begins to weigh whether the British socialite set up teenage girls for the late financier Jeffrey Epstein to abuse.
Ms Maxwell (59) is charged with eight counts of sex trafficking and other crimes. Prosecutors say she recruited and groomed four teenage girls to give erotic massages to Epstein between 1994 and 2004.
She has pleaded not guilty, and said on Friday that she would not testify because prosecutors did not prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
During two weeks of testimony from prosecution witnesses, jurors heard from four women who portrayed Ms Maxwell as central to arranging sexual relationships the women said they had with Epstein as teenagers. Two of the women, known as Jane and Carolyn, said they were 14-years-old when Epstein began abusing them.
Prosecutor Alison Moe is expected to refer back to their emotional and often explicit testimonies in her closing argument.
Ms Moe will likely reference Carolyn’s testimony about how Ms Maxwell sometimes paid her to give Epstein erotic massages, which could be crucial for the prosecution’s argument that Ms Maxwell committed sex trafficking.
Maxwell attorney Laura Menninger is expected to respond by questioning the accusers’ credibility. The defence has repeatedly argued that the women’s memories have become corrupted in the decades since the alleged abuse, and that they are motivated by money to implicate Ms Maxwell.
Ms Maxwell’s lawyers argue she is being treated as a stand-in for Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial on sex abuse charges.
In a Saturday hearing, Ms Maxwell’s attorney Jeffrey Pagliuca said the defence would argue that Jane was older than she said she was at the time of the alleged sexual encounters with Epstein, and that Maxwell “never had anything to do with Carolyn”. – Reuters