U.S. court upholds British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell's sex trafficking conviction
CTV
A U.S. court on Tuesday upheld disgraced British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell's conviction on sex trafficking charges for helping the late financier Jeffrey Epstein abuse underage girls.
A U.S. court on Tuesday upheld disgraced British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell's conviction on sex trafficking charges for helping the late financier Jeffrey Epstein abuse underage girls.
Maxwell's lawyers had argued that her convictions violated an agreement Epstein reached with federal prosecutors 15 years ago in which he agreed to plead guilty to sex crimes and his co-conspirators were granted immunity. The lawyers also said some of the charges were brought after the statute of limitations had expired, and alleged judicial errors during her trial and sentencing.
But a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York rejected all of those arguments.
"Identifying no errors in the District Court's conduct of this complex case, we affirm the District Court's ... judgment of conviction," Judge Jose Cabranes wrote in the ruling.
Maxwell, 62, was found guilty in December 2021 of luring young girls to Epstein so he could molest them, between 1994 and 2004. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2022.
Epstein sexually abused children hundreds of times over more than a decade, exploiting vulnerable girls as young as 14. Prosecutors said Maxwell, his longtime companion, helped him and made the abuse possible.
He killed himself in 2019 while awaiting trial.
