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Ghislaine Maxwell, 60, addressed the victims of Jeffrey Epstein directly during her sentencing hearing on Jun. 28, 2022. The serial predator’s righthand woman told the victims she hoped her conviction would bring them “pleasure” while trying to convince the judge to offer a lenient sentence, according to the New York Post. She was given 20 years behind bars.
Ghislaine attempted to apologize for “the pain and anguish” in the victim’s earlier statements, which included accounts from prominent Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre’s attorney. “The terrible impact on the lives of so many women is difficult to hear and even more difficult to absorb, both in its scale and in its extent.”
Pivoting to her ex-boyfriend, she said, “I believe that Jeffrey Epstein was a manipulative, cunning and controlling man who lived a profoundly compartmentalized life and fooled all of those in his orbit,” and added that Jeffrey, who killed himself in 2019, “should have been” there to face the music.
Jeff Epstein should have been here before all of you,” she said. “He should have stood before you in 2005, again in 2009 and again in 2019. … All the many times he was accused, charged and prosecuted. but today it is not about Jeffrey Epstein ultimately,” she said. “To you, all the victims … I am sorry for the pain that you experienced.
She told the victims she hope her sentencing could bring this “terrible chapter to the end, to an end” and that it would help them “travel from darkness into the light.”
Ghislaine was sentenced to 20 years in prison and a $750k fine by Judge Alison J. Nathan on Jun. 28, 2022. If the conviction is upheld, with regard to good behavior and credit for the two years she has spent in jail, she could leave prison in her late 70s, according to the New York Times.
Ghislaine was initially found guilty by a federal jury in Manhattan on Dec. 29, 2021, on five out of six counts related to her participation in Jeffrey’s sexual abuse of minor girls. Her crimes included conspiring with the disgraced financier to recruit, groom, and abuse underage girls from the period between 1994 and 2004.