Two years after the suicide in prison of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, accused of sex crimes, the trial of his ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell begins Monday in New York, to find out whether she had recruited between 1994 and 2004 a network of underage girls for the financier and his entourage.
To read also Trafficking in minors: Ghislaine Maxwell, the intriguing "Madame" of the Epstein system in court
The daughter of the press magnate Robert Maxwell - born near Paris on December 25, 1961 and who has triple French, British and American nationality - faces life imprisonment after debates which are to last six weeks.
According to the complex American criminal procedure, the trial technically began in mid-November with the final selection of 12 jurors in Manhattan federal court.
Ghislaine Maxwell has been imprisoned since the summer of 2020 in New York, a year after the death in August 2019 in her cell of her former companion, the American financier Jeffrey Epstein, accused of sexual exploitation of dozens of minors and for which she is suspected to have played the role of "
reel
".
Arbitrary detention
The almost sixty-year-old, a well-born celebrity who has lived free from want, has been complaining for 18 months, via her lawyers, about her conditions of detention in a Brooklyn prison. She had denounced mid-November in the British newspaper
Mail on Sunday
of "
attacks for a year and a half
", the fact of being deprived of sleep and having only "
rotten food
".
As a result, his brothers and sisters seized on November 22 in Geneva the UN working group on arbitrary detention - independent experts - to denounce "
serious violations of the rights of the defense and the presumption of innocence, unworthy and degrading treatment
"that their sister would undergo in prison,"
where she has been held in solitary confinement for 500 days in an unjustified manner
".
The facts with which he is accused date back to the decade 1994-2004.
The accusation is based on four anonymous complainants - two of whom were only 14 and 15 years old - who say they were approached by "
touts
", including Ghislaine Maxwell, near their school or at their work.
Read also Epstein affair: Ghislaine Maxwell's family seizes the UN
Then, after cinema sessions or shopping "
with girlfriends
", the young girls were persuaded, for a few hundred dollars, to come and give a massage, presented as non-sexual, to a powerful New Yorker ready to take their career off the ground. .
According to US federal prosecutors, the accused also participated in the sexual assaults with her partner, either at her home in London or at his home in Manhattan, Florida and New Mexico.
Shadows of Epstein and Andrew
The shadow of Jeffrey Epstein will obviously be omnipresent, more than two years after his suicide in prison at the age of 66, depriving his victims of a trial.
The billionaire, however, was convicted in Florida in 2008 for paying young girls for massages.
But he had only served 13 months in prison following a confidential agreement with the prosecutor at the time.
Another shadow will hang over the Maxwell trial: that of British Prince Andrew, a close friend of Epstein, the target since August of a civil complaint in New York for “
sexual assault
” filed by an American, Virginia Giuffre.
This complaint should be examined at the end of 2022 in a civil court in New York, even if the second son of Queen Elizabeth II is not prosecuted and denies these facts which would have taken place between 2000 and 2002, when Virginia Giuffre was a minor. .
After her trial, Ghislaine Maxwell should also be tried for perjury for having testified in 2016 in a libel proceeding she had brought against Virginia Giuffre, who accuses her of playing the go-between for Prince Andrew.
Virginia Giuffre is not one of the four plaintiffs against Ghislaine Maxwell.
The names of other personalities could be cited from Monday, including that of the former French model agent Jean-Luc Brunel, a close friend of Jeffrey Epstein, indicted and imprisoned in Paris in December 2020 for rape and assault sexual.
Read alsoSex crimes: the secret worlds of Jeffrey Epstein
The defense should argue that the alleged sexual crimes go back more than 20 years - a psychologist will enlighten the court on the phenomenon of "
false memories
" - and especially that Ghislaine Maxwell is tried instead of the main protagonist.
She will therefore plead not guilty to the six charges for which she faces up to 80 years in prison, but is not expected to speak at the hearing.