The 'socialite' behind Jeffrey Epstein 3:38
(CNN) -
British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell has gained worldwide notoriety as the ex-girlfriend and social partner of convicted pedophile and financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Now, after more than a year in federal custody, a jury found her guilty of five of the six counts related to her role in Epstein's sexual abuse of underage women.
She had pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Epstein committed suicide in August 2019 while awaiting trial.
In the wake of the financier's death, public pressure increased to hold those who might have helped him accountable, perhaps including Maxwell and a group of young women who allegedly worked for her, not just because of her actions, but also because of her own role.
Ghislaine Maxwell's trial for sex trafficking begins this Monday.
Prosecutors allege he created a network of underage victims for the late Jeffrey Epstein
Who is Ghislaine Maxwell?
Convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein with British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.
The
British
socialite was
born in 1961 and grew up in the idyllic Oxfordshire countryside.
She is the daughter of Robert Maxwell, a Czech-born newspaper mogul and British legislator, who died under mysterious circumstances.
The media mogul fell off his luxurious yacht, named "Lady Ghislaine", off the Canary Islands in 1991. It was posthumously discovered that he had committed massive pension fraud against his employees.
According to Roy Greenslade, who worked for the media mogul as editor of The Daily Mirror, in the early 1990s, Maxwell "adored" Ghislaine "in a way that he did not do with his [other] children."
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"He was a monstrous father," Greenslade recalls.
"He treated his whole family very badly."
But when it came to the youngest of her nine children, Maxwell "treated her with more leniency than any of them."
In his biography of the mogul, "Maxwell: The Rise and Fall of Robert Maxwell and His Empire," Greenslade recalls one particular night when he was sitting in an office with Maxwell and the reckless teenager walked in.
He says Maxwell gave his daughter a reprimand for "always taking risks, doing stupid and dangerous things" after having a near-fatal accident after diving into a boat.
"She was pretty smart in dealing with him," Greenslade explains, adding that he always spoke soothingly to his father in a way that he found difficult to challenge.
After Ghislaine left, Greenslade says Maxwell turned to him with pride in his voice: "She's just like me."
That, Greenslade says, is evidence of perhaps why he favored her more than the others.
The media mogul died in 1991 with an investigation that ruled that his death was due to a heart attack combined with accidental drowning.
However, some believe that Maxwell's death was suicide with his business empire on the brink of ruin.
There was applause at the time for the way Ghislaine handled the family tragedy.
"People who were there at the time (when Maxwell died) said she treated him brilliantly," Greenslade said.
"Dry eyes, dealing well with the press."
After the death of his father, Maxwell moved to the United States.
"He probably ran out of money," Greenslade says, despite many speculating that he earned income from a secret trust.
In America, Maxwell lived a public life and socialized in exclusive circles that included people connected to politics.
According to eyewitness accounts, Maxwell was invited to Chelsea Clinton's wedding and was even taken backstage at the Clinton Global Initiative summit in 2009. However, Bari Lurie, a spokeswoman for Chelsea Clinton, says the sole reason why The one Clinton knew about Maxwell was because the
socialite
was dating a friend of hers.
Maxwell was also photographed in 2000 with Donald Trump and his future wife, Melania Trump, alongside Epstein.
Maxwell was also in the background of the infamous photograph of Prince Andrew, which shows him with his arms around the waist of a young woman named Virginia Roberts. Roberts alleges that she was trafficked by Epstein, with the help of Maxwell, and forced to have sex with her friends, including Prince Andrew, when she was a minor. The prince has emphatically denied having sex with Roberts and says he "does not remember the photograph being taken."
In 2012, Maxwell founded the charity, the TerraMar Project, which sought to promote ocean conservation.
However, the non-profit organization ceased operations in December 2019, according to the records of the UK Company of Companies.
The same year, federal prosecutors in New York uncovered a criminal charge against Epstein of operating a sex trafficking ring between 2002 and 2005, where he paid girls as young as 14 to have sex with him.
How are you connected to Jeffrey Epstein?
Ghislaine Maxwell was the ex-girlfriend who became the social partner of Epstein, who committed suicide in his jail cell, at age 66, while awaiting trial on federal charges of sexual abuse of underage women and running a sex trafficking ring. .
He had pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The couple are said to have separated in the 1990s, although the
socialite
remained close to the pedophile.
Her name has been mentioned frequently in a memorandum of documents released earlier this year alleging that she was a supplier to Epstein and other high-profile individuals.
In 2003, Epstein described Maxwell as her best friend in a profile with Vanity Fair.
According to several people in Manhattan's affluent circles, including two of his friends, Maxwell introduced Epstein to many of the social figures in his life.
Bianca Britton contributed to this report.
Jeffrey Epstein
