By Brooke Harris-
Federal prosecutors on Monday filed two additional sex trafficking charges against Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime confidant of financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The new charges mark an expansion of the criminal probe against Maxwell, who was already facing six counts tied to Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking network. Prosecutors had previously accused Maxwell of facilitating the abuse of three young girls in the mid-1990s.
The new eight-count indictment adds a fourth victim, alleging that Maxwell helped to recruit the 14-year-old girl to engage in sex acts with Epstein at his Florida home between 2001 and 2004.
In a letter to a judge on Monday, prosecutors acknowledged the rewritten indictment may require defence lawyers to supplement their arguments to dismiss charges.
Maxwell and others are accused of calling up the victim to schedule the encounters, and paid her hundreds of dollars in cash after each visit, the indictment says.
Maxwell is further accused of normalizing inappropriate and abusive conduct by, among other things, discussing sexual topics in front of the victim, and being present when the victim was nude in the massage room of the Palm Beach residence” of Epstein, the indictment says.
Maxwell was arrested July 2 at a remote New Hampshire mansion.
Prosecutors say Maxwell played a key role in Epstein’s abuse of underage girls, helping to groom the victims and encouraging them to accept his offers of financial assistance. She also participated in some of the abuse herself, according to the original indictment.
She pleaded not guilty to the charges contained in the original indictment. The two additional charges are sex trafficking conspiracy and sex trafficking of a minor.
Maxwell is locked up at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, just across the river from the federal prison in Manhattan where Epstein died by suicide in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
The charges, contained in a rewritten indictment returned by a grand jury in Manhattan federal court, alleged that a conspiracy between Maxwell and financier Jeffrey Epstein occurred between 1994 and 2004.
Maxwell, 59, has remained in a federal jail without bail after a judge rejected bail packages three times, the last of which included offers to renounce her citizenships in the UK and France, to be kept in place by armed guards and to post 28.5 million dollars (£20.7 million) in assets.
Maxwell, a US citizen, has pleaded not guilty to charges brought a year after Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges. He killed himself at a Manhattan federal jail in August 2019. Maxwell has also appealed against the bail rejections.
The rewritten indictment added a sex trafficking conspiracy and a sex trafficking charge against Maxwell.
It also added a fourth girl to the allegations, saying she was sexually abused multiple times by Epstein between 2001 and 2004 at his residence in Palm Beach, Florida, beginning when she was 14.
The indictment said Maxwell groomed the girl to engage in sex acts with Epstein through multiple ways, including by giving her lingerie and hundreds of dollars in cash and by encouraging the girl to recruit other young females to provide “sexualised massages” to Epstein.
Earlier this year, Maxwell’s lawyers challenged the charges against her, saying they were obtained unjustly and did not properly allege crimes. They said the indictment also violated an agreement federal prosecutors made a dozen years ago not to charge Epstein or those who worked for him.
In a letter to a judge on Monday, prosecutors acknowledged the rewritten indictment may require defence lawyers to supplement their arguments to dismiss charges.