For years, she was described as a “socialite”, a word that conceals more than it explains. Socialites are almost always women from a wealthy if not an aristocratic background and their defining characteristic is being photographed with famous people.
Ghislaine Maxwell fitted the bill, appearing in photos with everyone from Donald Trump to Elon Musk to Prince Andrew. But being a socialite is not a job and it was unclear how she financed her opulent lifestyle, especially after the death of her father, Robert.
Over recent weeks, during her trial on sex trafficking charges in a New York courtroom, the answer became clear. Maxwell’s wealth came from her erstwhile boyfriend, the financier Jeffrey Epstein, who gave her at least $30.7m (£23m) over a period of eight years. By all accounts, Maxwell went from being in love with him to discovering that her usefulness lay elsewhere, in providing a steady stream of young girls to satisfy his depraved sexual appetite. The girls trusted her, thinking of her as an older sister, and only realised later that they had been betrayed. The “socialite” was actually a procurer, a word with deservedly unpleasant connotations.
It does not sit easily with Maxwell’s glamorous lifestyle – the planes, helicopters and visits to Epstein’s private island. Many well-known people will surely be regretting that they ever moved in the same circles as Maxwell and Epstein, let alone appear in the aircraft logs revealed in court. Indeed, Maxwell’s conviction last week on five charges seems to have created a kind of cognitive dissonance in some circles, as though such things simply should not happen to a woman with a degree from Balliol .
Well-connected individuals who rarely display an interest in American penal policy have complained bitterly about Maxwell’s prison conditions, as though she is in a different class from other inmates. (Assumptions about class are, of course, all over this case.) Her siblings have rallied round, insisting that they cannot accept the jury’s guilty verdicts, although that seems to be more an expression of denial than in any real expectation that she will win an appeal.
We know from rape trials that the public imagination struggles to accommodate individuals who challenge stereotypes about sex offenders, whether it is the good-looking date who turns out to be a rapist or the “socialite” who facilitates a paedophile. It is easier to believe terrible things about Rosemary West, a dumpy, working-class woman who helped lure girls into her husband’s car and joined in his abuse of them, than an heiress who once rested her boot on the thigh of an entranced Boris Johnson. Fred and Rose West committed horrific crimes together, torturing their victims as well as killing them, but Fred West was already a murderer when he chose 15-year-old Rosemary Letts, who had a horrendous history of childhood sexual abuse, as his accomplice.
Predators have a sixth sense when it comes to choosing co-conspirators. Maxwell was a grown woman when she met Epstein, and fully responsible for the choices she would go on to make, but it is striking that their relationship seems to have begun around the time of her father’s fatal fall from the yacht he named after her, the Lady Ghislaine.
It is no excuse to say that the discovery that her father was a fraudster, so soon after his death, would have shaken Maxwell to her foundations. But it may be that Epstein recognised her weaknesses, seized his chance – and got access to an address book that included the Queen’s favourite son, the Duke of York. Maxwell’s connections boosted his sense of impunity, which is perhaps the single most important factor in allowing predators to get away with their crimes. He would later describe Maxwell in humiliating terms as an ex-girlfriend who had fallen on hard times, framing himself as the benefactor who had allowed her to live in the style to which she had become accustomed.
The mystery surrounding the source of Epstein’s wealth has led to comparisons with Jay Gatsby, the enigmatic main character in Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, but such mythologising lends a spurious glamour to sordid crimes. It is a depressing fact that women who identify with powerful men often share their misogyny and reflect it back in a desperate quest for approval. Profiles of Epstein remarked on the disturbing fact that his homes were full of teenage girls. “They’re nothing, these girls,” Maxwell once told a confidante. “They are trash.”
It must have occurred to Maxwell by now that the two men she put absolute faith in, her father and her ex-lover, both left her to face the music after their apparent suicides. And for what? The columnist Barbara Amiel, who is married to the former newspaper magnate Conrad Black, recalls a conversation that shows Maxwell in an unexpected and highly unflattering light. “I bet I’m in charge of more lavatories and bathrooms than you are,” Maxwell suddenly said as the two women were walking along a beach. While Amiel thought about it, Maxwell reminded her to include those on planes. “Thirty-nine,” said Amiel and Maxwell’s face lit up. “I win,” she exclaimed.
Questions about Maxwell’s relationship with Epstein have now been cleared up. She procured girls for him and it speaks volumes about her moral compass, or lack of it, that she evidently cared more about the number of lavatories in his mansions than the vulnerable teenagers she exposed to sexual assault and rape.
Joan Smith is a journalist and author of books including Misogynies and Home Grown: How Domestic Violence Turns Men Into Terrorists.