ONE OR MORE victims of Jeffrey Epstein plan to tell a judge that his ex-girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell should be denied bail on charges that she recruited teenage girls for him to sexually abuse in the 1990s, prosecutors have said.
They made the revelation in court papers as they argued there is no reason to free Maxwell on bail.
The 58-year-old British socialite has been held without bail since her recent arrest at a million-dollar New Hampshire estate she bought late last year.
Prosecutors told a Manhattan federal judge in written arguments that at least one woman and possibly more are expected to exercise their right to appear at Tuesday’s hearing and ask that Maxwell be detained until trial.
“The government is deeply concerned that if the defendant is bailed, the victims will be denied justice in this case,” prosecutors wrote.
The filing came a day before an arraignment and bail hearing for Maxwell, who has been held for the last week at a federal jail in Brooklyn.
On Friday, her lawyers filed arguments that said she was being made a scapegoat after Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail last August.
They said she should be freed on 5 million dollars bail with electronic monitoring, adding: “Ghislaine Maxwell is not Jeffrey Epstein.”
They said their client denies misconduct, has had no contact with Epstein for more than a decade, and has never been charged with a crime or found liable in civil litigation stemming from the allegations against him.
Prosecutors said Maxwell’s defence lawyers proposed offering collateral in the form of property she owns in the UK, but added that was beyond the reach of US authorities.
Epstein was arrested in July 2019 and was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges of women and girls in Florida and New York in the early 2000s when he died by suicide in custody.
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