Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted on Wednesday of five out of six counts for recruiting and grooming underage girls for Jeffrey Epstein.
REUTERS
Ghislaine Maxwell’s family has branded her sex-trafficking conviction a “tremendous injustice” — complaining that she was unfairly portrayed as a “demon queen” and “the most hated woman in the world.”
“Ghislaine has been denied justice — has been denied a fair trial,” one of the socialite’s older brothers, Kevin Maxwell, told ABC News Thursday, saying he was “still shocked” at the verdict from the day before.
“The presumption of innocence never existed,” he said, insisting the family is “very confident” his well-connected 60-year-old sister will eventually be cleared on appeal.
Kevin Maxwell — who regularly turned up with his other siblings at their embattled sister’s Manhattan trial — said that “anybody who sat in and listened to the accusers’ testimony … is going to have been moved” by their tales of abuse by pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
“And I can also understand anger,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean that I believe for a single second that my sister is guilty of the crimes of which she was convicted.”
He stood by his sister’s defense that she was being unfairly punished for Epstein, her one-time lover and almost constant companion — complaining she had been portrayed as the late pedophile’s “demon queen” accomplice.
“There’s no, simply no, question that there are many victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes,” the 62-year-old brother told ABC News.
“They’re simply not crimes that were committed by my sister,” he insisted.
“I remain absolutely persuaded of Epstein’s crimes. I’m equally persuaded that my sister will be exonerated on appeal, and these guilty verdicts will be overturned.”
Ghislaine’s other brother, Ian Maxwell, 65, also ripped the “shocking result” in an interview with The Telegraph, saying it “reflects the fact that Ghislaine has been denied the right to a fair trial, starting with the appalling conditions in which she has been held for over 18 months and which seriously impacted her ability to participate in her own defense.”
He accused prosecutors and “non-appearing accusers” of having “manipulated the media so that Ghislaine was branded the most hated woman in the world.”
“And this has gone on for years in the era of social media, Twitter and 24-hour streaming news and opinion,” he told The Telegraph. “This in itself has denied her a fair trial.”
“I am confident of the strong grounds for appeal both legal and evidential and that my sister will be vindicated and ultimately found innocent,” he told the UK paper.
Ghislaine, the Oxford-educated youngest child of late publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, was convicted on five out of six counts for recruiting and grooming underage girls for years for Epstein.
The top charge — sex-trafficking of minors — carries a maximum of 40 years in prison, with the sentencing date yet to be set.
Epstein, 66, hanged himself in his Manhattan lockup in August 2019 while awaiting his own trial on serious sex charges.
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