British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted by a federal jury in Manhattan on 29 December 2021 on five counts, including sex-trafficking of a minor. She was found guilty of recruiting underage girls to be sexually abused by the late billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein, and could face up to 55 years in prison.
Disgraced British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell has been placed on suicide watch without justification, her attorney stated on Saturday, according to Reuters.
Maxwell, a former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, was found guilty on 29 December of recruiting underage girls to be sexually abused by the late billionaire financier between 1994 and 2004 at his properties. She has been at the jail in Brooklyn since her July 2020 arrest, and faces sentencing on 28 June, with the prospect of spending up to 55 years in jail.
However, according to Bobbi Sternheim, a lawyer for Maxwell, the 60-year-old former Epstein “pimp” was removed on Friday from the general population of inmates at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center and placed in solitary confinement.
Ghislaine Maxwell has not been allowed any pen or paper and was placed on the watch “without justification,” insisted the lawyer in a letter to US Circuit Judge Alison Nathan.
“If Ms. Maxwell remains on suicide watch, is prohibited from reviewing legal materials prior to sentencing, becomes sleep deprived, and is denied sufficient time to meet with and confer with counsel, we will be formally moving on Monday for an adjournment,” Sternheim said in the letter to the judge presiding over the case.
Sternheim added that Maxwell hasn’t been able to “properly prepare” for the sentencing. Furthermore, as part of her suicide watch, her regular clothes, toothpaste, soap and papers were taken away, said the lawyer. He went on to insist that a psychologist evaluated Ghislaine Maxwell and backed up the assessment that she was “not suicidal.”
Maxwell and her attorneys have complained about the conditions of her incarceration since she was first arrested, with claims she was subjected to strip searches and awakened every 15 minutes.
Jeffrey Epstein died at a Manhattan jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, with his death ruled a suicide – something that his lawyers had challenged at the time. Many questioned the decision to take Epstein off suicide watch, just a week after he apparently tried to take his own life on 23 July. The tycoon’s death remains shrouded in speculation and conspiracies.
Reporting from Sputnik.
