Ghislaine Maxwell

Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell (born 25 December 1961) is a British former socialite and convicted sex offender.

In 2021, she was found guilty of child sex trafficking and other offences in connection with the deceased financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

In June 2022, she was sentenced in a New York court to twenty years' imprisonment.

Born in France and raised in Oxford, Maxwell is the daughter of British media proprietor Robert Maxwell and French-born researcher of the Holocaust, Elisabeth Maxwell.

Ghislaine Maxwell was born in 1961, in Maisons-Laffitte, Île-de-France, France, the ninth and youngest child of Elisabeth (née Meynard), a French-born scholar, and Robert Maxwell (Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch), a Czechoslovak-born British media proprietor.

Her father was from a Jewish family, and her mother was of Huguenot (French Protestant) descent.

Maxwell was born two days before a car accident that left her fifteen-year-old brother Michael in a prolonged coma until his death in 1967.

Her mother later reflected that the accident had an effect on the entire family, and surmised that Ghislaine had shown signs of anorexia while still a toddler.

Throughout childhood, Maxwell lived with her family in Oxford at Headington Hill Hall, a 53-room mansion, where the offices of Pergamon Press, a publishing company run by her father, were also located.

Her mother said that all her children were brought up as Anglicans.

Maxwell studied first at Oxford High School for Girls in North Oxford and then, aged nine, was enrolled at Edgarley Hall preparatory school in Somerset, followed by Headington School at age thirteen.

According to Tatler, Maxwell recalled that her father installed computers at Headington in 1973 and her first job was training to use a Wang 2200 and later programming code.

The Times reported that he did not permit Maxwell to bring her boyfriends home or to be seen with them publicly, after she started attending Oxford University.

In the 1980s she attended Balliol College, Oxford, and became a prominent member of London's social scene.

Maxwell was a prominent member of the London social scene in the 1980s.

She founded a women's club named after the original Kit-Cat Club and was a director of Oxford United Football Club during her father's ownership.

She also worked at The European, a publication her father had established.

She spent a large amount of time in the late 1980s aboard the yacht, which was equipped with a jacuzzi, sauna, gym and disco.

The Scotsman said Robert had also "tailor-made a New York company for her".

The company, which dealt in corporate gifts, was not profitable.

She attended Marlborough College to study for A-Levels, before going on to earn a degree in Modern History with Languages from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1985.

Maxwell had a close relationship with her father and was reportedly his favourite.

According to Tom Bower, writing for The Sunday Times, in 1986 Robert invited her to the naming in her honour of his new yacht the Lady Ghislaine, at a shipyard in the Netherlands.

The Sunday Times reported that Maxwell flew to New York City on 5November 1990 to deliver an envelope on her father's behalf that, unknown to her, was part of "a plot initiated by her father to steal $200m" from Berlitz shareholders.

Maxwell worked for her father until his death in 1991; she then moved to New York City, where she continued living as a socialite and had a relationship with Epstein.

After Robert Maxwell purchased the New York Daily News in January 1991, he sent Ghislaine to New York City to act as his emissary.

In May 1991, Maxwell and her father took the Concorde on business to New York, from where he soon departed for Moscow and left her to represent his interests at an event honouring Simon Wiesenthal.

In November 1991, Robert Maxwell's body was found floating in the sea near the Canary Islands and Lady Ghislaine.

Soon afterwards, Ghislaine flew to Tenerife, where the yacht was berthed, to attend to his business paperwork.

She attended her father's funeral in Jerusalem alongside Israeli intelligence figures, president Chaim Herzog, and prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, who gave his eulogy.

Although a verdict of death by accidental drowning was recorded, Maxwell has since said she believes her father was murdered, commenting in 1997: "He did not commit suicide. That was just not consistent with his character. I think he was murdered."

After his death, Robert Maxwell was found to have fraudulently appropriated the pension assets of Mirror Group Newspapers, a company that he ran and in which he held a large share of ownership, to support its share price.

Pension funds in excess of £400m were said to be missing, and 32,000 people were affected.

In 2012, Maxwell founded a non-profit group for the protection of oceans.

Following sex trafficking allegations being brought by prosecutors against Epstein in July 2019, the organisation announced cessation of operations the same month.

Maxwell is a naturalised US citizen and retains both French and British citizenship.

In July 2020, Maxwell was arrested and charged by the federal government of the United States with the crimes of enticement of minors and sex trafficking of underage girls, related to her association with Epstein.

She was denied bail as a flight risk, with the judge expressing concerns regarding her "completely opaque" finances, her skill at living in hiding, and the fact that France does not extradite its citizens.

In December 2021, she was convicted on five out of six counts, including one of sex trafficking of a minor.

She faces a second criminal trial for two charges of lying under oath about Epstein's abuse of underage girls.