Jeffrey Epstein ‘She was so dangerous’: where in the world is the notorious Ghislaine Maxwell?

Jeffrey Epstein    
‘She was so dangerous’: where in the world is the notorious Ghislaine Maxwell?          

 

In the months since Jeffrey Epstein died in prison, his former partner has disappeared. Will she ever return to face her accusers?

Emine Saner Thu 12 Dec 2019

 

....It was the mid-90s and this was the second time the two had met. Farmer had encountered Maxwell and her friend Jeffrey Epstein at her New York Academy of Art graduate show. She would go on to work for the pair for a year, at the front desk of Epstein’s Manhattan mansion. She was perfectly placed to see who came to the house – and says she witnessed young teenagers being brought through the doors by Maxwell. Following an alleged sexual assault by Maxwell and Epstein, Farmer went to the police. She was ignored.

 

More than 20 years on, her account – along with the testimonies of several other women, including an allegation of abuse from her younger sister, Annie, who was 16 at the time – has helped to create a picture of Epstein as a prolific sex offender, who abused countless underage girls. It is a scandal that has drawn in other powerful men, most notably Prince Andrew. One woman, Virginia Giuffre, says she was trafficked by Epstein to have sex with Andrew on three occasions. He has repeatedly denied the allegations, most recently in his disastrous TV interview.

 

In July, Epstein was charged with sex trafficking, and in August he killed himself in his prison cell while awaiting trial. Since then, attention has turned to Maxwell, 57, his right-hand woman. Yet Maxwell has seemingly vanished. “From what we know, Ghislaine Maxwell was a principal enabler to Jeffrey Epstein when he was alive,” says the lawyer Dan Kaiser. Kaiser is representing Jennifer Araoz, one of the women who says she was raped by Epstein, and who is suing his estate, Maxwell and three other “enablers”.

 

“She was integral in maintaining the sex trafficking ring,” says Kaiser. “She provided important administrative services in terms of the hiring of recruiters, and management of those employees, the making of appointments and dates for interactions between Mr Epstein and the underage girls that were providing sexual services to him. She also maintained the ring by intimidating girls, by ensuring their silence.”

 

Kaiser continues: “Jeffrey Epstein couldn’t have done what he did for as long as he did it without the services of somebody like Ghislaine Maxwell. She is as culpable, in my judgment, as Jeffrey Epstein himself.” Maxwell has always denied the allegations and has never faced criminal charges. Her lawyer has not responded to a request for comment....

 

Her social standing was such that it would probably be easier to list the influential people to whom Maxwell was not connected. She was close to Bill Clinton and attended Chelsea Clinton’s wedding; she donated to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. There are photographs of Maxwell with Arianna Huffington, Elon Musk and Michael Bloomberg. She knew Donald Trump and members of the Kennedy family. She was connected to the British royal family through Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson. Maxwell and Epstein – who loaned Ferguson money to pay off debts – were guests of Andrew at events, including some at Windsor castle, Balmoral and Sandringham.

 

Prince Andrew, in his recent Newsnight interview, said guests at the parties and dinners in Epstein’s New York mansion included “academics, politicians, people from the United Nations”. But we know now that it was not just influential friends Maxwell cultivated. One of her friends, Euan Rellie, told Tatler: “Every single interesting, pretty, new girl to arrive in New York would end up going for tea with Ghislaine, then being introduced to Jeffrey. She was the acceptable face of a rather mysterious billionaire.”

 

....She was charming initially, says Farmer. “Everyone [was] like: ‘This woman is so intelligent and interesting.’ She had a really great personality when you first met her.” But it didn’t take long for her to become verbally abusive towards the staff, she says. “I was one of the staff. I would have to go to Jeffrey and say: ‘Ghislaine’s verbally abusing me again.’ Then he would scream at her. It was all like ‘good cop, bad cop’, and they loved playing that game with everybody.”

 

Once, she says, Ivana Trump visited. “Quite often, with people like Ivana – powerful [people] – Ghislaine would say ‘Hop in the car, you can go on a ride with us’ and it was supposed to be my special little treat.” Then, as soon as they were back at the mansion, Maxwell would switch and shout at her, she says. She also says she could be threatening. “They had video cameras everywhere [in the house], and Ghislaine liked to intimidate by talking about the cameras. She’d say: ‘They’re watching you.’”

 

Farmer alleges that Maxwell would bring in a steady stream of young girls to the mansion, often saying she was casting for Victoria’s Secret, the lingerie company owned by Leslie Wexner, a close friend of Epstein. “It was really weird to me. I’m like [the] ‘models are so young’, and she said: ‘Yeah, but they need these models for Victoria’s Secret. They go as young as 13 now in modelling.’” Farmer alleges Maxwell would recruit teenagers from schools on the Upper East Side and in Central Park.

 

....It is alleged that Maxwell was not only an enabler for Epstein’s abuse, but took part in it. In her Panorama interview, Giuffre, then known as Virginia Roberts, recounted how Maxwell and Epstein abused her at his Palm Beach house after Maxwell had recruited her from her job working as a spa attendant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. In 1996, Farmer says Maxwell and Epstein sexually assaulted her. She went to the police as well as more than one FBI agent, none of whom took action. She also spoke to Ward in 2002 for a Vanity Fair profile – Ward has since said that the then-editor Graydon Carter cut out the entire part about Farmer and her sister after being pressured by Epstein. A spokeswoman for the magazine has said: “Epstein denied the charges at the time and since the claims were unsubstantiated and no criminal investigation had been initiated, we decided not to include them in what was a financial story.”

 

....Ransome, who says she was kept for six months on Epstein’s private island and claims she was raped several times a day, said: “They were never like a couple. Jeffrey and Ghislaine were best friends, or like brother and sister. Never holding hands or kissing. And she wasn’t his employee.”

 

When Maxwell found that Farmer had spoken out, she made threatening calls – Farmer says she has been in hiding “for many years”. “Ghislaine kept threatening my life. She found out where I was living, and she would send messages to me or I would get a call and I would have to move again. Most of her threats were veiled, like: ‘You better look over your shoulder because there’s someone coming for you.’ She told me she was going to burn all my paintings, my career was burned.”

 

In 2015, Giuffre sued Maxwell for defamation, after Maxwell said she was lying about the allegations she had made. The case was settled out of court and Maxwell began retreating from public view.

 

She was no longer seen in public with Epstein after his 2008 conviction for soliciting an underage girl for prostitution. For this, he was given an 18-month prison sentence, in a sweetheart plea deal that saw an investigation into his abuse of more than 30 underage girls (for which he could have been given a life sentence) shut down. He served just 13 months, much of it on day release.

 

Maxwell with (from left) Donald Trump, Melania and Epstein, in 2001, at Mar-a-Lago. Photograph: Davidoff Studios/Getty Images
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/be35b31f3123ebb80a25a25bbfa3f5d0aeb22998/226_418_3236_3010/master/3236.jpg?width=620&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=7243c9db471588f8c8710aeff8d3342f

 

Maxwell (in green dress) at Royal Ascot in 2000, with Prince Andrew (second from left) and Jeffrey Epstein (far right). Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock
https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c12e27f07fd73c4525ed5e5cd0665638e0686fa1/0_67_1339_1029/master/1339.jpg?width=620&quality=45&auto=format&fit=max&dpr=2&s=7ddba2f84f2a610e8f6b50691ea51e0f

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/12/she-was-so-dangerous-where-in-the-world-is-the-notorious-ghislaine-maxwell

 

Hastert Protected by Child Abuse Law, Truth about Thalidomide, Thailand-U.S. sex trafficking ring, Urban Legends of Those Attacking Ritual Abuse Theories

- Victim Says Hastert 'A Monster' Protected by Child Abuse Law
- Film explores Harold Evans’s work to expose the truth about thalidomide
- Arrests made in Thailand-U.S. sex trafficking ring

Victim Says Hastert 'A Monster' Protected by Child Abuse Law
By Ivan Moreno, Associated Press
CHICAGO — Oct 4, 2016
A man who said Dennis Hastert sexually abused him decades ago told Illinois lawmakers Tuesday the former U.S. House speaker was "a monster" who was protected by the statute of limitations and wasn't appropriately punished.

The comments from 54-year-old Scott Cross came as lawmakers are considering joining 37 other states that don't have a statute of limitations for child sexual abuse cases. Hastert was sentenced in April to 15 months in prison for violating banking laws while trying to silence one of four victims identified by prosecutors, but Illinois' statute of limitations meant he couldn't be charged with sexual abuse, which could've sent Hastert to prison for decades.

"This topic, while difficult for me to discuss, is one that cannot be swept under the rug," said Cross, his voice at times shaking as he urged a panel of lawmakers to change the limits of current law.

Lawmakers have four similar proposals pending that would eliminate Illinois' statute of limitations for sexually abusing children....
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/hastert-illinois-pushes-change-child-abuse-law-42547014


Film explores Harold Evans’s work to expose the truth about thalidomide
Marsha Lederman
The Globe and Mail
Friday, Apr. 17, 2015

The film connects the dots between Hitler and thalidomide. One of the inventors of sarin gas was ordered by Hitler to develop an antidote to the nerve gas. Otto Ambros (the “A” in sarin), a Nazi official involved in Auschwitz, convicted at Nuremberg but later freed, went on to work at Chemie Gruenenthal – the German company that developed thalidomide. In the film, the Thalidomide Trust presents convincing (although still circumstantial) evidence that the drug may have been tested on concentration camp inmates. “My God, I never thought I’d see the likes of that again,” said the uncle of a thalidomide baby when he first met him. He was one of the soldiers who liberated Bergen-Belsen, where he saw small children who looked a lot like his new nephew....

Thalidomide, as the film documents, was developed by Chemie Gruenenthal, and marketed as a miracle drug for pregnant women suffering from morning sickness, beginning in 1957. The results were devastating: Thousands of babies were born with severe birth defects (one father recounts seeing his newborn daughter who could “only be described as a torso with sort of little flowers where the arms and legs should be,” he says in the film). Many babies were stillborn – or left to die, the film explains in one of its many heartbreaking details....

The children who did survive were often shunned by society (and sometimes by their abandoning fathers) and they presented terrific challenges for loving but desperate parents, including mothers who were also dealing with a tremendous (if completely unfounded) guilt. By 1962, widespread bans were implemented. In Britain, to Evans’s astonishment, no inquiry was called, no compensation offered. The families, frantic for help, were left to sue. But once the case was before the courts, newspapers were prevented from reporting on the issue until every case was settled.

At the Sunday Times, Evans sicced the paper’s investigative Insight team on the injustice. Risking jail time, Evans launched what he called a moral campaign in his paper, which eventually produced significant results: a debate over compensation in the House of Commons, which opened the door for other media to report on the story. The company manufacturing the drug in Britain, Distillers (which no longer exists), reeled – consumers boycotted its alcohol products; share prices plummeted. Distillers finally agreed to pay the £20-million in compensation Evans had been calling for....
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/film-explores-harold-evans-work-to-expose-the-truth-about-thalidomide/article24009573/


Watch the trailer for Attacking the Devil: Harold Evans and the Last Nazi War Crime
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/video/video-watch-the-trailer-for-attacking-the-devil/article24105902/


Arrests made in Thailand-U.S. sex trafficking ring
Amy Forliti, Associated Press · Minneapolis · Oct 4, 2016

About a dozen people were arrested in cities across the U.S. on Tuesday for running what authorities called a sophisticated sex trafficking operation in which hundreds of women were brought from Thailand to America under fraudulent visas and forced to work as prostitutes to pay off tens of thousands of dollars in bondage debts.

The women — including one who was forced to have sex with strangers for 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week — were not allowed to move about freely and were "effectively modern day sex slaves," according to a redacted indictment unsealed Tuesday.

The arrests, along with the recent arrest of the organization's boss in Belgium, will effectively dismantle the operation, said Alex Khu, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Minneapolis....

Tuesday's indictment charges 17 people with various counts, including conspiracy to commit sex trafficking, conspiracy to commit forced labor, conspiracy to engage in money laundering and conspiracy to commit visa fraud. About a dozen people were arrested in the Minneapolis area, Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles.

Khu said his office began investigating a sex trafficking case in the Twin Cities in January 2014 and discovered it was part of an international ring and "a very sophisticated, complex network operating throughout the United States ... where women are really placed on a circuit, traveling from one city to the next."

According to the indictment, since 2009, hundreds of women were brought from Bangkok, Thailand, to several U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Minneapolis, Washington and Dallas. The women were from poor backgrounds, spoke little English and were lured with promises of a better life....
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/10/04/thailand-us-sex-trafficking-ring-arrests-made


Exposing Doug Mesner/Lucien Greaves - co-founder of the Satanic Temple and Grey Faction presenter
https://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/exposing-doug-mesnerlucien-greaves-co-founder-of-the-satanic-temple-and-grey-faction-presenter/

The Urban Legends of Those Attacking Ritual Abuse Theories
https://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/2016-conference/the-urban-legends-of-those-attacking-ritual-abuse-theories/  Satanic Temple, Grey Faction, Doug Mesner/Lucien Greaves

Petition to Stop Attacks Against Child Abuse and Ritual Abuse Survivors and Neil Brick
https://www.change.org/p/protect-child-abuse-survivors-petition-to-stop-attacks-against-child-abuse-and-ritual-abuse-survivors-and-neil-brick

5.5 Million Children Victims of Sex Trafficking in the World Today, Lebanon Sex Trafficking of Young Syrian Women

‘Sold’ takes a look at the sex trafficking business
By G. Allen Johnson Wednesday, April 13, 2016

There are 5.5 million children — yes, children — who are victims of sex trafficking in the world today. Bay Area filmmaker Jeffrey D. Brown calls attention to the problem in “Sold,” a drama about a 13-year-old Indian girl forced into prostitution, and the American do-gooders (Gillian Anderson, David Arquette) who try and save her.

Filmed in India in 2013 (it debuted at Cinequest in San Jose in 2014, but is only now getting a release), the English-language movie benefits from an appealing central performance by young Niyar Saikia, whose character Lakshmi endures beatings, forced rape and other hardships. Brown, who co-wrote the script based on Patricia McCormick’s 2006 novel, is able to convey the miserable existence and horrible lives of sex trafficking victims without resorting to torture porn. The film does not have a rating, but it seems rather PG-13-ish (there is no nudity and merely the suggestion of sex).

Lakshmi is from a remote village in Nepal, but her family, desperate for money, sells her temporary services for what they think is work as a maid in the big city of Kolkata (once called Calcutta). Instead, her temp agency turns out to be a pimp agency, and she is forced into prostitution....
http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/Sold-takes-a-look-at-the-sex-trafficking-7246163.php


Lebanon Shocked Over Sex Trafficking of Young Syrian Women
By Bassem Mroue, Associated Press
BEIRUT  Apr 13, 2016

Back in Syria, the young women were told they would get well-paid jobs at restaurants and hotels in Lebanon. But when they arrived, their belongings and mobile phones were taken away, and the women were locked up in two hotels north of Beirut and forced into prostitution.

What followed was an ordeal of beatings, torture and abuse until Lebanese security forces raided the hotels and dismantled the operation in late March.

The discovery of the sex trafficking ring and the rescue of the women deeply shocked tiny Lebanon, a Mediterranean Arab nation already overwhelmed by the influx of more than a million Syrian refugees who have fled the civil war, and prompted calls for investigation.

The case, which involves 75 female victims, is considered the worst sex trafficking scandal in Lebanon in decades and has raised questions about who might have shielded and enabled such a vast network....

The Syrian women were brought to Lebanon in stages over the past several months. Those who refused to work as prostitutes were repeatedly raped and tortured until they submitted, according to Lebanese women's rights activists....

Lebanese security officials, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, estimate the gang was making more than a $1 million a month from the prostitution ring....
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/lebanon-shocked-sex-trafficking-young-syrian-women-38353505 


Child Abuse and Organized Abuse Research
https://ritualabuse.us

Child Prostitution Busts in the United States

FBI: 69 children, 99 pimps found in national bust - Associated Press November 8, 2010 More than five dozen child prostitutes have been found in the last three days as part of a nationwide crackdown on the sexual exploitation of children, the FBI said Monday. FBI spokesman Jason Pack said 69 children were removed from prostitution and 99 suspected pimps were arrested in 40 cities across 30 states and the District of Columbia. Authorities arrested 785 other adults on a variety state and local charges, Pack said. All the children found in the last three days have been placed into protective custody or returned to their families.

The children were found during Operation Cross Country V, a three-day roundup targeting child traffickers and pimps. The largest group of child prostitutes, 24, was found in and around Seattle, according to the FBI. FBI executive assistant director Shawn Henry said the children found ranged in age from 12 to 17....Since 2003, when the FBI and the Justice Department launched the Innocence Lost National Initiative, about 1,250 child prostitutes have been located and removed from prostitution.
http://napavalleyregister.com/news/national/govt-and-politics/article_c7801d0e-ac1b-5ff7-9bb1-18c836a27051.html


Indictment: Somali Gangs Trafficked Girls For Sex - 29 Indicted In Juvenile Sex Ring Allegedly Run By Somali Gangs; Girls Prostituted In 3 States Nov. 08, 2010 MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - Twenty-nine people have been indicted in a sex trafficking ring in which Somali gangs in Minneapolis and St. Paul allegedly forced girls under age 14 into prostitution in Minnesota, Tennessee and Ohio, according to an indictment unsealed Monday. The 24-count indictment, unsealed in U.S. District Court in the Middle District of Tennessee, said one of the gangs' goals was recruiting females under age 18, including some under age 14, and forcing them into prostitution so the defendants could get money, marijuana or liquor. The indictment details several instances in which young Somali or African American girls were taken from place to place and forced to engage in sex acts with multiple people. One girl was under 13 when she was first prostituted. Another girl was 18 when she was raped by multiple men in a hotel room, the indictment said. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/08/ap/national/main7034588.shtml