Ghislaine Maxwell Trial Day 1| Maxwell And Epstein Were «Partners In Crime», Mr Visoski Lolita Express Pilot, Jane

This is a recapitulatif of Ghislaine Maxwell Trial, Day 1.

This trial will deal only with the sex-related charges against Maxwell. The trial is expected to last six weeks.

Maxwell, 59, was a close confidant of Epstein and dated him at one point. She has been charged with six counts in connection with an alleged sex trafficking scheme with Epstein in the 1990s.

Federal Judge Alison Nathan presides the court.

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Jury

According to several reports, the jury was sworn in after a delay. The jury of twelve consists of six men and six women and six alternates.

Opening Statements

Opening statements started after lunch lead by Assistant U.S Attorney Lara Pomerantz presenting the prosecution’s case. The case rests on the testimony of four victims whom accuse Maxwell of grooming them for abuse by Epstein between 1994 and 2004, when some were still minors.

The Prosecutor Opening statement : Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein were “partners in crime” in the sexual abuse of teenage girl.

“She was involved in every detail of Epstein’s life. The defendant and Epstein were partners in crime.

Federal prosecutors shared a simple message with jurors in their opening statement: “She knew what was going to happen to those girls.”

“She used the same excuse over and over to get the girls to touch Epstein – massage,” Pomerantz argued. “You’ll learn the cover of massage was the primary way the defendant and Epstein lured girls into sexual abuse.

“The defendant massaged Epstein in front of the girls, then encouraged the girls to massage Epstein,” she said. “But what was happening inside those massage rooms was not a massage – it was sexual abuse.

“Sometimes she was even in the room for the massages herself and sometimes, she touched the girls’ bodies,” Pomerantz continued. “And even when she was not in the room, make no mistake: she knew exactly what Epstein was going to do to those children when she sent them to him inside the massage rooms.”

“When the defendant sent a 14-year-old girl [to] an adult man, she knew exactly what was going to happen,” Pomerantz said.

“She knew exactly what she was doing. She was dangerous,” Pomerantz also remarked. “She was setting young girls up to be molested by a predator.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz said at the start of Ghislaine Maxwell Trial : Ghislaine Maxwell & Jeffrey Epstein enticed girls as young as 14 to engage in “so-called massages” in which sex abuse came to be seen as “casual and normal” after they were showered with money and gifts.

The Defense, Bobbi Sternheim, Maxwell’s lead attorney.

The Defense countered with : like so many women before her, shewas being made a scapegoat for a man’s bad behavior.

“Ever since Eve was accused of tempting Adam for the apple, women have been blamed for the bad behavior of men, and women are often villainized and punished more than the men ever are,” Sternheim said in her opening statement. “The charges against Ghislaine Maxwell are for things that Jeffrey Epstein did.

“But she is not Jeffrey Epstein. She is not like Jeffrey Epstein – and she is not like any of the other men, powerful men, moguls, media giants, who abuse women.”

Mr Visoski | Jeffrey Epstein’s Pilot

Mr Visoski said he had been hired in 1991 and had flown Epstein around roughly ‘every four days’.

Prosecutors called their first witness late Monday afternoon: Larry Visoski, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime pilots.

Mr. Visoski described, in broad strokes, the role Ms. Maxwell played in managing Mr. Epstein’s household and properties, describing their relationship as “couple-ish.” Guided by photographs presented as evidence, Mr. Visoski also described Mr. Epstein’s residences.

Women in civil lawsuits have accused Mr. Epstein of conspiring with associates, including his pilots, to facilitate sexual abuse and avoid law-enforcement detection.

14 year-old Jane

Jane met Epstein and Maxwell in 94, the prosecutor, Lara Pomerantz, told jurors: a seemingly innocent encounter that began at a picnic table with the realization that the two adults and the teenage girl all lived in Palm Beach, Fla.

It ended with Jane providing her phone number. That was the “beginning of a nightmare that would last for years,” Ms. Pomerantz said. She said that Ms. Maxwell helped win Jane’s trust with shopping trips and “helped normalize abusive sexual conduct” at the hands of Mr. Epstein.

The jury would hear directly from Jane and from three other women who had similar experiences as teenage girls, the prosecutor said.

The Defense | a defense lawyer, Bobbi C. Sternheim, told jurors that recollections from witnesses like Jane, who are expected to testify under oath about Mr. Epstein’s abuse, were not to be trusted.

She suggested the accusers had “unreliable and suspect” memories that could have been “corrupted” over the years or “contaminated” by “constant media reports.”

She also suggested the accusers were motivated by a desire to win “a big jackpot of money” from a possible civil action against Mr. Epstein’s estate.

“Each accuser’s story is thin,” she told jurors. “They have been impacted by lawyers, by media, by things they have read and things they have heard and by money, big bucks.”

Ms. Sternheim painted Ms. Maxwell as a “scapegoat” who is on trial only because Mr. Epstein had killed himself in a federal jail.

That suicide, she told jurors, left “a gaping hole in the pursuit of justice” for many people. Ms. Maxwell is “filling that hole,” Ms. Sternheim added. “Filling that empty chair.”

“Ever since Eve was accused of tempting Adam with the apple,” she said, “women have been blamed for the bad behavior of men.” DAY 1 is over.

The Defense’s strategy is putting the blame on Jeffrey Epstein.

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Ghislaine Maxwell is also facing two other counts of perjury in connection to a sworn deposition, but a trial on those charges has not yet been scheduled. Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to all charges.

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