Latest News
December 08, 2021
Prosecutors in Ghislaine Maxwell’s child sex-trafficking trial in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday introduced a witness who was once the kind of minor teen on whom the Briton is alleged to have preyed.
At 14, Carolyn was vulnerable. She had an alcoholic mother and a 17-year-old boyfriend and had been raped and molested by her grandfather from the age of four. She needed money.
Prosecutors allege that Maxwell procured girls between 1994 and 2004 for the financier Jeffrey Epstein, who would sexually abuse them.
Epstein, a convicted sex offender who numbered Prince Andrew and former presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton among his associates, killed himself in a New York City jail in August 2019, while awaiting his own sex-trafficking trial.
Maxwell, 59 and the daughter of the late British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell, was arrested in July 2020 in New Hampshire, for her purported role in procuring minor teens for Epstein, some as young as 14. Now on trial on six counts, Maxwell pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Carolyn, who used her first name, was the third accuser to testify in the New York trial. She alleged that Maxwell coordinated sexualized massages with Epstein, starting when she was 14. At one point, she said, Maxwell assessed the girl’s naked body and touched her breast.
Carolyn said Virginia Giuffre – a longtime Epstein and Maxwell accuser – introduced her to them at his Palm Beach mansion in the early 2000s. Carolyn’s then boyfriend knew Giuffre, which was how they met.
“Virginia asked me if I wanted to come make money,” Carolyn said in court, later testifying that Giuffre was 18 at the time.
“Did Virginia tell you what you had to do to make that money?” prosecutor Maurene Comey asked.
“Not right away,” Carolyn said. Giuffre, she said, told her they were going to her friend’s house on Palm Beach Island to “give him a massage”. They arrived and entered through the kitchen, she said, adding: “We were greeted by Ms Maxwell.” Giuffre told Maxwell “that I was her friend”, she said.
“What did Maxwell say?” Comey asked.
“You can bring her upstairs and show her what to do.”
“We walked up the stairs that were in the kitchen and we passed a bunch of bedrooms and entered into Mr Epstein’s bedroom, into his bathroom area.”
Giuffre, Carolyn said, took a massage table out of the closet.
“Virginia had taken off her clothes and she asked me if I would be comfortable taking off mine,” she said, “and I told her I would like to keep my bra and underwear on”.
Epstein entered, she said, and got onto the massage table face-down. After 45 minutes, he turned over and “Virginia got on top of him” and had sex with him, Carolyn said.
Carolyn sat on the sofa in the bathroom, she said. She said $300 was left for her on the bathroom counter.
Giuffre has alleged that Maxwell and Epstein coerced her into having sex with Prince Andrew when she was 17. Maxwell denies it, as does Andrew.
Carolyn said she returned to Epstein’s house, but not with Giuffre. Maxwell took her phone number, she said, and would call to schedule massages.
Voice cracking, Carolyn wiped her eyes after revealing that she went to Epstein’s house “over 100” times between the ages of 14 and 18. Sometimes, she said, she would schedule appointments. She needed money for drugs.
“Marijuana, cocaine, alcohol, anything that could block out … the appointment.”
Carolyn said she and Maxwell talked about “random personal things”, including her past sexual abuse. Maxwell asked her about sex toys and touched her, she said.
“I was upstairs setting up the massage table and at that point I was kind of comfortable because I’d been there so many times,” she said. “I was getting fully nude, and she came in and felt my boobs and my hips and my buttocks and said … that I had a great body for Mr Epstein and his friends. She just said that I had a good body type.”
Maxwell left the room and Epstein entered, Carolyn said. She was still just 14.
As time went on, she said, Epstein’s abuse came to include vaginal penetration and group sex. An Epstein associate took naked photos of her, she said. During sexualized massages with Epstein, Carolyn said, she told him about her “screwed up home life” including past abuse.
Carolyn broke into tears when she said the money Epstein gave her was for “buying drugs”. When she was about 15 or 16, she said, she brought some friends to Epstein’s house. She stopped seeing him at 18, she said, when she was “too old”.
After a lengthy cross-examination, prosecutors asked more questions of Carolyn on their re-direct, to dispel the defense’s suggestion that she was motivated by financial gain. She became increasingly distraught and said she was 13 when she met Maxwell.
“No. Money would not ever fix what that woman has done to me,” she said, weeping. “What she did was wrong … I’m so petrified for my daughters.”
Earlier Tuesday, prosecutors used photos of Epstein and Maxwell together to bolster their argument that they were so close, it stood to reason the socialite participated in his abuse of teen girls. These photos, on CDs seized from Epstein’s Manhattan home during a July 2019 search, were presented to jurors during FBI analyst Kimberly Meder’s testimony.
In one image, Maxwell smiled as she held Jeffrey Epstein’s foot in her hands, apparently giving him a massage. In another, Maxwell kissed him as they posed.
The second accuser in Maxwell’s trial testified on Monday, under a pseudonym, Kate. She alleged that Maxwell asked her to find young women for Epstein, because his sexual demands were insatiable.
The trial continues. Prosecutors said that they might complete their case this week.
