It took the jury five days to deliver five guilty verdicts on sex-trafficking charges brought against Ghislaine Maxwell, who groomed and delivered young girls to Jeffrey Epstein, the millionaire and convicted sex offender who reportedly hanged himself in his own jail cell in 2019.
Maxwell is guilty on the charges of:
- Conspiracy to Entice Minors to Travel to Engage in Illegal Sex Acts
- Conspiracy to Transport Minors With Intent to Engage in Criminal Sexual Activity
- Transportation of a Minor With Intent to Engage in Criminal Sexual Activity
- Conspiracy to Commit Sex Trafficking of Minors
- Sex Trafficking of Minors
On the second count, Enticement of a Minor to Travel to Engage in Illegal Sex Acts, Maxwell was not found guilty.
Maxwell and former Anchorage Daily News owner Alice Rogoff were friends and colleagues back in the days when Rogoff owned the political landscape of the state.
In 2014, when Maxwell came to Alaska to spend time with Rogoff during the Iditarod Sled Dog Race, the two adventured across Alaska, as detailed a few days later in the New York Post’s Page Six gossip column, when it reported on her at a glitzy soiree in New York.
“Maxwell traveled across hundreds of miles of icy wilderness to the finish line in Nome, where thousands of fans of ‘the last great race’ cheered on the mushers and their dogs,” the Post reported. They flew the race route in two of Rogoff’s private Cessna 206s. Three years later, Rogoff, who obtained her pilot’s license during her time in Alaska, crashed one of planes while visiting former Sen. Clem Tillion in Halibut Cove.
Maxwell is the youngest daughter of the late British publishing magnate Robert Maxwell, who was a member of Parliament, a suspected spy, and scandal-ridden fraudster, who stole millions of dollars from his companies’ pension plans, a fact only discovered after his death.
Adventuresses and millionaires both, Rogoff and Maxwell were increasingly involved in global Arctic politics, which was a growing fad among the elite in those days.
In 2012, Maxwell founded an environmental nonprofit called the TerraMar Project, which allowed her to jet around the world and gain credibility at various influential conferences. She was a featured speaker at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2014. She was also a featured speaker at the Arctic Circle Assembly, both in Reykjavik, Iceland and Seattle, Washington.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski serves on the honorary advisory board of the organization, along with HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco, Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, and Artur Chilingarov. Rogoff to this day, although no longer a resident of Alaska, is still on the advisory board.
At the time of her Iditarod adventure, Rogoff was still in negotiations with McClatchy to have her Alaska Dispatch News purchase the Anchorage Daily News for $34 million, which she accomplished that year. It took Rogoff three years to run the newspaper into bankruptcy; she sold it in a bankruptcy settlement for $1 million in 2017, leaving many Alaska businesses out in the cold with their invoices to her company unpaid.
In 2019, Epstein, who was Maxwell’s companion and partner in sex crimes, was charged with sex trafficking, and the justice system started closing in around the person now known as the woman who arranged for Epstein’s parade of girl victims, with crimes going back to the 1990s.
When the charges against Epstein were making headlines, Maxwell had gone into hiding, remaining elusive for a year in a 4,365-square-foot home surrounded by 156 private acres in Bradford, N.H., which she had purchased a few months earlier. No longer was she splashed across the society blogs and news pages; in fact, she studiously avoided being seen in public.
On July 2, 2020, she was arrested there, and a federal appeals court twice denying bail requests from her attorneys, as she was considered a flight risk.
During the trial of Maxwell over the past two weeks, the sordid details came forward. One of the victims who testified told the jury that Maxwell and Epstein started abusing her when she was just 14.
According to The Guardian newspaper, the women – Jane, Kate, Carolyn and Annie Farmer – testified they met Maxwell as teens, “and that she lured them into Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit. While the dates and exact circumstances of their encounters with Maxwell differ, they all share striking similarities. Only Farmer used her real full name.
“These four women all describe being vulnerable when they met Maxwell, such as suffering financial precarity or strained family relationships. They said that Maxwell made them feel comfortable before Epstein’s misconduct and that she made them feel special by asking questions about their lives. She served as a reassuring presence that tempered concerns or suspicions about Epstein.
“They all said that Maxwell was involved in Epstein’s abuse or misconduct. Three said that Maxwell coordinated their appointments with Epstein. Three said that Maxwell touched them. They all described Maxwell as working to satisfy Epstein’s physical needs. Accusers’ testimony portrayed Maxwell as an enabler and, in some instances, an enthusiastic participant.
Click here to read the Guardian’s summary of each of their stories of abuse.
Maxwell’s attorneys say they will appeal the verdicts, but for now, the former high-flying Arctic expert is in jail, where she will remain for at least many months to come.
