The 60-year-old former high-society figure Gylane Maxwell is likely to spend the rest of her life behind bars, as a New York court sentenced her to 20 years in prison on Tuesday after she was convicted at the end of 2021 in New York for the sexual trafficking of underage girls for the late businessman Jeffrey Epstein.
Guillain Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein in an undated photo released by the judiciary in New York on December 8, 2021.
Maxwell, who was wearing a mask, showed almost no emotion when Manhattan Federal District Judge Alison Nathan handed down this ruling for the "heinous" crimes she had committed.
But before the sentencing, Maxwell expressed for the first time her "sympathy to all the victims" and said she "regretted what they had suffered" for the sexual crimes committed between 1994 and 2004 against teenage girls between the ages of 14 and 17.
However, Maxwell blamed her ex-partner, Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in his New York prison in August 2019, describing him as a "manipulator (...) who deceived everyone in his vicinity."
Judge Nathan responded by asserting that she would not be punished "instead of Epstein," and Federal Prosecutor Damian Williams denounced "(Maxwell's) heinous crimes against children" and expressed relief that "no one is above the law" in the United States.
The plaintiffs received with satisfaction the sentence decided by the court.
40-year-old Annie Farmer, who sadly recounted during the trial at the end of 2021 how she had fallen into the clutches of Maxwell and Epstein as a teenager, was relieved that "it is never too late for truth and responsibility".
Another victim, Sarah Ransom, told the press, "Yes, Guillain must die in prison."
"I spent 17 years in my own prison because of what you did to me, Jeffrey (Epstein) and all their accomplices. I was raped several times. Sometimes I was raped three times a day (...) There was a constant influx of girls who were being raped over and over again.”
- 55 years old -
After her trial in New York last November and December in which she was convicted of sex trafficking of minors for Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell was facing up to 55 years in prison.
Her agents, who announced their intention to appeal the ruling, had requested in mid-June that the sentence not exceed 20 years in prison, and denounced putting their client in solitary confinement, a move that the prison administration justified by the risk of her committing suicide.
They also raised, in vain, the negative impact on her life of her father, Robert Maxwell, who died in 1991 as a result of his fall from his yacht in mysterious circumstances, and Jeffrey Epstein.
At the end of her trial in late 2021, prosecutors described Maxwell as a "sophisticated hunter" who had previously worked and determined to entice and seduce teenage girls and secure them for Epstein in his homes in Florida, Manhattan, New Mexico and the US Virgin Islands.