Ghislaine Maxwell, the alleged former madam of the late billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, is claiming through her attorneys that she’s being subjected to raw sewage in the New York City prison where she is awaiting trial for various sex charges.
In a filing put forth on Tuesday night, Maxwell’s lawyer Bobbi Sternheim claimed that Maxwell, 59, was forced to change cells at the Metropolitan detention center in Brooklyn after raw sewage permeated her cell last week.
She also alleged that guards were still able to read Maxwell’s confidential legal papers and monitor her meetings with her attorneys, and that neither Maxwell nor her lawyers were allowed water during a four-hour meeting that they had on Sunday.
Sternheim added that though there have been many complaints about Maxwell’s treatment in jail, “little if anything has been done.”
“The ever-changing rules are negatively impacting Ms Maxwell’s ability to prepare for trial,” Sternheim continued, according to The Guardian. “The hyper-surveillance of Ms Maxwell and counsel during legal visits is highly inappropriate and invasive.“
This filing was in response to a 7 June letter from prosecutors in which they claimed that Maxwell “is detained under favorable and privileged conditions.”
This comes after Maxwell was denied bail for a fifth time while awaiting trial on charges for allegedly recruiting teenage girls for Epstein to sexually abuse, and sometimes participating in the abuse herself. The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan issued a brief order rejecting Maxwell’s bid for release, with the three-judge panel declining to elaborate any further on the situation.
Maxwell’s brother Ian spoke out in March to say that his sister is “eager” to confront her accusers in court.
“I’m not minimizing the seriousness of the allegations, but my sister’s fighting for her life,” Ian Maxwell, 64, told “Good Morning America,” adding that the conditions at the Brooklyn detention center where Ghislaine is being held are “torture.”
Ian claimed that Ghislaine is being used as a “patsy” for Epstein’s suicide while in custody, going on to say that she is eagerly awaiting her day in court to fight the sex-trafficking charges that she has been hit with.
“Ghislaine wants to confront the accusers head-on and deal with this and get on with her life,” he said. “She is not Epstein. Epstein was guilty. He did time. And he was gonna do a hell of a lot more time. But she is not him.”
“She deserves to be treated as Ghislaine, presumed innocent,” Ian added. “She is as convinced as she can be that she will be exonerated. We as a family are behind her, solidly behind her.”
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