NEW YORK — British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell should spend at least 30 years in prison for her role in the sexual abuse of teenage girls over a 10-year period by her onetime boyfriend, financier Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors said Wednesday in written arguments.
Prosecutors said she should serve between 30 years and 55 years in prison, reflecting the federal sentencing guidelines. They made their recommendations to the judge who will preside over a sentencing hearing on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court.
The 60-year-old Maxwell was convicted in December of sex trafficking and other crimes after a month-long trial that featured testimony from four women who said they were abused in their teens.
Defense lawyers said in a sentencing submission last week that she should spend no more than five years in prison and shouldn’t pay for Epstein’s crimes, since he was the mastermind and principal abuser and “orchestrated the crimes for his personal gratification.” Epstein took his own life in 2019 in jail as he awaited a Manhattan federal sex trafficking trial.
But prosecutors said Maxwell played an “instrumental role in the horrific sexual abuse of multiple young teenage girls” between 1994 and 2004 at some of Epstein’s palatial residences. They called her crimes “monstrous.”
