Sex trafficking: Ghislaine Maxwell appeals her 20-year prison sentence
Ghislaine Maxwell allegedly helped alleged sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein set up teenage girls.
Britain's Ghislaine Maxwell has appealed her 20-year prison sentence in New York for sex trafficking minors to financier Jeffrey Epstein, according to a court document released Thursday.
The document does not detail the arguments of his lawyers, who had already announced their intention to appeal when the sentence was pronounced on June 28.
The daughter of British media magnate Robert Maxwell and accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in New York prison in August 2019 before his trial for underage sex crimes, faced 55 years in prison.
< p class="e-p">She had been found guilty at the end of December of five of the six charges against her, including the most serious of sex trafficking of minors for the account of Epstein, a financier with powerful economic and political relays.
During the trial, four victims of the system of sexual exploitation of underage girls, set up by Jeffrey Epstein, had testified to the role played by Ghislaine Maxwell, his former companion, to recruit them, between 1994 and 2004.
The defense had tried to minimize the role played by the former figure of the international jet set, who had himself blamed Jeffrey Epstein, presenting him as a manipulator when she spoke in Manhattan federal court on June 28.
Her lawyers also argued that among the victims, aged 14 to 17 , some were over the age of consent at the time of the events, in the states where they were committed.
Finally, they had questioned the impartiality of #x27;one of the jurors of the Manhattan court where she was found guilty, because he had failed to reveal during the procedure e jury selection that he himself had been the victim of sexual abuse as a child.
