Ghislaine Maxwell is moved out of solitary confinement cell after two years of ‘torture’ as she awaits sentencing for sex trafficking
- Ghislaine Maxwell, 60, was arrested in July 2020 and has remained in jail since
- She is facing up to 50 years in prison for five charges related to sex trafficking
- She’s been in solitary confinement over fears she’d kill herself like Jeffrey Epstein
Ghislaine Maxwell has been removed from solitary confinement in prison after two years of what her family claimed was ‘torture’.
The disgraced socialite is now sharing a dormitory style cell with other inmates and can receive visits from her family and friends for the first time since her arrest in 2020.
Maxwell, 60, remains at the grim Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn, New York, until her sentencing next month for sex trafficking.
But her family welcomed the move because it means she is no longer being deprived of human contact.
Maxwell is facing 50 years in jail when she is sentenced for five charges related to recruiting and trafficking underage girls for the late paeodphile Jeffrey Epstein, and joining him in the sordid abuse.
She was kept in solitary confinement after the FBI tracked her down to a remote bolthole because prison officials feared she would kill herself before trial, as Epstein did in 2019.
Convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell is no longer in solitary confinement in a New York City prison, after nearly two years of being isolated by herself
Maxwell was found guilty by a trial on five charges including sex trafficking of a minor, though she has yet to be sentenced (pictured alongside Prince Andrew and Virginia Roberts in London on March 13, 2001)
The British socialite has been held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn (pictured), New York, as she awaits being sentenced
Her family complained about her being woken up every 15 minutes by guards with a torch, had a camera watching her at all times and that she was physically abused by guards.
They lodged a complaint with the United Nations and claimed that her treatment breached ‘Nelson Mandela rules’ about prisoner treatment.
Maxwell’s brother Ian said: ‘I am finally going to be able to see Ghislaine. Apart from a few seconds of snatched conversation I had with her at the bar of the court, we have not had any meaningful interactions. I will be able to do that because she has been released into the general population.
‘She is still in MDC but in the general population. There are dangers in it but she has come out of being in that ‘Shu’ [segregated housing unit] and out of that torture she has suffered. She has kept her head held high and I admire her determination’.
Ian Maxwell (pictured), Ghislaine’s brother, confirmed that she was now out in the general population while in jail, after being isolated for nearly two years
Mr Maxwell said that being a ‘dormitory style’ cell would mean that his sister would at least have some company.
While she was on her own the guards were told not to talk to her, he told The Daily Telegraph.
Last week Judge Alison Nathan, who presided over the trial, affirmed Maxwell’s conviction meaning the sentencing will go ahead.
Judge Nathan ruled that a juror who did not admit his past sexual abuse while filling out the jury questionnaire was not grounds for a new trial.
But the judge did rule that the three conspiracy counts will be sentenced as one, reducing the maximum prison term from 65 years to 50 years.
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