A federal prosecutor began her closing statement in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking case by telling jurors the defendant was “dangerous.”
She targeted girls for abuse, the prosecutor, Alison Moe said, including one whose father had recently died, another whose mother was an alcoholic and a third who was the daughter of a single mother.
“Maxwell was a sophisticated predator who knew exactly what she was doing,” Ms. Moe said. “She manipulated her victims and groomed them for sexual abuse.”
Ms. Moe told jurors that she would list eight reasons that Ms. Maxwell was guilty of helping the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse girls.
The first reason, Ms. Moe said, is that Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein were “partners in crime” who exploited teenage girls together, she said.
While it would be disturbing for an older man to try to forge relationships with girls, Ms. Moe said, the presence of Ms. Maxwell — a “posh, smiling, age-appropriate woman” — gave him cover.
“It lures them into a trap,” Ms. Moe added.
To bolster the description of Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein as being extraordinarily close, Ms. Moe referred to pictures of the two together over a period of years, the passing of time indicated by charging hairstyles. Those photographs had been displayed to jurors during the trial over the objections of the defense.
One photograph in particular emphasized the intimacy between the two, Ms. Moe said. It was visible only to jurors and showed Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein swimming nude together.
Reason two, Ms. Moe said, is that Ms. Maxwell’s actions were systematic: “She ran the same playbook, over and over and over again, as she exploited young girls.”
Ms. Maxwell’s playbook, Ms. Moe said, was in line with a description of how sexual predators “groom” victims for abuse that was offered by an expert witness earlier in the trial.
Ms. Maxwell identified and selected the victim: girls from troubled households, Ms. Moe said. Then she and Mr. Epstein gained access to the victim, inviting the girls over to their luxurious homes, without their parents or other adults. “They were isolating these girls for a reason,” Ms. Moe said.
Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein “made these girls feel special,” Ms. Moe said. They offered to pay for one victim’s voice lessons and paid for another’s trip to Thailand. “They were building trust for what was going to come next,” the prosecutor said
Then, Ms. Moe said, “Maxwell helped Epstein normalize sexual encounters” — through foot massages, sexualized contact, topless lounging by the pool. “It escalated with sexualized massages,” she said.