Ghislaine Maxwell plans at her criminal trial to challenge prosecution claims that she “groomed” underage girls for the late financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse, and to offer testimony that her accusers might have faulty memories.
A letter from the lawyer Jeffrey Pagliuca, made public on Monday, outlines possible defenses to charges that Maxwell helped recruit and groom four underage girls for Epstein to abuse from 1994 to 2004, and engaged in sex trafficking of the fourth girl.
In a high-profile case made even more so by Epstein’s links to Prince Andrew, Maxwell, 59 and the daughter of the late British press baron Robert Maxwell, has been denied bail. She has pleaded not guilty.
A hearing on admitting expert testimony is scheduled for Wednesday. The trial is set to begin on 29 November and could last six weeks.
According to the letter made public by Maxwell’s lawyer, a former president of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law will testify that Maxwell’s alleged effort to win her accusers’ trust did not automatically reflect an intent they be abused.
The letter said Park Dietz would testify that the suggestion Maxwell committed “grooming-by-proxy”, by recruiting underage girls to give sexualized massages to Epstein, had no support in the scientific community.
It also said Elizabeth Loftus, a psychologist specializing in memory issues, would testify about “false memories” of sexual abuses that people could describe on the witness stand with “confidence, detail, and emotion”, without deliberately lying.
A spokesman for US attorney Damian Williams in Manhattan, whose office is prosecuting Maxwell, declined to comment.
Epstein, a convicted sex offender, killed himself at age 66 in a Manhattan jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. A medical examiner called the death a suicide.
Pagliuca said Dietz could also testify about how Epstein, like others with “great power and wealth”, might have radiated a “halo effect” that let him surround himself with people who served his needs.
“The materials reviewed reflect that Jeffrey Epstein was a brilliant man who was flawed by enduring personality traits … found among those with antisocial, narcissistic, borderline, and histrionic personality disorders,” the letter said.