Editorial: With Ghislaine Maxwell's sentence, painful town chapter comes to a close

The "stain" has started to fade.

Ghislaine Maxwell, the confidante and former girlfriend of sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, was sentenced last week to 20 years in prison for helping the late Palm Beach financier sexually abuse underage girls. While she did apologize to the victims for their pain at her sentencing, unsurprisingly, she also did not take any personal responsibility, instead choosing to blame Epstein for what happened.

"My association with Epstein will permanently stain me," she said at the sentencing.

This national disgrace also brought shame on Palm Beach and Palm Beach County. Three of the four Maxwell accusers who testified during her trial said they were from or were abused in the county, but it wasn't until 2005 that Palm Beach police, led by former Chief Michael Reiter, first learned about Epstein.

One phone call from the stepmother of a 14-year-old victim started an investigation. But as Reiter pointed out in a December statement, other people had seen Epstein, who lived for years on El Brillo Way and was in his 50s then, with "female children in suspicious circumstances," but did not report it.

And then, what should have been a slam-dunk prosecution fell apart with the State Attorney's Office, which secured an indictment only on one charge of felony solicitation of prostitution. That rightfully upset the chief, who took his concerns to the FBI.

Eleven months after the FBI began its probe, Epstein signed a secret, non-prosecution agreement with federal authorities in exchange for pleading guilty to two state felony counts that included solicitation of a minor. Though there have been numerous attempts to unseal the pact, it remains unopened to this day.

Though the FBI had identified at least 40 victims, his plea let him avoid harsher federal counts and federal prison. His sweetheart deal led him to serve only 13 months in a vacant wing of the county stockade, where he was let out on work release six days a week for up to 16 hours a day. He also spent a year on house arrest but was allowed to travel frequently.

The law finally caught up to Epstein 10 years later. After a series of stories in the Miami Herald, New York prosecutors in 2019 charged him with sex trafficking related to incidents in Palm Beach and New York. About a month later, he hanged himself in a Manhattan jail cell.

For her part, Maxwell, 60, was arrested almost two years ago and convicted in December of recruiting and trafficking four teenage girls for sexual abuse by Epstein. Judge Alison J. Nathan made clear that Maxwell was sentenced for her own "heinous and predatory" crimes, not Epstein's, adding that she wanted to send an "unmistakable message" that such activities would be punished.

According to the Associated Press, the girls described how Maxwell charmed them with conversation and gifts and promises that Epstein could use his wealth and connections to help fulfill their dreams. She then led them to give massages that turned sexual.

Casting aside Maxwell's attempt at deflection, Epstein could not have committed his crimes to the extent that he did without Maxwell's help. She recruited the teens and brought them to Palm Beach or one his other homes. She stood idly by while he sexually abused them. She mingled with the rich and famous — such as former presidents Clinton and Trump as well as Britain's Prince Andrew — but yet turned a blind eye to the suffering of the underage victims.

Hopefully, her conviction and the recent demolition of Epstein's island property will bring their victims some closure. Justice finally was done, but it is appalling that it took so long, that so many people here and elsewhere looked the other way for far too long, and that too many people seemed to be influenced by the power and wealth of Epstein and Maxwell.

The stain has begun to fade, but we should hope that it never goes away completely. Only that way will we all remember and be able to stop this kind of abuse from happening again.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Editorial: Maxwell sentence ends sordid chapter, but we should never forget