Ghislaine Maxwell ‘secretly watched all day by psychologists’, her lawyers claim
Prison psychologists are secretly watching Ghislaine Maxwell for hours every day, her lawyers have claimed in court documents.
Attorneys for Ms Maxwell, who is accused of grooming and abusing underage girls, say she is under constant surveillance. Her mental health is being frequently evaluated, they added.
“The defense recently learned that some of these guards were, in fact [Bureau of Prisons] psychologists who were observing Ms Maxwell and evaluating her for hours each day without her knowledge,” the former British socialite’s lawyers wrote in a letter to District Court Judge Alison Nathan on Monday.
“We are aware of no other pretrial detainee receiving such treatment.”
Ms Maxwell, an associate of the late disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, was arrested on 2 July.
She stands accused of recruiting, grooming and sexually abusing girls as young as 14, as part of Epstein’s alleged year’s long criminal enterprise.
Ms Maxwell, the 58-year-old daughter of the late media tycoon Robert, pleaded not guilty to all the charges and was denied bail at a pre-trial hearing in July. She is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn.
Ms Maxwell’s lawyers have said their client is being subjected to multiple searches. Prison guards routinely wake her up during the night, it is alleged.
They have also requested that their client be moved into the general prison population at the Brooklyn detention centre.
The lawyers say Ms Maxwell is receiving different treatment because of her status and the circumstances surrounding the death Epstein.
Epsten was found dead in his New York prison cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on charges relating to the trafficking and sexual abuse of minors.
A coroner ruled that Epstein died by suicide. The investigation into his death revealed a host of alleged safeguarding failures by prison staff who were supposed to be monitoring him.
But Ms Maxwell’s lawyers say she has never been suicidal and is, therefore, being treated unfairly.
“She, unlike Mr Epstein, has never been suicidal and was never diagnosed as exhibiting risk factors for suicide,” the lawyers wrote in a separate filing earlier this month.
Reports have claimed that an entire floor of the prison has been emptied to accommodate Ms Maxwell while she awaits her trial, which has been scheduled for July 2021.
She has been limited to 30 minutes a month for personal phone calls, while other prisoners get 500.
Prosecutors say Maxwell has been isolated for “safety” and “security” reasons.
Ms Maxwell “will be placed into the general population if and when BOP is assured that such placement would not pose a threat to the orderly operation of the institution,” prosecutors added in a filing last week.
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