In a new indictment filed Monday, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell has been charged with two additional sex trafficking charges after a fourth victim was added to the case against Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime confidant, NBC News reports.
Federal prosecutors had already accused Maxwell of recruiting three underage girls for Epstein during the mid-1990s. However, the addition of a 14-year-old girl who was allegedly recruited by Maxwell from 2001 to 2004 not only lengthens the amount of time on her potential sentence, it also widens the scope of how long this activity allegedly occurred.
Maxwell had plead not guilty to the six previous charges against her. These latest charges include sex trafficking conspiracy and sex trafficking of a minor. Maxwell, among others, are accused of calling the victim to schedule sexual encounters with Epstein at his Florida home, then paying her hundreds of dollars after each visit.
Maxwell was arrested in July at her mansion in New Hampshire. The original indictment claims she allegedly “assisted, facilitated, and contributed to Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of minor girls by, among other things, helping Epstein to recruit, groom, and ultimately abuse” them. Court documents assert that both her and Epstein were aware that some of the victims were under the age of 18.
In February, Maxwell’s attorney Bobbi Sternheim claimed her client has been under constant surveillance, including four to five searches per day. Sternheim alleges Maxwell has been recorded by correctional officers with a hand-held camera every time she is moved, and was once subjected to a pat-down search where the guard refused to film it being done.
Federal officials have long been worried that Maxwell would attempt to kill herself as she awaits trial, which is set to begin in July. Epstein died at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center in August 2019 from what has been ruled a suicide.
