How Ghislaine Maxwell went from a neglected daddy’s girl to Jeffrey Epstein’s ‘apex predator’

Ghislaine Maxwell has been referred to as the ‘mastermind’ behind Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes. Photo / Getty Images

She’s there on the sidelines in the most damning of photographs – the one in which the disgraced pariah once known as Prince Andrew has his arm sleazily slung round the bare waist of a teenage girl. And in the notorious shot of him lying across the laps of five women at Sandringham, hers is the only female face not redacted.

Ghislaine Maxwell, scion of the Mirror newspaper dynasty, who once partied with supermodels and graced the pages of Tatler, makes for an oddly detached presence in these pictures.

With sharp features and a mannish mop of hair, she could almost be mistaken for a bystander as she hovers in the background.

Almost, but for the half-smile of pride on her rather thin lips, as she witnesses each squalid mise-en-scene – engineered for the monstrous sexual gratification of billionaire paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell – fixer, procurer and enforcer extraordinaire – was no bit player. Court documents and the slew of newly released material build a picture of a woman so slavishly dedicated to her co-conspirator that she was willing to exploit, abuse and destroy lives to gain his approval.

According to the US Department of Justice (DoJ), one victim was 14 years old, with recently released papers also alleging a girl aged just 9 was abused.

Prince Andrew, Virginia Giuffre, who was one of Epstein’s victims, and Ghislaine Maxwell. Photo / US Department of Justice

In her heartbreaking posthumous memoir, Nobody’s Girl, Virginia Giuffre told how she was trafficked to have sex with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor when she was just 17.

In marrow-chilling detail, she described how she was initially preyed upon by “apex predator” Maxwell. A smiling, well-dressed woman with a reassuring accent that reminded her of Mary Poppins approached her, suggesting she could get a job as a masseuse.

After being invited to Epstein’s house at just 16, where she found herself coerced into a threesome in which the two adults laughed at her little-girl knickers, Maxwell took over her “training”.

“It was everything down to how to give a b*** j**, how to be quiet, be subservient, give Jeffrey what he wants,” she later said.

Now 64, Maxwell is serving a 20-year sentence in the US for child sex trafficking and other offences. She is currently trying to negotiate a bizarre deal for clemency in exchange for exonerating Donald Trump and Bill Clinton.

Ghislaine Maxwell attends the James Perse Store Launch at 411 Bleecker on September 2005 in New York City. Photo / Getty Images

Meanwhile, her name and her face crop up daily as the media pores over the latest damning dossier of fresh evidence. Not only did Maxwell traffic and take an active part in the degradation of vulnerable teenage girls, she also handed them over to a cabal of wealthy, powerful men who passed them around like they were the disposable spoils of privilege.

And with every appalling story, the same question resurfaces, “just how did a woman born into British high society, a privately-educated Oxbridge graduate with prospects and connections, end up as part accomplice, part puppet master in these most heinous of crimes”?

Those who know her say the seeds were sown long before her path crossed that of Epstein, and she fell into the thrall of this manipulative outlier whose shadowy business dealings had made him an equally opaque fortune.

It was, they believe, a case of history repeating itself, only this time as an out-and-out tragedy. The neglected daddy’s girl became a sugar daddy’s girl, desperate to please, even if it meant facilitating Epstein’s twisted and abhorrent urges.

“When she was first on trial, I thought it was a spectacular fall from grace. In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have imagined how deeply and how much further she could fall,” says journalist Anna Pasternak, who moved in the same social circles as Maxwell in 1980s Oxford, where they both grew up and later studied.

“These girls were non-people to her, which is why they could be trafficked and they could be abused. It is so abhorrent and so at odds with the smiling, glossy-haired, social girl that I would encounter at parties.

“We were never friends. I just knew her as an air-kissing acquaintance, who would always be looking over your shoulder to spot somebody who was richer and more useful – usually a man.”

Ghislaine Maxwell, youngest child of media proprietor and fraudster, Robert Maxwell (1923-1991), holding a framed photograph of her late father in 1991. Photo / Getty Images

Among those who knew her at that time, the consensus seems to be that Maxwell came across as “entitled”. She was self-possessed, gushing and charming, but also calculating – a consummate hostess who instinctively gravitated towards the most important guests in any room. Those who knew her also say she was emotionally guarded.

Pasternak was younger than Maxwell. Both families lived in Oxford, and her sister went to prep school with Maxwell’s brothers, Kevin and Ian, who lived in the grandeur of Headington Hill Hall.

In those days, the fearsome reputation of patriarch, Robert Maxwell, led some observers to feel sympathy for poor, little Maxwell, awash with luxury, but starved of love.

“I think the tyrannical behaviour of Ghislaine’s father fostered a ruthless survival instinct in her,” reflects Pasternak. “She learned to look after those who could be useful and trampled everyone else underfoot.”

In Robert, the very worst of blueprints was laid down. The former MP and self-made media tycoon was a loud, aggressive bully. An arriviste, who was deemed to have money but no class, he strove to be accepted by Britain’s elite, weaponising his charm to court politicians and members of the establishment.

The parallel with Brooklyn-born Epstein is impossible to ignore – except in the American billionaire’s case, Maxwell had an extraordinary contacts book of the famous and influential that would benefit him.

The youngest of nine children, Maxwell was ostensibly Robert’s favourite child, but that was no bar to being punished and bullied by him. Yet instead of driving her away, it fuelled her need to gain his approval.

Shortly after she was born, Maxwell’s brother suffered catastrophic injuries in a car accident, aged 15, which left him in a coma until his death seven years later. In the immediate aftermath of the crash, a dark pall was cast over the already dysfunctional family, and her parents took no interest in their new child – until she asserted herself.

In her mother’s memoir, A Mind of My Own, one anecdote about Maxwell seems to sum her up: “Aged 3, she planted herself in front of me and said simply, ‘Mummy, I exist’,” her mother, Elisabeth, wrote. “I was devastated and, from that day on, we all made a great effort with her, fussing over her so much that she became spoiled.”

Robert Maxwell and his daughter Ghislaine watch the Oxford v Brighton football match in October 1984. Photo / Getty Images

Maxwell was dispatched to boarding school at the age of 8, which rather contradicts claims she was cosseted. Indeed, a former colleague of her father, the journalist and broadcaster Anne Robinson once reflected on Maxwell’s early life, “she had a horrendous childhood ... she lacked goals ... she just went from one strong‑minded man to another”.

Later, at Marlborough College, alma mater of the Princess of Wales, sources say Maxwell was popular, sporty and socially ambitious – like her father, she was acutely conscious of status.

She went on to Balliol College, Oxford, where it was widely assumed she had gained her place thanks to a generous donation by her father rather than academic merit. Here, she blossomed into a social butterfly.

Fellow student Rachel Johnson remembered her as something of a livewire, “a shiny glamazon with naughty eyes holding court astride a table”. Others recollect how she would flirt with Rachel’s brother, future Prime Minister Boris Johnson. But even as a young adult, Robert was a controlling force, and she was never permitted to bring boyfriends home.

After graduation, she became prominent on the social scene, not just in Oxford and London, but on the slopes of Aspen – leading to frequent appearances in gossip columns. She was at the grandest of parties in New York, pictured arm-in-arm with Naomi Campbell, and was a ubiquitous presence at high-profile charity events.

Harry Mount, editor of The Oldie, came across Maxwell in New York, where she had resettled in a bid to carve her own path, albeit working for one of her father’s publications.

From the outset, Mount, who was then a correspondent for the Telegraph, noticed there was something that set Maxwell apart from her peers.

“Ghislaine was very unlike most rich, spoilt children,” he recalls. “Somehow, she had learned to flatter and ask you questions. I imagine she did that in reaction to her father’s appalling, bullying nature. That ability made her an ideal front woman to do the disgusting pimping for [Epstein], and to be charming at parties with the great and the good.”

But that came later, after a wrecking ball destroyed the life she had known. Very suddenly in 1991, Robert went missing from his luxury yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, and was later found dead.

Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein are seen outside No 10 Downing St in photos released by the US Justice Department. Photo / US Justice Department / Getty Images

In the aftermath, it was discovered that for years, he had plundered hundreds of millions of pounds from his employees’ pension funds to prop up his crumbling business empire.

The family had to leave their home, and their possessions were auctioned off. Maxwell found that the protection, wealth and standing she had always relied on had vanished overnight.

As the world reacted in horror to the truth, Maxwell continued to lionise and defend her father. Even in death, she remained stubbornly loyal to this autocratic man who had mistreated her.

“The whole of Ghislaine’s world has collapsed, and it will be very difficult for her to continue,” her mother told Vanity Fair. But her daughter was made of sterner stuff, and returned to New York to reinvent herself.

Less than a year later, photographers spotted her at Heathrow Airport with Epstein. The die was cast.

In the 2022 documentary, Ghislaine Maxwell: Filthy Rich, Petronella Wyatt said it appeared as if Maxwell couldn’t feel secure without money.

Epstein, meanwhile, craved access to the rarefied circles in which she moved. They made for an unlikely couple, but the pair soon became inseparable. “It wasn’t a normal relationship, but it was the kind of relationship she obviously needed,” Wyatt said.

Fellow socialite Christina Oxenberg told the documentary that Maxwell had alluded to the troubling nature of their alliance, although presumably she didn’t grasp the literal meaning of her remarks.

In one conversation, Maxwell said “she picks up three girls a day for Jeffrey, and the phrase that she used, which she thought explained it all, was, ‘I cannot keep up with his needs’”, Oxenberg explained.

Epstein’s needs – abhorrent, illegal, immoral – became Maxwell’s driving force, not least because she was financially dependent on him. According to official records, he bankrolled her life to the tune of more than £22.5m ($30.7m) between 1999 and 2007 alone.

Back in her element, Maxwell continued to dazzle in public. Piers Morgan met her briefly at a book launch and found her “smart, confident and charming”.

“There was nothing when I met her, which would imply anything nefarious, or that she would have this dark, depraved other life that was going on,” he says. “I was genuinely completely shocked when it all came out about her.”

Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Audrey Strauss, speaks to the media at a press conference to announce the arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell in July 2020 in New York City. Photo / Getty Images

Shock and horror are the universal response – with one exception. Lady Victoria Hervey, a former girlfriend of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew), has recently taken to the airwaves in an extraordinary defence of those mentioned in the Epstein files.

She went on to tell the Telegraph that she has little truck with his victims. “One could not call this trafficking. These girls ... could come and go as they wanted. They got addicted to the lifestyle.

“I think Ghislaine has been made a scapegoat and should not be in prison.”

It’s a deeply unpopular stance that flies in the face of all evidence that vulnerable teenagers were systematically groomed – and does Maxwell’s victims the gravest of disservices.

Giuffre, who is believed to have received a £12m out-of-court settlement from Mountbatten-Windsor before he was stripped of his titles, was once asked about Maxwell’s role.

Her reply was unequivocal. Maxwell was the “mastermind”, the enabler and “often more vicious and cruel than Epstein”. Far from a mere onlooker in those irredeemably compromising photographs, the woman at the back was in fact the orchestrator of every troubling tableau.

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