Prince Andrew’s friend Ghislaine Maxwell will learn her fate Tuesday when a US judge sentences the former socialite for helping late disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse girls.
Maxwell, 60, faces receiving an effective life term in prison when judge Alison Nathan hands down her sentence in Manhattan´s federal court.
The Oxford-educated daughter of the late British press baron Robert Maxwell was convicted late last year on five of six counts, the most serious for sex trafficking minors.
Her lawyers have argued for leniency, citing a traumatic childhood and claiming that Maxwell is being unfairly punished because Epstein escaped trial.
They called for Nathan to hand down a sentence less than the US probation office´s recommended 20 years.
Prosecutors have asked that Maxwell receive between 30 and 55 years in jail, arguing that she has shown an "utter lack of remorse" for her crimes, committed between 1994 and 2004.
Maxwell´s attorney Bobbi Sternheim wrote in a letter Saturday to Nathan that her client had been placed on suicide watch -- despite not being suicidal -- and that her lawyers would look to postpone her sentencing if she remained in solitary confinement.
During her high-profile trial late 2021, the prosecutors successfully proved that Maxwell was "the key" to Epstein´s scheme of enticing young girls to give him massages, during which he would sexually abuse them.
Two of Epstein´s victims, identified as "Jane" and "Carolyn," testified that they were as young as 14 when Maxwell began grooming them.
Maxwell´s lawyers say their client had "a difficult, traumatic childhood with an overbearing, narcissistic, and demanding father."
"It made her vulnerable to Epstein, whom she met right after her father´s death," they wrote in submissions filed earlier this month.
Money manager Epstein killed himself in prison 2019 aged 66 while awaiting his own crimes trial in New York.
"Ms. Maxwell cannot and should not bear all the punishment for which Epstein should have been held responsible," her attorneys pleaded.
Her circle included Britain´s Prince Andrew, former US president and real estate baron Donald Trump and the Clinton family.
In February, Prince Andrew settled a sexual abuse lawsuit with Virginia Giuffre, who said she had been trafficked to the royal by Epstein and Maxwell. (Web Desk/AFP)