Second Week of Ghislaine Maxwell Sex Scandal Trial Kicks Off

The alleged madame of late American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, is accused of procuring underage girls for Epstein as part of his paedophile sex trafficking ring. She insists she is innocent.

On Monday, the Ghislaine Maxwell trial on child sex trafficking is entering its second week.

Last week's hearings were finalised with the testimony of Michael Dawson, a Palm Beach police sergeant who took part in an October 2005 search of Jeffrey Esptein's South Florida estate. Former police officer Gregory Parkinson, who participated in the same search, also testified.

The testimonies revealed that the authorities had seized two massage tables and sex toys during the search. Juan Alessi, Jeffrey Epstein's former housekeeper, revealed in his testimony on Thursday that he had to clean up after Epstein's massages, mentioning finding "large dildos" that were hidden in Ghislaine Maxwell's "basket of sex toys".

The prosecution also said that there was a "sexually suggestive photograph of a very young girl" in Epstein's bedroom at the Palm Beach estate.

Another Epstein property, a house in Manhattan, was also searched in 2019. The prosecutors revealed that “schoolgirl costumes, small ones, were found in the same floor of the house as a massage room where an underage girl was sexually abused”.

Aside from this, an anonymous witness named "Jane" asserted that Epstein sexually abused her when she was 14 and that Maxwell was sometimes present during the process.

According to "Jane", she first met Maxwell at the Interlochen Center for the Arts summer camp in Michigan, where the socialite, later joined by Epstein, was offering her some kind of "scholarships".

The financier allegedly abused her for the first time at the Palm Beach estate.

"He [Epstein] took me in the pool house and, on the right hand side was this couch, futon-looking thing, and he just proceeded to pull me over. He sat in the corner and didn’t say a word”, Jane said. “He pulled me on top of himself, and proceeded to masturbate on me … I was frozen in fear. I’d never seen a penis before".

Earlier during the first week of the trial, the jurors heard the testimony of Epstein's longtime pilot, who said he never saw any sexual interactions on the sex offender's private jet, dubbed by the media "Lolita Express". He, however, recalled flying with prominent figures like the UK’s Prince Andrew and former US Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.

Ghislaine Maxwell, who has not testified, is accused of procuring underage girls for Epstein, but she maintains her innocence. The late financier died behind bars in 2019, with officials ruling suicide as the cause of his death.