By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Ghislaine Maxwell’s defense is set to start making its case in the British socialite’s sex abuse trial on Thursday, after the jury heard testimony from four women who said she groomed them for abuse by Jeffrey Epstein when they were teenagers.
Maxwell, 59, has pleaded not guilty to eight counts of sex trafficking and other crimes. Her attorneys argue she is being scapegoated for the late financier Epstein’s alleged conduct because he is dead. Epstein killed himself in 2019 in a Manhattan jail cell while awaiting trial on sex abuse charges.
In its case, which is expected to last two to four days, Maxwell’s lawyers are likely to continue attempting to undermine her accusers’ credibility by asserting that the women’s memories have faded over the years and that they are motivated by money to implicate Maxwell.
Maxwell is accused of setting the girls up for abuse between 1994 and 2004. The defense plans to call psychologist Elizabeth Loftus, who studies how people’s memories can become corrupted over time, as an expert witness. Loftus has testified or consulted in hundreds of trials, including O.J. Simpson’s.
The defense is also seeking testimony from lawyers who helped the women submit claims to a victims’ compensation fund managed by Epstein’s estate. Maxwell’s lawyers said the women cooperated with prosecutors because they thought it would benefit their civil claims.
Prosecutors on Wednesday urged U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan to preclude the lawyers from testifying, citing attorney-client privilege.
The prosecution rested its case last Friday.
The trial’s resumption follows a three-day break as Nathan attended her U.S. Senate confirmation hearing for a spot on the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. After she was nominated by President Joe Biden, Nathan said she would see the Maxwell trial through to completion.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Peter Cooney)
