Ghislaine Maxwell’s lawyers say her prison treats her like Hannibal Lecter

Lawyers for Maxwell say her treatment in jail is ‘fitting for Hannibal Lecter but not a 59-year-old woman who poses no threat to anyone’

Lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell, the ex-girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, have accused her jail of treating her like Hollywood’s most famous cannibal.

“Though she is a model prisoner who poses no danger to society and has done literally nothing to prompt ‘special’ treatment,” Maxwell’s attorneys wrote to a judge on Thursday, “she is kept in isolation – conditions fitting for Hannibal Lecter but not a 59-year-old woman who poses no threat to anyone.”

Maxwell is charged with trafficking underage girls for Epstein to sexually abuse in the 1990s, to which she has pleaded not guilty. As she waits in jail for her trial, which is scheduled to start in July, her lawyers have tried three times to release her on bail – and all three times, US District Judge Alison J Nathan has turned them down.

In court papers filed this week, attorney David Oscar Markus upped the ante on his rhetoric, saying Maxwell is not only treated as badly as Hannibal Lecter, but worse than Harvey Weinstein and other high-profile criminals.

“The truth is that wealthy men charged with similar or more serious offenses, many of whom have foreign ties, are routinely granted bail so that they can effectively prepare for trial,” Mr Markus wrote. “Bernie Madoff. Harvey Weinstein. Bill Cosby. John Gotti. Marc Dreier. Dominique Strauss-Kahn.”

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Maxwell’s defense team has repeatedly lamented the “nightmarish” conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where she is being held. They say the prison has subjected her to isolation, dirty drinking water, “inadequate” food, and flashlights waking her up every 15 minutes at night.

Maxwell, it should be noted, is under suicide watch. Her ex-boyfriend, Mr Epstein, hanged himself in 2019 while he was in jail awaiting his own trial.

As part of a deal to spring her on bail, Maxwell’s lawyers have offered to have her renounce her foreign citizenships. That has not been enough to persuade the judge.

“To summarize, the defendant’s willingness to renounce her French and UK citizenship does not sufficiently assuage the court’s concerns regarding the risk of flight that the defendant poses,” Judge Nathan wrote in March.

Meanwhile, a new lawsuit was brought against Maxwell last month, accusing her and Mr Epstein of repeatedly raping a Turkish woman in front of her eight-year-old son in 2008 and threatening to feed her to alligators if she told on them. 

Maxwell has denied the charges.