According to a law enforcement source, the security team assigned to Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime friend and alleged madam for Jeffrey Epstein who was moved on Monday to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park in Brooklyn, a federal prison, will be the highest-level security available.
“She’ll be shadowed by prison officers every time she leaves her cell and a surveillance camera will be trained on her cell, according to the source,” the New York Post reported. The source added, “They want to make sure she’ll stand trial,” pointing out that the Bureau of Prisons wants to avoid another “black eye.”
Maxwell’s bail hearing is currently pending after she was arrested last week and charged with sex-trafficking of minors, the same charge Epstein faced before he allegedly committed suicide in a Lower Manhattan jail cell.
An alleged victim of Epstein and Maxwell claimed that she was a young teenager when Maxwell performed “sexualized massages” with her and Epstein. The Post stated, “During the abuse, Maxwell and the teen engaged in sex acts with Epstein after the pair had groomed the girl and normalized sexual abuse to her, according to authorities. In a similar scheme in London, Maxwell befriended another teen in the early 1990s and pushed the girl to give Epstein massages, prosecutors said.”
“Prosecutors alleged that Maxwell, between 1994-1997, ‘assisted, facilitated and contributed to Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of minor girls by, among other things, helping Epstein to recruit, groom and ultimately abuse victims known to Maxwell and Epstein to be under the age of 18.’ They added, ‘Moreover, in an effort to conceal her crimes, Maxwell repeatedly lied when questioned about her conduct, including in relation to some of the minor victims… when providing testimony under oath in 2016,’” Fox News reported.
Epstein’s alleged suicide was contested after his death; forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, who saw Epstein’s autopsy, told CBS’ “60 Minutes,” “There were fractures of the left, the right thyroid cartilage and the left hyoid bone. I have never seen three fractures like this in a suicidal hanging. Sometimes there’s a fracture of the hyoid bone or a fracture of the thyroid cartilage … very unusual to have two, not three, and going over, over a thousand jail hangings and suicides in the New York state prisons over the past forty, fifty years, no one had three fractures.”
The New York City Medical Examiner’s Office, which asserted that Epstein indeed committed suicide, took issue with Baden’s supposition, saying that fractures of the hyoid bone and cartilage could be seen in suicides and homicides.
Two weeks before Epstein’s death, he was placed on suicide watch after bruises were discovered on his neck. Roughly a week before his death, he was taken off suicide watch and moved into a high-security housing unit, where correction officers were supposed to check on him every 30 minutes.