The Oxford-educated British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the disgraced media tycoon, Robert Maxwell, is at the very centre of controversy this week. Allegedly a close friend, confidant, former lover and employee of Jeffrey Epstein, the seedy billionaire with a reported penchant for underage girls. The man who died in a Manhattan prison cell on Saturday morning – in what is currently thought to be an act of suicide. His death came hours after 2,000 documents were released containing multifarious allegations against him – and those close to him.
Regarding Maxwell, it’s a case of did she, didn’t she – to what extent was she bound up, even leading an underground operation? The recently released papers suggest that she was involved in ‘recruiting, maintaining...and trafficking girls for Epstein’. She faces a conspiracy investigation in the United States along with the other former assistants of Epstein – all allegations which she firmly denies.
Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell, born on Christmas Day, 1961, was the youngest of nine, and allegedly the diamond of Robert Maxwell’s eye, his absolute favourite. To such an extent, that he became fiercely protective of his daughter. By the time she arrived as an undergraduate at Balliol College, Oxford, (following her time at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, the Duchess of Cambridge’s alma mater) she would try to prevent being seen with boyfriends out of fear of her father – who suspected that any man after his daughter was a good for nothing gold-digger.
She grew up in Headington Hill Hall in Oxford, a lofty 53-room Italianate mansion visited by Oscar Wilde and the Bloomsbury Group under previous ownership. Under Maxwell, it became the office for Pergamon Press, his publishing house. Maxwell even commissioned a stained-glass window by an Israeli sculptor Nehemia Azaz to adorn the imperial staircase.
Growing up in such a place, circulating in such eminent society circles – Robert Maxwell even served as an MP for Buckingham between 1964 and 1970 – Ghislaine developed a weighty, influential address book. According to The Telegraph , Ghislaine was ‘routinely lauded as one of the best connected socialites’. Dining out on her opulent connections that spanned politicians, entrepreneurs and royalty; the likes of Bill Clinton, Elon Musk and the Duke of York, she was utterly capable of turning on (and up) the charm as situations emerged. Ghislaine was well educated, fluent in a handful of languages, glamorous and rich – she was even a qualified helicopter pilot.
An acquaintance told The Telegraph , ‘She had an upbringing and taste and knew [...] how to entertain. You can’t buy that. You can’t buy access, either.’
Robert Maxwell chose to call his £15 million luxury yacht Lady Ghislaine. Years later, on 5 November 1991, at the age of 68, it was by the yacht that he would be found floating dead off the Canary Islands. Whether the death was accidental, health-related, an act of suicide or murder continues to be debated; six years later in a interview with Hello! magazine Ghislaine would confess: ‘I think he was murdered’.
Scandal followed Robert Maxwell’s mysterious death – he was found to have stolen – or ‘fraudulently appropriated’ – the pension assets of the Mirror Group Newspapers to support his companies’ share price as he was operating in fear of bankruptcy – and in so doing, did 32,000 people out of their pension.
Ghislaine took the news badly – she was reportedly ‘utterly broken’ after his death, and, according to a friend who writes for Vanity Fair , Epstein ‘saved her’ when they met at a New York party in 1992. Her meeting with Epstein, an enigmatic Jay Gatsby-esque figure, also came after a split with her great love, the Italian aristocrat Count Gianfranco Cicogna, a member of the wealthy Ciga Hotels Clan and a stunt pilot (who died in a blazing crash at an airshow in South Africa in 2012).
Epstein and Ghislaine’s unusual relationship went through various phases – at first, they were supposedly romantically linked (which fizzled out) but the two remained unquestionably close (as all the photography suggests – Ghislaine never more than an arms length away, simmering, lurking in the background). Epstein once even described Ghislaine as his ‘best friend’. With her address book, she became his facilitator, making the connections that wealthy Epstein sought – trips to Sandringham as the Duke of York’s guests and regularly jetting to private birthday parties aboard Epstein’s jets and to Little St James, his island off the coast of St Thomas. (An island reportedly dubbed the ‘Island of Sin’ and ‘Orgy Island’ by locals, according to The Independent ). It’s thought that Ghislaine’s role evolved to become something of a ‘lady of the house’ – running his properties, ingoings and outgoings and various ‘errands’.
It’s now thought that the relationship had a more sordid side – an unproven thought, but still one that shows no sign of abating. Court documents state that it is ‘an undisputed fact that multiple witnesses’ have testified that Miss Maxwell operated as Epstein’s ‘procurer of underage girls’ for his elusive massages – a claim that she fiercely denies. Virginia Giuffre, a woman who claims to have served as Epstein’s teenage ‘sex slave’ leads the charge. It’s a tangled web that gets increasingly complicated as more information is brought to the table.
It’s now that Epstein has gone that Ghislaine faces the world’s glare as desire for justice for the alleged victims mounts. She quietly disappeared from the party circuit in 2016 and had been running TerraMar, a non-profit environmental organisation, even addressing the UN on ocean matters – until, it was announced last week, that the charily would cease operation.
Now – it’s suggested that she’s been living under the radar with a boyfriend, fourteen years her junior, inside a $3M oceanfront mansion in Manchester-by-the-Sea, outside of Boston. The boyfriend in question is tech CEO Scott Borgerson. She reportedly hasn’t been seen in public for three years and hasn’t left the house amidst the new focus on the Epstein case. A source familiar with Ghislaine’s new life told The Daily Mail: ‘She’s become a real homebody; she rarely ventures out. She’s the antithesis of the woman who travelled extensively and partied constantly with Epstein.’
Ghislaine was ever-present in those photographs, always in attendance at those parties – but, now she is really needed, will she emerge and shine light on what actually went on?
