Ghislaine Maxwell barricaded herself in prison conference room, feds say
August 26, 2021
Ghislaine Maxwell barricaded herself into a video conference room in prison with a trolley of legal papers, prosecutors have said.
Maxwell, the former girlfriend of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has been in awaiting trial in jail since her arrest in July 2020.
The 59-year-old has been charged with recruiting four teenage girls for Epstein between 1994 and 2004.
Maxwell denies the allegations.
They claim that her cell has been flooded with raw sewage and rodent droppings and say she is woken up every 15 minutes at night by guards shining a light into her eyes.
Maxwell has also released a picture of herself with a black eye suggesting that she had also been assaulted behind bars.
Prosecutors said that Maxwell had been allowed “to bring a cart full of legal materials into the VTC room for meetings” but that she had “used that cart to barricade the door to the room, thereby preventing prison staff from being able to access the room”.
Audrey Strauss added: “Because of the security threat posed by the use of the cart to barricade the door to the VTC room, the defendant is no longer permitted to bring the cart into the room.”
She said that Maxwell could take “whatever materials she can carry into the room”, and could make multiple trips to collect more documents.
Maxwell’s lawyer Bobbi Sternheim, defending her client, said the state “cannot resist the opportunity to gratuitously cast Ghislaine Maxwell in a negative light while it defends the Metropolitan Detention Center at all costs, regardless of the facts”.
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https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/ghislaine-maxwell-jail-trial-barricade-jeffrey-epstein-b952587.html