The British heiress Ghislaine Maxwell, who has stood before a federal court in New York since Monday for aiding and abetting sexual abuse, is said to have set the tone on the estate of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
A former domestic worker for the late finance manager, Juan Alessi, testified Thursday that Maxwell had presented himself as the "mistress of the house".
He also observed how the fifty-nine-year-old recruited minors.
As Alessi told the court, he drove Maxwell to Mar-a-Lago, the private club of the future American President Donald Trump in Florida, in the early 1990s. When she noticed a girl in the parking lot of the club, she spoke to her. A few hours later, the girl, Virginia Roberts, is said to have visited Giuffre, Epstein and Maxwell for the first time in their Palm Beach villa. The now thirty-eight-year-old had repeatedly stated in the past few years that she had been molested by Epstein and Maxwell as a minor. The defendant and her former partner are said to have left the then seventeen-year-old Prince Andrew for sexual assault.
Alessi remembered other young women Thursday visiting Epstein and Maxwell properties in Palm Beach, Manhattan, New Mexico and the Caribbean island of Little St. James. After “massages” behind closed doors, he kept discovering dildos, vibrators and sex toys. According to a rule book of almost 60 pages, Alessi was not allowed to comment on the findings. "I should be blind and deaf and not allowed to say anything," he testified. Prosecutors accused Maxwell of regularly recruiting girls and women for sexual assault by Epstein between 1994 and 2004.
According to the defense, the daughter of British media mogul Robert Maxwell is also said to have been manipulated by the convicted sex offender.
If found guilty after the planned six weeks of trial, Maxwell faces up to 80 years in prison.