The appeals and descriptions of the victims have borne fruit.

"You deserve to be locked in a cage forever," Virginia Roberts Giuffre demanded before the sentencing of her former tormentor Ghislaine Maxwell.

Former fashion student Elizabeth Stein later recalled rape, death threats and an unwanted pregnancy in federal court in New York.

"I didn't even know whose baby it was.

I aborted it," Stein read from her so-called Victim Impact Statement.

Annie Farmer, who met Maxwell and her accomplice, the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, in 1996 when she was 16, recalled the trauma caused by both.

"I hope you consider the suffering that many women are still going through to this day following Maxwell's abuse,"

she asked the presiding judge, Alison Nathan.

Meanwhile, former model Sarah Ransome compared traveling alongside Maxwell and Epstein to sex hell.

"I became a sex toy with a heartbeat in it," said the South African.

Shortly after the disturbing statements, Judge Nathan sentenced America's top sex offender to 20 years in prison.

The considerable sentence against Maxwell, said the lawyer at the long-awaited sentencing hearing on Tuesday, is also a signal.

Anyone who sexually abuses underage victims or engages in human trafficking with them will be held accountable.

said the South African.

Shortly after the disturbing statements, Judge Nathan sentenced America's top sex offender to 20 years in prison.

The considerable sentence against Maxwell, said the lawyer at the long-awaited sentencing hearing on Tuesday, is also a signal.

Anyone who sexually abuses underage victims or engages in human trafficking with them will be held accountable.

said the South African.

Shortly after the disturbing statements, Judge Nathan sentenced America's top sex offender to 20 years in prison.

The considerable sentence against Maxwell, said the lawyer at the long-awaited sentencing hearing on Tuesday, is also a signal.

Anyone who sexually abuses underage victims or engages in human trafficking with them will be held accountable.

Defense attorneys also saw Maxwell as a victim

Anything was possible in the Maxwell case up until the proverbial last minute.

Before the sentencing of the New York pedophile Epstein's accomplice, who recruited girls and young women for him for sexual assaults for years, prosecutors had demanded 30 to 55 years in prison.

“It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of their crimes.

They demand justice,” the prosecutors justified the comparatively high demand.

Meanwhile, Maxwell's defense attorneys had pushed for a lenient sentence.

Her client was traumatized as a child by her father, the British media mogul Robert Maxwell.

After his death in 1991, the former it girl of London society looked for a new strong man and found him in Epstein.

The defense argued that four to five years in prison were appropriate.

Epstein was arrested in July 2019.

Four weeks later, prison officials found the 66-year-old hanged in a cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan.

Maxwell was in hiding at the time.

In July 2020, Federal Police (FBI) officers finally arrested Epstein's confidant at her New Hampshire home.

A prominent circle of friends

Four victims testified against Maxwell during the criminal trial, which ended four weeks later and resulted in a guilty verdict on five of the six counts of “recruiting and transporting minors for illegal sex”.

The sixty-year-old deliberately made friends with the then minors in order to leave them to Epstein for sexual assault, called "massage".

Maxwell previously prepared them for abuse through mutual undressing, sex toys, and conversations about intimate encounters.

In addition to Epstein and Maxwell, celebrities are said to have been involved in the attacks in Manhattan, New Mexico, Florida, Paris and on the Caribbean island of Little Saint James between 1994 and 2004.

Judge Nathan had the former couple's entourage, which included Prince Andrew,

Bill Gates and former Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump were included, but excluded before the trial began.

After the disturbing descriptions of the victims, the lawyers Lisa Bloom and Brad Edwards called on the American Federal Police (FBI) again on Tuesday to investigate Maxwell's college friend Prince Andrew and other possible accomplices.

For Farmer, Ransome and Stein, the case with Maxwell's conviction does not seem to be over either - despite or perhaps because of the apology with which she surprised the victims on Tuesday.

"I'm sorry for your pain.

I know the connection to Jeffrey Epstein will never let me go," said Maxwell, who was shackled in the courtroom.

She too was deceived by Epstein.

Farmer dismissed the apology as an attempt to whitewash himself and portray himself as a victim.

"She took no responsibility for her crimes," Maxwell later accused.

Meanwhile, Bobbi Sternheim, the defense attorney for Epstein's accomplice, announced an appeal.

Even the public attention before the criminal trial, said the lawyer on the steps of the courthouse,

hardly left any room for fair dealings with her client.

"We all know that the person who should have been sentenced today shied away from responsibility," Sternheim alluded to Epstein's suicide.