Should Jeffrey Epstein’s ex-girlfriend spend her Christmas behind bars?

Ghislaine Maxwell is set for a “miserable” prison birthday on Christmas Day. This time last year, the British heiress was in her $1 million New Hampshire mansion. Now she will turn fifty-nine on the twenty-fifth in a nine by seven-foot cell at Brooklyn’s tough Metropolitan Detention Center, in New York.

Inmates there traditionally get a turkey dinner, with socks and peanuts as gifts. Cameron Lindsay, a former warden, told The Sun on Sunday, “The meal is prepared by inmates. “It’s a traditional Christmas meal, with cranberry sauce.”

December 19 marked 168 days of Ghislaine Maxwell’s incarceration in solitary confinement inside New York’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center.

Bail/No bail

On December 18 as her high-powered legal team fought to have the fifty-eight-year-old former socialite released on $28.5 million (£21 million) bail in time for Christmas, one of Maxwell’s close friends opened up to The Mail on Sunday about the reality of Maxwell’s life behind bars.

“Ghislaine’s being treated worse than a terrorist or murderer,” claimed the friend. “She’s lost 24 lb, her hair is falling out and she hasn’t exercised or been allowed to step outside into fresh air since she entered jail on July 6.”

Maxwell’s high-powered legal team fought to have her released on bail in time for Christmas. But she’s reading through the government documents, she’s feisty and ready to fight. She believes there is not a single piece of evidence in those 2.5 million pages which corroborates any charges against her.

Pimpin’ pedo

Maxwell stands accused of helping her former boyfriend, convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, recruit and sexually abuse girls as young as fourteen between 1994 to 1997, and of lying about her role as his alleged “pimp and madam” when she was deposed in a 2016 civil lawsuit. Maxwell denies all the charges, but if convicted, the Oxford-educated friend of Prince Andrew faces up to 35 years in prison.

Last week it emerged that Maxwell and her “secret” husband of four years, Scott Borgerson, 44, are so convinced of her innocence that they will risk every penny they have – a joint fortune of $21.78 million – to secure her bail. Meanwhile, a group of family and friends, including her brother and twin sisters, have offered to put their homes and assets to make up the rest of the bail money.

“Ghislaine is determined to clear her name and prove her innocence,” said the friend. “She and her spouse have put everything they own on the line. Her legal fees alone are $7 million. She wants her day in court.”

Dummy divorce

Just as determined are prosecutors from the Southern District of New York and women who claim Maxwell lured vulnerable girls to Epstein’where he – and allegedly she – sexually abused them. U.S. Attorney Audrey Strauss filed a thirty-six-page reply to Maxwell’s bail application, portraying her as a cold, conniving liar and conwoman who wouldn’t hesitate to flee should Judge Alison Nathan grant her bail request.

While Maxwell’s “devastated” husband wrote a passionate letter to the judge saying that “the Ghislaine I know is a wonderful and loving person” and insisting their life together was so idyllic she would never run, prosecutors dropped a bombshell by claiming the socialite told them she was “in the process of divorcing” Mr. Borgerson when she was arrested.

Prosecutors stated, “Although the defendant now claims her marriage would keep her in the United States, her motion does not address the plainly inconsistent statements she made to Pre-trial Services at the time of her arrest when… she said she was in the process of divorcing her husband.”

Looks like no Christmas pudding for Ghislaine.