As it happened: Maxwell convicted of grooming girls for Epstein

While Ghislaine Maxwell has been convicted of five of the six charges she faced, she is far from done with the legal process.

She now faces up to 65 years behind bars. Judge Alison Nathan, however, has yet to set a sentencing date. Her final sentence will be up to the judge, who will also decide whether her sentences for each count are to be served consecutively or concurrently.

Maxwell’s defence team has said they will appeal the verdict. A successful appeal would require that they show that the judge violated federal rules that somehow impacted the jurors as they came to a verdict.

While she waits for her sentencing date, Maxwell will remain incarcerated in the notorious Metropolitan Detention Center in the borough of Brooklyn, where Maxwell has previously complained about conditions.

Sarah Krissoff, a former prosecutor with the Southern District of New York, tells the BBC she expects "a very significant prison sentence" for Maxwell.

"Given the involvement of minors, the judge has really great discretion to impose a significant sentence, and based on the evidence that was presented at trial, frankly, I expect the judge to impose a very severe sentence upon her."

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This is one of the most high-profile convictions of a woman for enabling a sex trafficking ring.

And most importantly, it's a major victory for the more than 100 accusers who fought for over a decade to have Epstein and his co-conspirators face criminal charges.

Maxwell, the 60-year-old daughter of a British media tycoon, has been found guilty of grooming and trafficking girls as young as 14 years old for sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

There were several powerful moments inside a packed courtroom in New York City, mainly from the prosecution which kept its case simple to avoid overwhelming the jury.

The entire foundation of the case rested on the four accusers' credibility. It is because their testimony was so convincing that Ghislaine Maxwell has been convicted.

Read Nada's full analysis here.

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Four women took the stand at Maxwell’s trial, testifying that they had been sexually abused by Epstein before they turned 18 and that Maxwell had urged, facilitated and participated in the abuse.

Annie Farmer was the only one who used her real name in her testimony. In court, she pointed at the defendant and accused her of groping her in a topless massage at age 16. Farmer also said Maxwell had neither said nor done anything as Epstein had groped her at a cinema.

Jane was the first accuser to take the stand. She said she had been molested by Epstein from the age of 14, and that Maxwell had “instructed” her on how to massage Epstein, being "casual" about the abuse.

Kate was another accuser - a British woman who said Maxwell had asked her if she knew any other "cute, young pretty girls" who could "have sex with Epstein". Kate alleged that the socialite had often called her a “good girl” and had even laid out a schoolgirl dress for her to wear for Epstein.

Carolyn said she had been to Epstein’s Florida home “hundreds of times” between the ages of 14 to 18, with Maxwell calling to set up the massage appointments and then paying her afterwards. An ex-boyfriend of Carolyn corroborated the testimony, saying he had driven her to and from the home, and had seen the money.

Ghislaine Maxwell was one considered the toast of high society in London and New York.

Born into a life of opulence and privilege to publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell in 1961, Ghislaine became anxious to please her overbearing father even as her siblings rebelled or withdrew from family life.

She later defended him even after news that he had raided the Mirror Group’s pension fund of £440m ($583m) as part of a scheme to artificially inflate the company's share price at the expense of 32,000 of his employees. “He wasn’t a crook,” she told Vanity Fair in 1992.

After learning to appease her father’s whims, she did the same for Jeffrey Epstein.

Read more here.

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Maxwell's lawyer, Bobbi Sternheim, has just emerged from court and delivered this brief statement.

"We firmly believe in Ghislaine's innocence. Obviously we are very disappointed with the verdict.

"We have already started working on the appeal and we are confident she will be vindicated."

Ghislaine Maxwell’s legal troubles are not over. She still faces perjury charges for allegedly lying under oath about her role in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuses.

The perjury charges stem from accusations that she lied during a 2016 deposition for a lawsuit filed against Epstein by one of the accusers, Virginia Giuffre.

During the deposition, Maxwell repeatedly said she was largely unaware of Epstein’s abuses. Federal prosecutors accused her of making “false declarations”.

While the charges were originally included in an indictment against Maxwell released after she was arrested in July 2020, in April Judge Alison Nathan granted a request from Maxwell’s attorneys to separate the charges from the rest of the counts.

The perjury charges each carry a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Giuffre’s 2015 lawsuit against Maxwell alleged that Maxwell recruited her when she was still a teenager and of trafficking her for sexual abuse between 1999 and 2002.

Tara Palmeri, a journalist who spoke to witnesses and accusers in this trial, tells the BBC she thinks this conviction could be the "tip of the iceberg".

Palmeri says Jeffrey Epstein used vulnerable women to recruit other victims, who may not have realised they were being manipulated.

Watch the interview in full below.

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If you're just joining us, here's what you need to know:

• Maxwell has been convicted of five out of six federal charges, including sex trafficking of a minor.
• The trafficking sentence, the most serious one the British socialite faced, carries a sentence of 40 years in prison.
• Maxwell showed no emotion in court as the judge spoke. After the verdict was read, she poured herself a glass of water and took two sips.
• Her siblings in the Manhattan courthouse - Kevin, Isabel, and Christine - also sat silently as they learned their sister's fate. She now faces around 65 years in jail for the trafficking and grooming charges.
• The jury's verdict came after around 40 hours of deliberating, as well as a four-day Christmas break.
• Maxwell, a longtime associate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has been in jail since her arrest last July.
• The trial was delayed several times due to the coronavirus pandemic. In recent days, the Omicron variant has triggered an "astronomical spike" in cases in NYC, the judge said during the trial

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A large crowd of journalists is waiting outside the court from any further comment from the lawyers in the trial.

Earlier, the federal prosecutors who tried the case were seen leaving the court. They gave no comment to reporters and showed no outward display of emotion.

There has been some suggestion that one of Maxwell's lawyers may address the journalists on this chilly New York City evening.

Lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as family members, have repeatedly complained about her conditions in jail and her legal team has made several applications for bail, which so far have all been denied.

Her siblings even filed a legal complaint to the United Nations calling her detention “arbitrary” and her jail conditions “inhumane”.

Earlier this year her brother Ian told the BBC the way she was being treated in jail was "degrading" and "amounts to torture".

He said she was being held under constant surveillance in a 6x9ft (1.8x2.7m) cell with no natural light, and the food was "basically inedible".

Following her conviction, Maxwell faces the possibility of spending the rest of her life behind bars.

One of Jeffrey Epstein’s accusers has said that the jury in the Maxwell trial has finally given her justice after years of waiting.

Virginia Giuffre, 38, claims that she was brought to the UK at the age of 17 to have sex with Prince Andrew and has filed a civil case against him in New York claiming he abused her – including once at Maxwell’s London home.

He has denied the charges.

In a statement following the news of the verdict against Maxwell, Giuffre said that her “soul yearned for justice for years and today the jury gave me just that”.

“I will remember this day always. Having lived with the horrors of Maxwell’s abuse, my heart goes out to the many girls and young women who suffered at her hands and whose lives she destroyed,” she said.

Giuffre added that she hopes the verdict is “not the end but rather another step in justice being served”.

“Maxwell did not act alone. Others must be held accountable,” she said. “I have faith that they will be.”

Ghislaine Maxwell’s relationship to Jeffrey Epstein - the disgraced US financier who took his own life in 2019 while awaiting a sex trafficking trial - came into the spotlight after his death.

A well-connected socialite, she is said to have introduced Epstein to wealthy and powerful figures, including Bill Clinton and Prince Andrew.

According to reports, Maxwell and Epstein's romantic relationship lasted only a few years, but she continued to work with him long afterwards.

"She had an upbringing and taste and knew how to run a house and a boat and how to entertain," an acquaintance was quoted by the UK's Daily Telegraph as saying. "You can't buy that. You can't buy access, either."

In a Vanity Fair profile published in 2003, Epstein said Ms Maxwell was not a paid employee, but rather his "best friend".

She is accused of having assisted Epstein's abuse of minors by helping to recruit and groom victims known to be underage.

Ms Maxwell denies any wrongdoing and has previously denied any involvement in or knowledge of Epstein's abuse.

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Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, Robert Maxwell, was a controversial and ruthless newspaper baron, football club owner and onetime Labour MP.

He became an outsized figure in British life but rose from very different circumstances.

Born in a humble village in what was then Czechoslovakia, he escaped poverty and Nazi persecution in Eastern Europe, fought alongside the British Army across Europe and eventually became one of the most powerful men in British publishing.

In 1991, at age 68, his body was found in the sea off the Canary Islands near his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine - named after his daughter.

Although a verdict of accidental drowning was recorded, the mystery surrounding the circumstances of his death was never cleared up.

He had succeeded in building a global publishing empire, but after his death, it emerged that he had taken money from the pension funds of his Mirror Group Newspapers.

Of Ghislaine’s siblings, her brother Ian has been one of her more vocal defenders, recently telling the BBC he doubted his sister would get a fair hearing.

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As the news broke that a verdict had been reached, a huge scrum of reporters prepared to deliver the news from central Manhattan.

BBC New York producer Kizzy Cox captured the scene.

The prosecution’s evidence against Ghislaine Maxwell was “overwhelming”, says Mark Richards, the trial attorney who successfully defended US teenager Kyle Rittenhouse, who fatally shot two people during unrest in Wisconsin in 2020.

“They had Epstein’s history. Most of the people in the US know about some part of the history, so the defence had to overcome that, along with I think a lot of evidence,” Richards told the BBC. “They’re salacious charges.”

Richards said that while the incidents detailed in court by Maxwell’s accusers took place at various times and locations, there was “a certain consistency” to them.

“If it’s one accuser, a jury is going to say she could be mistaken or could be lying,” he said. “But when you start having four accusers with corroborating evidence such as the pilots, some of the household staff, it becomes overwhelming.”

The duty of the defence team, Richards added, would have been to “come up with a narrative that at least equals the government’s.”

“I don’t think in this case they were able to put together a narrative that runs counter sufficiently enough to cast reasonable doubt,” he said.

US lawyer Lisa Bloom, who has represented eight accusers of Jeffrey Epstein, has called the women who testified against Ghislaine Maxwell "tremendously inspiring".

"Nobody wants to go to court and testify in a sexual assault trial. Most people won't even call an attorney… it takes extraordinary courage," she told the BBC.

"They did it because they wanted to get justice against Ghislaine Maxwell - convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, I can now say," she added.

"It’s tremendously inspiring and it lifts up all survivors of sexual abuse."

She said survivors have reached out to her.

"Some of them have already reached out to me and said: 'Maybe I can really win in my case because now I see this is what has happened in Ghislaine Maxwell's case."

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During the monthlong trial, Maxwell's lawyers argued she was a scapegoat for Jeffrey Epstein's crimes, while prosecutors sought to link the duo as "partners in crime" running a "pyramid scheme of abuse".

As more reaction pours in post-verdict, here's a look back at the key moments from this high-profile court case:

• Epstein’s long-time personal pilot recalled flying VIPs like Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump around the world. Another pilot recalled flying at least two Epstein accusers.
• Defence attorneys alleged an accuser was an actor crying on cue, after she wept on the stand testifying about her abuse at age 14 by Epstein and Maxwell.
• Epstein’s former housekeeper alleged Maxwell - who he called the “lady of the house” - ordered staff not to speak unless spoken to and not to look Epstein in the eye.
• University of California psychology professor Elizabeth Loftus, the defence's star witness, told the jury that people can have "false memories" of traumatic events.
• Prosecutors released a collection of digital photos and files to demonstrate how close Epstein and Maxwell were.
• Carolyn, another accuser to take the stand, said Maxwell had set her up for massages with Epstein "hundreds of times" when she was between the ages of 14 and 18.
• A British accuser, Kate, said Maxwell gave her a schoolgirl dress to serve Epstein tea and asked if she knew any “cute, young, pretty girls like you” who could have sex with him.
• Annie Farmer, the final accuser to take the stand, said Maxwell groped her in a topless massage when she was 16

You can read the full story here.

Teresa Helm, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s accusers has just sent us this statement, praising the women that testified during the trial.

"Justice takes the lead today," she says. "I am consumed with gratitude for every brave, courageous and justice driven person that has fought for this outcome.

"Ghislaine Maxwell will never again have the opportunity to take anything from anyone. She will reside on the other side of freedom.

"Us survivors, we go free."

The BBC spoke to Helm, who accused Epstein of sexually assaulting her at the age of 22, and described Maxwell as a "master manipulator", earlier in the trial.

Watch the interview here:

Alan Dershowitz, a lawyer who made his name defending high-profile celebrity clients like OJ Simpson, says the trial of Ghislaine Maxwell has weakened the case against Prince Andrew.

One of Epstein's accusers, Virginia Giuffre, says she was forced to have sex with the Duke of York on three occasions. He has denied the accusations.

Dershowitz himself was accused by Giuffre of participating in Epstein's sex ring. He has denied the allegations.

The government "didn't use as a witness the woman who accused Prince Andrew, accused me, accused many others, because the government didn't believe she was telling the truth", Dershowitz told BBC News, in reference to Giuffre.

"This case does nothing at all to strengthen in any way the case against Prince Andrew. Indeed it weakens the case against Prince Andrew considerably."