Good news: Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty. I think we can also consider this a conviction for Jeffrey Epstein, since there has to be a child rapist to receive delivery from a child trafficker.
Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime paramour of financier Jeffrey Epstein, was convicted on sex-trafficking charges after a trial that centered on what types of enabling conduct — including befriending young girls and teaching and scheduling them to massage an older man — should be considered criminal.
Maxwell, 60, was accused of recruiting teenage girls to massage Epstein at his homes in Palm Beach, Fla., New York, New Mexico and elsewhere between 1994 and 2004.
Epstein allegedly paid the girls hundreds of dollars in cash for the massages, which involved sexual touching and which he expected three times a day. He died by suicide 28 months ago, while awaiting his own trial.
The jury found Maxwell guilty on five of six counts, including conspiracy to commit sex trafficking and sex trafficking of an individual under 18. She was found not guilty of enticement of one individual under 17 with the intent to engage in illegal sexual activity.
Also, though, I must ask what has happened to the BBC? They asked Alan Dershowitz to provide commentary on the verdict.
After Ghislaine Maxwell was found guilty Wednesday on five of six sex trafficking counts for her role in procuring young girls for her former boyfriend and serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to abuse, BBC News took to the airwaves to analyze the proceedings. And they brought on Alan Dershowitz, notably named by Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre as one of the men (she has also claimed Prince Andrew sexually assaulted her) she said Epstein and Maxwell allegedly forced her to have sex with repeatedly when she was underage. Dershowitz has denied the allegations.
He is currently suing one of Epstein’s victims, so the BBC should have known better — there’s an obvious conflict of interest. Dershowitz should have known better, too, but he’s nothing but a sleazy hack already.
Another reminder:
Big day of remembrance and reflection for all our heroes of Science and Rationality. pic.twitter.com/eZNX0cnPQp
— Kieran Healy (@kjhealy) December 30, 2021
Maybe the BBC should convene a round table conversation with Pinker, Krauss, Dawkins, Summers, etc. to sadly discuss the fate of their old friends.
Belatedly, the BBC says “oops”.
Come on, every news service. Scratch Alan Dershowitz off your invitation lists already, just like all those scientists should have automatically shunned Jeffrey Epstein.
The BBC have a long history of enabling sex offenders. Look up Jimmy Savile.
They give “equal time” to racists and TERFs, so why not rapists and pedophiles too?
The Royal Family is leaning on the government, the government is leaning on the police, and the police are leaning on the BBC, and the BBC journalists aren’t all best known for integrity. This response is all about Prince Kiddyfiddler. Another big silence is about an American ex- president. The UK libel laws are among the most vicious in the world.
Sometimes they give “equal time” to people who are both rapists and TERFs! The Venn diagram of the racist and TERF categories is also pretty close to a circle.
Unfortunately, now that the TERF’s have an useful idiot with Dave Chapelle among their ranks they can claim they’re not racists.
So…why was this Dershowitz guy considered relevant in the first place…?
What’s relevance got to do with it? It’s all about ratings.
Your Venn diagram description is wrong. You either mean the intersection of those two categories is a near circle (the TERF circle) or that the much larger racist circle almost completely engulfs the smaller TERF circle.
White Supremacist slogan: “Race is real!”
TERF slogan: “Sex is real!”
Those mantras seem a little too close to be coincidence.
It seems there has been a secret deal between randy andy and his accuser.
When will the donald be arrested for all his sex crimes?
Uh oh! Speculation grows that Maxwell may try to cut a deal for reduced sentence. There’s a lot of maybe/maybe not here, including speculation that she and her lawyers tried to negotiate a deal but failed. They quote one lawyer (Jeffrey Lichtman, El Chapo’s lawyer) saying: “There’s a tremendous amount of information she has on some very important people. Now that she’s been convicted she may be more eager to discuss. She certainly should, in my mind, because a lot of people skated here, while she bore the brunt of the government’s full wrath,”
And especially Dawkins & Pinker as with other New Atheists & scientists Epstein funded. These people need to answer for how they enabled Epstein’s monstrosity.
Yeah, “speculation has been growing” for quite some time already: lots of people — and lots of Trump-loving tabloids — have been warning of bombshell revelations about the Clintons and just about anyone else ever seen with either Maxwell or Epstein. Whatever happens, or doesn’t happen, we can expect LOTS of wild-assed conspiracy theories — especially if no such deal happens at all, since that would only prove there’s a HUGE number of powerful people forcing authorities to cover everything up!
Raging Bee @13, maybe not the Trump-loving tabloids.
(https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/ghislaine-maxwell-donald-trump-bill-clinton-epstein-b1980131.html)
Strictly speaking, I think Ms Maxwell is more of a paedophile enabler than a paedophile herself. Still, this verdict is a good outcome. Now for the next and far more important step: felony charges for all the royals, politicians, LEOs and attorneys-general who protected Epstein.
Prince Andrew should get no special treatment here — not only should he be tried and (I expect) convicted, he should be sent to the scummiest cell in the scummiest prison in the UK. Maybe it would push some much-needed prison reform in the process, and the prince could finally point to something useful he’s done!
robro@11–
If Ms Maxwell cuts a deal that allows prosecutors to convict more of Epstein’s fellow travellers, I’m all for it (up to a point).
Also, if the BBC wants to repair its integrity here, it needs to sack the producer responsible for this decision.
@6
He wouldn’t be in a sensible world, but he’s a celebrity and a controversial wingnut, so catnip for journos and eye balls to advertisers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Dershowitz
Today, the BBC (on Radio 4’s Today) also gave airtime to Ian Maxwell, Ghislaine’s brother, to assert her innocence. Unlike in the Dershowitz case, it is defending doing so, claiming (I didn’t hear the interview) that he was interviewed in relation to the decision to appeal, and was appropriately challenged. But AFAIK, the Beeb does not routinely give the relatives of convicted sex offenders airtime, even if there is an appeal in prospect.
Integrity?
BBC has been enabling various rotten PMs for a long time. During Bojo, this has reached almost Pravda-style levels, softball questions to government ministers, no critical coverage of blatant lies told in the parliament et cetera et cetera.
During the trial, Maxwell’s high -paid lawyers tormented the various rape victims in the usual manner for such trials, making them break down and cry.
I will of course not encourage to do anything illegal.
Buuut if you find yourself walking next to the lawyer aside a railroad track and see a train coming, just do whatever comes natural to you.
birgerjohansson is right. The BBC is performing it’s intended role to the best of it’s ability – that’s protecting the establishment while presenting a facade of being unbiased. That’s always been it’s real job, it’s just that over the last decade or two it’s become more blatant along with so much else on the British political right.
The current chairman of the board of governors is a prominent Conservative who has donated £400,000 to the party in the past. The higher tiers of management are packed with Tory supporters and there’s a rotating door between the BBC and the Tory party for political journalists and editors. It’s all part of the corrupt system which keeps the lower orders in line.
Tinkerer @ 22
Just one example – when leaving the EU, Britain was entitled to get back 4 billion euro it had in the European investment bank.
But the negotiators knew Boris was in a hurry to sort out that particular detail before a particular date in the fall of 2019, or he would face political embarassment at home. So they drew out the negotiations, and he folded as predicted, letting the EU keep 4 billion €.
And BBC and the other media said….
(sound of crickets).
Another example out of many showing how control of BBC political journalists and editors works:-
During the first lockdown in 2020, Dominic Cummings (Boris Johnson’s principle advisor and one of the main architects of the Brexit campaign) and his wife caught Covid, and against all the rules drove his family to a cottage on his father’s estate half way across the country and then basically had a holiday travelling around the local area and spreading their germs around. After being found out he held a press conference telling all sorts of obvious lies about how he was really being very responsible and he was just doing the best for his family, and that his drive to a local beauty spot with his kids in the car was really just his way of “testing his eyesight” (!) before returning to London.
Because of the widespread outrage the BBC’s Newsnight show was forced to run a story about it and the well-respected presenter Emily Maitlis introduced the piece by asking whether there’s one rule for the government and one rule for everybody else. It was a perfectly reasonable question to ask but it was too much for the Tories so they made an official complaint to the Board of Governors who promptly issued a grovelling apology and suspended Maitlis from presenting on air for two weeks.
It wasn’t just punishment for Maitlis, it also sent a message to other BBC journalists and presenters that stepping out of line and openly criticising the government was going to be very bad for your career.
As a couple of asides which illustrate how the wealthy elite follow different rules:
1: The police investigated Cummings’ actions but decided that there wasn’t enough evidence and anyway it was “not in the public interest” to prosecute him even though it was a criminal offence and numerous other people further down the social ladder had received large fines for breaking the same rules.
2: The digging around from this affair revealed that the cottage Cummings stayed in had been built by his father without planning permission, a no-no in this country and an offence which is normally subject to hefty fines and could even mean demolishing the house. However the local council decided that this was a special case and it was “not in the public interest” to do anything about it so they did nothing.