Ghislaine Maxwell outsourced sex acts for Jeffrey Epstein, jury hears

NEW YORK — Ghislaine Maxwell spoke in a childlike voice and recruited others to perform sex acts on her boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein because she couldn’t keep up with his insatiable libido, a witness testified Monday at the British socialite’s trial.

“She said he needed to have sex about three times a day,” the witness, who testified using the pseudonym Kate, told jurors in Manhattan Federal Court.

She remembered Maxwell once asking “if I knew anybody who would come and give Jeffrey a b--- job because it was a lot for her.”

“She said, ‘You know what he likes: Cute, young, pretty. Like you,’” Kate testified.

The witness said she declined to provide Maxwell references.

Now 44, Kate said she was 17 when she first met Maxwell in Paris in 1994.

Soon after their first meeting in France, Maxwell invited Kate over for tea at her London townhouse.

The witness told jurors she looked up to the Oxford-educated Maxwell, who boasted about being friends with Prince Andrew, Donald Trump and other prominent people.

Kate said her understanding was that Maxwell the girlfriend of “philanthropist” Jeffrey Epstein. Maxwell was responsible for taking care of his needs and “making sure everything was the way Jeffrey liked it to be,” Kate said.

Not long after their tea date, Kate testified, Maxwell called and said Epstein’s massage therapist had canceled and she needed someone in a pinch to fill the slot.

Then 17 and working as a model, Kate had no experience working as a masseuse, she said. Nevertheless, she agreed to do it.

Maxwell told the teen she’d be a good fit “because I had such strong hands,” Kate testified. “She said that he needed massages all the time and that it was difficult to keep up.”

Kate took the stand as a witness — not a victim — following a court ruling that she was not legally a minor when she began giving Epstein sexualized massages.

The witness, who spoke with an English accent and sometimes took long pauses before answering questions, described walking into a dimly lit room in Maxwell’s upscale townhouse in London’s tony Belgravia neighborhood.

There, Epstein lay in a robe and nothing else. Maxwell handed her some massage oil and closed the door, the witness said, leaving the 17-year-old alone with the financier.

Under questioning by Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz, Kate affirmed Epstein engaged in a sex act with her. She did not go into detail.

“She said, ‘How did it go? Did you have fun? Was it good?’” Kate recalled of Maxwell’s demeanor after the massage. “She seemed very excited and happy, and she thanked me again.”

Kate said she would ultimately end up in the couple’s orbit for more than a decade, not breaking loose until she was in her early 30s.

She described Maxwell’s attitude before and after the massages as strange, recalling how Epstein’s chief recruiter, who was 15 years her senior, often spoke to her in a childlike voice.

“Her demeanor was very, I would say it was almost like a schoolgirl. I almost felt like . . . she was younger than me. It was odd. Everything was fun and everything was silly,” the witness darkly recalled. “Everything seemed to be like a fun silly joke.”

Referencing another sexualized encounter with Epstein — this one at his Palm Beach villa when she was around 18 — Kate recalled how Maxwell made her dress up in a schoolgirl outfit with a short, pleated skirt, white socks, white underwear and a skirt.

“I thought it would be fun for you to take Jeffrey his tea” in the outfit, Kate said Maxwell told her.

Maxwell, wearing a dark gray-green turtleneck, avoided eye contact with Kate, looking at her notepad or whispering in the ear of one of her attorneys, Christian Everdell.

The testimony came in the second week of Maxwell’s Manhattan Federal Court trial.

Jurors last week heard from another of Epstein and Maxwell’s accusers, who testified under the pseudonym, Jane.

Jane said she was 14 when Epstein and Maxwell first sexually assaulted her under the guise of a massage and that the abuse would continue for years.

Epstein’s former pilot, Larry Visoski, who flew the financier around the world for almost 30 years, told the jury about seeing former presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump on the private jets.

And the jury heard from Juan Alessi, the longtime manager of Epstein’s Palm Beach villa, who spoke about underage girls frequenting the property when he worked there from 1990 to 2002. Alessi said Epstein and Maxwell often tasked him with cleaning up the aftermath of Epstein’s abuse — even going so far as to hand wash sex toys recovered in the massage room.

A retired police lieutenant testified about the green massage table where Epstein allegedly assaulted minors. The table was displayed to the jury in the courtroom.

On Monday, the jury also heard from Patrick McHugh, an executive at JP Morgan who testified about multiple multimillion-dollar wire transfers Epstein made to Maxwell, including for $18.3 million in the late 1990s. McHugh referenced payments in 2007 to a company, “Air Ghislaine,” that was used to buy Maxwell a helicopter.

After the trial finished for the day, Maxwell’s brother and sister, Kevin and Isabel Maxwell, urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to intervene in her detention. They said the federal Bureau of Prisons is starving Maxwell and subjecting her to inhumane conditions.

The Maxwell siblings have already appealed to the United Nations to get her out of jail.

Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to federal charges that she managed Epstein’s perverted life of crime from 1994 to 2004 by trafficking teens and young women to sleep with him at his properties worldwide. She faces separate charges of lying about the conduct under oath.

The 59-year-old argues the government has scapegoated her for Epstein after he killed himself while in custody in 2019.

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