Federal prosecutors on Monday filed two additional sex trafficking charges against Ghislaine Maxwell, the longtime confidant of financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The new charges mark an expansion of the criminal probe against Maxwell, who was already facing six counts tied to Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking network. Prosecutors had previously accused Maxwell of facilitating the abuse of three young girls in the mid-1990s.
The new eight-count indictment adds a fourth victim, alleging that Maxwell helped to recruit an underage girl to engage in sex acts with Epstein at his Florida home between 2001 and 2004.
Maxwell’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Maxwell was arrested July 2 at a remote New Hampshire mansion. Prosecutors say she played a key role in Epstein’s abuse of underage girls, helping to groom the victims and encouraging them to accept his offers of financial assistance. She also participated in some of the abuse herself, according to the original indictment.
She pleaded not guilty to the charges contained in the original indictment. The two additional charges are sex trafficking conspiracy and sex trafficking of a minor.
Maxwell is locked up at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, just across the river from the federal prison in Manhattan where Epstein died by suicide in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
