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Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous pal Ghislaine Maxwell has lodged more than 100 complaints during her time behind bars, claiming everything from excessive body-cavity searches to invasive shower surveillance, according to a new report.
Maxwell, who awaits sentencing after being convicted of serving as the late sex predator’s ruthless handmaiden, spent 22 months in solitary confinement at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center.
New court papers show that Maxwell complained of an increased number of “humiliating” body-cavity and strip searches, according to the report.
She also alleges that she was handcuffed to a chair while watching television and that jail personnel filmed her around the clock — even in the shower.
Maxwell’s attorneys note that another inmate threatened to strangle her in her sleep and that she feared being shot dead by a sniper.
Her legal team contends that the punishing conditions of her confinement should qualify her for a more lenient term at sentencing.
Scheduled to learn her fate later this month, Maxwell faces a maximum of 55 years in prison.
Her attorneys are pushing for a sentence of closer to five years from Judge Alison Nathan, the report stated.
Stressing her “humiliating” incarceration in the grim Brooklyn lockup, they are pushing for a term far softer than the 20 years meted out to Epstein.
Her team has also highlighted what they cast as her traumatic upbringing under her father, the late newspaper mogul Robert Maxwell.
Epstein, they argue, manipulated Maxwell into corralling young girls for his personal pleasure and that her giving nature made it difficult to decline his requests.
She was transferred from solitary confinement to a general population cell in May.
Lawyers say security cameras monitored Maxwell’s movements 24 hours a day, while an “additional hand-held camera … followed her while under the constant surveillance of several prison guards who scrutinized her every move, even when she was showering.”
Lights in her cell were left on day and night and a torch was shone into her eyes every 15 minutes to ensure she did not meet the same fate as Epstein, whose death was ruled a suicide, it is claimed.
Her lawyer, Bobbi Sternheim, adds: “She was subjected to an excessive number of physical searches on a daily basis: strip searches, body-cavity searches.
“At times, searches were conducted in inappropriate ways and were especially painful humiliating (sic) and intimidating, as when her breasts and genitalia were touched in a rough and reckless manner.”
A vegan, Maxwell was allegedly provided with meals that were “meager (sic), stale, often rancid and inedible,” and that the tap water in her cell was “foul-smelling and undrinkable”.
Maxwell’s legal team has likened her time on remand as similar to the punishment given to terrorists and the Mexican druglord “El Chapo.”
Prosecutors in the case will offer their own submissions regarding Maxwell’s sentence this week.
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