Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein were "partners in crime" in the sexual abuse of teenage girls, a prosecutor said Monday, while Maxwell's lawyers said she was being made a scapegoat for a man's bad behaviour as the British socialite's sex trafficking trial got underway in New York.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Pomerantz said at the start of Maxwell's sex trafficking trial that the British socialite and Epstein enticed girls as young as 14 to engage in "so-called massages" in which sex abuse came to be seen as "casual and normal" after vulnerable victims were showered with money and gifts.
The prosecutor sought to make clear to a jury of 12 that there was no confusion about whether Maxwell, Epstein's longtime companion, was his puppet or accomplice.
She described Maxwell, 59, as central to Epstein's sex abuse scheme, which prosecutors say lasted over a decade.
"She was in on it from the start. The defendant and Epstein lured their victims with a promise of a bright future, only to sexually exploit them," Pomerantz said, as U.S. Attorney Damian Williams looked on from a spectator bench.
Maxwell "was involved in every detail of Epstein's life," the prosecutor said. "The defendant was the lady of the house."
Even after Maxwell and Epstein stopped being romantically involved, the pair "remained the best of friends," Pomerantz said.
She said Maxwell "helped normalize abusive sexual conduct" by making the teenagers feel safe and by taking them on shopping trips and asking them about their lives, their schools and their families.
The prosecutor spoke from an enclosed plastic see-through box that allowed her to take off her mask as Maxwell, in a cream-coloured sweater and black pants, at times wrote and passed notes to her lawyers.
When she finished, attorney Bobbi Sternheim said her client was a "scapegoat for a man who behaved badly," just like so many women all the way back to Adam and Eve.
"She's not Jeffrey Epstein. She's not like Jeffrey Epstein" or any of the powerful men, moguls and media giants who abuse women, Sternheim said.
She called Epstein "the proverbial elephant in the room."
"He is not visible, but he is consuming this entire courtroom and overflow courtrooms where other members of the public are viewing," she said.
Sternheim said the four women who would testify that Maxwell recruited them to be sexually abused were suffering from quarter-century-old memories and the influence of lawyers who guided them to get money from a fund set up by Epstein's estate after his August 2019 suicide in a Manhattan federal jail as he awaited his own sex trafficking trial.
The lawyer said "accusers have shaken the money tree, and millions of dollars have fallen their way."
The openings set the scene for a six-week trial that Maxwell settled into with frequent gazes at her sister in the front row of a spectator section diminished in space by coronavirus restrictions.
Maxwell — who once dated the financier — is accused of acting as Epstein's chief enabler, recruiting and grooming young girls for him to abuse. The charges against her stem from the allegations of four women who say she and Epstein victimized them as teens from 1994 to 2004.
Pomerantz said the abuse occurred at Epstein's homes, including his estate in Palm Beach, Fla.; his posh Manhattan townhouse; a Santa Fe, N.M., ranch; a Paris apartment; and a luxury estate in the Virgin Islands.
The government's first witness was Lawrence Paul Visoski Jr., who worked for Epstein starting in the 1990s as a pilot on the private jets that shuttled Epstein, Maxwell and others between his various homes.
A prosecutor had Visoski start by describing the layout of the New York residence that he regularly visited to pick up luggage and do other chores. He was to return to the stand Tuesday.
Authorities charged Maxwell in July 2020, arresting her after tracking her to a US$1 million New Hampshire estate where she had been holed up during the coronavirus pandemic.
Maxwell has pleaded not guilty and vehemently denies wrongdoing. She has been jailed in Brooklyn since her arrest, calling the claims against her "absolute rubbish." Maxwell's lawyers and family say she was Epstein's pawn, now paying "a blood price" to satisfy public desire to see someone held accountable for his crimes.
The wealthy, Oxford-educated Maxwell is the daughter of British newspaper magnate Robert Maxwell, who died in 1991 after falling off his yacht — named the Lady Ghislaine — near the Canary Islands. Robert Maxwell, whose holdings at the time included the New York Daily News, was facing allegations that he had illegally looted his businesses' pension funds.
Ghislaine Maxwell holds U.S., British and French citizenships and was repeatedly denied bail in the runup to her trial.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.