In 1991, media magnate Robert Maxwell sent his favourite daughter, Ghislaine, to America after he purchased the New York Daily News.
Warning: this story contains graphic and distressing content, including testimony of sexual assault.
Decades before the term "nepo baby" was coined, the Oxford graduate benefited from being a child of privilege, having been handed jobs at organisations her father owned or where he was a board member, before she was 25.
Her last name opened doors in the business world and on London's social scene, where Ghislaine, the "socialite," appeared on the pages of Tatler and gossip columns in the Daily Mail.
When Ghislaine was 29, she was dispatched across the pond to represent her father's interests in America's booming media industry.
New York was set to be the backdrop to a new, prosperous chapter for the socialite and the family business.
But months later, Robert tumbled off his luxury yacht in the Mediterranean and washed up dead near a Spanish fishing boat.
The empire he had built over decades, the one that allowed him entry into almost every powerful room in London and afforded his family every privilege, collapsed like a house of cards.
The island of Manhattan instead became the place where Ghislaine formed a friendship with trader-turned-billionaire and later convicted sexual predator, Jeffrey Epstein.
Her decision to enter Epstein's orbit and then conspire with him to sexually exploit and abuse countless girls and women changed the course of her own life and that of their victims.
In 2022, Maxwell was found guilty of grooming and trafficking girls as young as 14 years old for Epstein and was handed a 20-year sentence in a US prison.
Maxwell told US deputy attorney general Todd Blanche last year that she first met Epstein for tea in his Madison Avenue office after a girlfriend suggested they should meet.
The woman told her he was "looking for a wife," Maxwell claimed.
"I'm edging towards 30. I don't need to tell you guys, that's a very important moment for a girl to, like, think about important things," she said, according to the transcript.
Epstein, in documents recovered from his estate and made public last year, claimed he met Maxwell when she was in a "depression" and believed she found his friendship "immediately rewarding".
Perhaps she did. In exchange for her introducing him to her wealthy and powerful friends, he used his considerable wealth to fund the lifestyle she had lost when her father died.
In a statement to the judge considering her sentence and released as part of the US Department of Justice (DoJ) disclosures, one of her and Epstein's victims called Maxwell a parasite.
"She has lived a life of privilege, abusing her position of power to live beyond the rules … [she] has for decades lived a parasitic lifestyle relying on Epstein and others to fund her lavish existence," the letter reads.
The relationship between Maxwell and Epstein lasted decades, and in that time, a cadre of rich, powerful and famous men were lured into the pair's world. So too were the women and girls who were assaulted and abused.
Maxwell's history of procuring and grooming victims for Epstein is well known, but a trove of about three million files related to the financier, released on January 30 as part of the so-called Epstein files, offers new details about her role in her former partner's crimes.
The document releases have occurred as Maxwell has been fighting her guilty verdict, and on Tuesday, she is set to testify before the US Congress regarding its investigation into Epstein.
From the grave, Epstein and his trail of depravity have been a political thorn in President Donald Trump's side as the MAGA base cried foul over the handling of the case.
This week, Maxwell could be a very unwelcome distraction for Trump, too, as she appears before one of America's top political institutions.
Congress will attempt to get answers out of Maxwell over her role in the sexual and predatory conspiracy that victimised the vulnerable while Epstein entertained the elite.
But already the DoJ files are providing more details and damning accounts of the things she allegedly said, promised and dismissed as she trafficked girls and women to a predator and became one herself.
'It was a them thing,' woman tells investigators
For at least 10 years, Maxwell "assisted, facilitated, and participated" in Epstein's abuse of girls by helping him to "recruit, groom, and ultimately abuse victims" who she knew to be minors, the US attorneys office said at the time of her sentencing.
In the documents released by the DoJ, firsthand accounts reported to the FBI and victim statements submitted to court detail some of her conversations with the girls she trafficked.
A 2019 FBI record of an interview by a US assistant attorney and an agent with a woman who said Maxwell treated her like "they were sisters, 'like little schoolgirls".
The interviewee told the agent and attorney she was younger than 18 when she was introduced to Maxwell, who then introduced her to Epstein, saying: "I know how much he's going to like you."
The document includes an alleged recollection of a phone call between Maxwell and Epstein, where she gave what the interviewee described as a "resume" of attributes to Epstein, "saying things like 'she's so pretty, and she's so strong.'"
"Maxwell would call [NAME REDACTED] and say in a 'schoolgirl voice', 'Jeffrey wants to see you,'" the document reads.
"When Epstein wanted [NAME REDACTED] to do something she did not want to do, Maxwell would minimise and say things like 'don't be silly.'"
The interviewee also alleged Maxwell asked her if she knew anyone who could perform oral sex on Epstein, "because Maxwell did not feel like' doing it.'"
In the interview with investigators, the woman describes several instances of alleged sexual assault.
"Maxwell showed [NAME REDACTED] to a room, where Epstein was in a robe. Epstein took off the robe, got on the bed, and [NAME REDACTED] massaged him. Epstein turned over and [NAME REDACTED] saw he had an erection," the document reads.
"Epstein stated, 'Well, that doesn't make you uncomfortable, does it?' … [and] touched [NAME REDACTED] and put her hand on his penis."
Later in the document, the investigators record that the woman told them about a specific instance of alleged rape by Epstein where she "was crying and froze".
The record of the interview says the woman alleged that Maxwell and Epstein talked with her separately about having a child.
"Maxwell told [NAME REDACTED] that they should find someone for Epstein to have a child with. Maxwell told [NAME REDACTED], 'Well, it can't be you because you're getting a bit old.'"
The alleged victim told investigators Epstein and Maxwell invited her to "Palm Beach, Paris, New York and the Virgin Islands".
On a trip to the Virgin Islands, the three of them went for a walk on the beach, the document reads.
"Epstein was in the middle between [NAME REDACTED] and Maxwell and stuck his hands down both of their bikinis. It dawned on [NAME REDACTED] that 'it was a them thing.'"
Towards the end of the record, the investigators note: "[NAME REDACTED] feels that Maxwell is just as responsible as Epstein."
The ABC has not independently verified the accounts in the documents, but their stories are consistent with those told by other victims in courtrooms, media interviews, and biographies over the years.
In previously released documents in the DoJ uploads, a statement from a victim submitted to a New York court describes Ghislaine as a "psychopath".
The letter dated December 15, 2020 and addressed to the judge was asking the court not to release Maxwell before her trial and revealed more about how victims were groomed.
"She was both charming and manipulative with me during the grooming process, consistent with what many of the women she abused have described," the victim wrote of Maxwell.
Trump unscathed so far
The global tentacles of the newly released trove of documents, which stretch from America to the United Kingdom, Norway and Australia, emphasise the enormous footprint of the scandal.
What had seemed only a month ago like a domestic issue ready to tear the Republican Party apart and endanger Trump's leadership is now causing more upheaval abroad than at home.
Yet, while there are no bombshells that threaten Trump's political standing so far, or major new revelations about his well-documented friendship with Epstein and Maxwell, the story will not go away.
That is despite Trump's insistence that "it's really time for the country to get on to something else".
While some of it comes down to the US president's opponents and critics, who insist there is more going on, they are not the only ones who continue to draw the president into the Epstein story.
Maxwell's own lawyers invoked the president's name when pushing for an appeal to her sentence last year.
Her lawyers have long claimed that a 2007 plea deal, which saw Epstein sentenced to 18 months in prison for soliciting a child for prostitution, should have shielded her from prosecution as a co-conspirator.
"I'd be surprised if President Trump knew his lawyers were asking the Supreme Court to let the government break a deal," Maxwell's lawyer David Oscar Markus said in a statement last year.
"He's the ultimate deal-maker, and I'm sure he'd agree that when the United States gives its word, it should keep it."
As the administration faced pressure in 2025 to release more documents related to the Epstein investigation, Maxwell sat down for a two-day interview with deputy attorney general and former Trump lawyer, Todd Blanche.
During the discussion, she denied under questioning that she had observed Trump engaged in any form of sexual behaviour.
"I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting," Maxwell said, according to the transcript.
"I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects."
There are hundreds of mentions of Trump in the new tranche of documents released by the DoJ, including in news articles, emails, and public documents. Being named in the Epstein files does not imply wrongdoing.
Days after her interview with Blanche, Maxwell was transferred to a minimum-security prison, the Bryan Federal Prison Camp in Texas, where she shares the facility with the disgraced founder of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes, and former Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star Jen Shah.
Most of the inmates at the facility are serving time for non-violent offences and white-collar crimes.
Yet the New York Times reports that according to Bureau of Prisons regulations, inmates designated as sex offenders are generally supposed to be held in low-security prisons, not in minimum-security facilities, like that of Bryan, Texas.
"It is with horror and outrage that we object to the preferential treatment convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell has received," two women who have accused Epstein and Maxwell of abusing them, Maria and Annie Farmer, and the family members of another, Virginia Giuffre, told the NYT.
"President Trump has sent a clear message today: Pedophiles deserve preferential treatment, and their victims do not matter."
What to expect from Congress appearance
On Tuesday, Maxwell will testify under oath before the congressional committee investigating the federal government's handling of the Epstein files.
Committee chairman James Comer, who is leading the investigation, said they had "been trying to get [Maxwell] in for a deposition".
"Her lawyers have been saying that she's going to plead the Fifth, but we have nailed down a date," he said.
Maxwell's legal team indicated she would plead her Fifth Amendment rights, which allows citizens to decline to speak to authorities.
"Put plainly, proceeding under these circumstances would serve no other purpose than pure political theatre and a complete waste of taxpayer monies," her attorney David Markus wrote in a letter to the committee.
"The committee would obtain no testimony, no answers, and no new facts."
If she is unable to appeal her sentence, Maxwell's only chance of leaving prison early would be through a presidential pardon.
The White House has denied that Trump is considering granting her clemency.
"It's not something I've heard discussed," Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters last year, but said that as a general rule, "we don't comment on clemency requests."
Trump, when asked if he would consider a pardon in October, said he'd have to "take a look at it".
"I wouldn't consider it or not consider it. I don't know anything about it. I will speak to the DOJ [Department of Justice]," he said.
