More than just being the favorite child of her father, Ghislaine Maxwell was at the center of the influence operation and the web of businesses linked to organized crime and intelligence that Robert Maxwell set up in New York City before his 1991 death.
Despite being found guilty late last year for her role in sex crimes against minors, Ghislaine Maxwell, the “madam” and chief accomplice of the intelligence-linked pedophile and sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, may soon walk free. A juror in the case, Scotty David, subsequently took credit for the jury’s decision to find Ghislaine Maxwell guilty and “inadvertently” revealed that he had incorrectly answered a pre-trial questionnaire. As a result, the possibility of a mistrial, and Ghislaine walking free, now looms large.
David has some interesting connections, as he currently works for the Carlyle Group – the global investment firm whose ties to the bin Laden family during the early 2000s have come under scrutiny. Carlyle’s executives often have ties to intelligence, with one example being its former chairman and then chairman emeritus, Frank Carlucci, who had been deputy director of the CIA and, later, Reagan’s Secretary of Defense. Carlyle’s current co-founder and co-chairman David Rubenstein, as noted in this article from Free Press Report, served on the board of the influential Trilateral Commission during the same time as Jeffrey Epstein, while his ex-wife Alice Rogoff (divorced in 2017) had a very close working relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell, including with her now defunct “charity” the TerraMar Project. Given the fact that there are known ties between David’s employer and Ghislaine Maxwell, why has this potential conflict of interest gone unmentioned by mainstream media?
Not only that, but – according to a family member of one of the women who testified against Maxwell during her trial – David was connected with the journalist who would publish the now infamous, post-verdict report via Vicky Ward. Ward has been denounced by Epstein victims and others close to the case for having had a past “chummy” relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell she declined to disclose for years and for subsequently telling Ghislaine that Epstein victim Maria Farmer had been the person who had first reported Maxwell and Epstein to the FBI back in 1996. Farmer later claims that Ward’s lack of journalistic integrity, after promising to keep Farmer’s identity secret, had put her life in danger and forced her into hiding.
It seems that there is, yet again, a major cover-up in the works, one which involves major centers of financial and political power in New York City and beyond. In order to fully understand the sexual trafficking and blackmail operation that Maxwell and Epstein oversaw, and why powerful forces apparently continue to intervene in the case, one must first understand its genesis, particularly how and why Ghislaine Maxwell arrived in New York City. In this second installment of “Meet Ghislaine” (read Part 1 here), the beginnings of Ghislaine’s career – closely controlled by her father, Robert Maxwell, until his 1991 death – are followed in detail.
The Young Ghislaine
Early on in life, Ghislaine Maxwell was surrounded by the rich and powerful figures who frequented her father’s offices as his publishing empire and political connections grew both in the UK and abroad. Her father, Robert Maxwell, was a dominant force in her life as he was for her siblings as well, though Ghislaine gained a reputation as his favorite child, despite having been neglected in the earliest years of her life.
However, Ghislaine did not escape the abuse that was known to befall Robert Maxwell’s other children. While brothers Kevin and Ian were well known to regularly receive tongue lashings from their father in full view of friends and business associates, Ghislaine received “prearranged hidings [beatings]” from her father, with a nine-year-old Ghislaine telling author Eleanor Berry, a friend and confidant of her father’s, that “Daddy has a series of things lined up in a row. There’s a riding crop with a swish to it, another straight riding crop and a few shoehorns. He always asks me to choose which one I want.”
By all accounts, Robert Maxwell had firm control over Ghislaine’s young life. This was particularly true when it came to her love life through her teens and into her time at university, when he reportedly would ban her boyfriends from the family home and try to keep her from being seen with them publicly. It appears that Robert Maxwell applied this rule uniquely to Ghislaine and not to his three older daughters. Though such behavior could be attributed merely to his being a protective father, he later went to great lengths—even involving his publishing empire—to promote Ghislaine’s affairs with certain individuals, particularly those who inhabited elite circles (explored in more depth later in this article). This behavior suggests that Robert Maxwell may have seen Ghislaine’s sexuality as a useful tool in growing his influence empire, beginning when she was quite young. It also may have contributed to Ghislaine’s willingness, years later, to sexually exploit and abuse the young women targeted by herself and Jeffrey Epstein.
In much the same way as Ghislaine’s young personal life was controlled by her father, her entry into the working world after her graduation from Oxford was directly facilitated and managed by her father, with Robert Maxwell setting her up “with a string of jobs across his business empire.” By 1984, at age twenty-two, she was serving as a director of the British football club Oxford United alongside her brother Kevin. At the time, Robert Maxwell held shares in the club through a company created explicitly for that purpose. He served as the club’s chairman beginning in 1982.
Prior to and during this same period, Ghislaine worked in various roles at her father’s companies Pergamon Press and the Mirror Group, with British media later describing her early career as “entirely dependent on her father’s patronage.” She was working for the Mirror Group by 1984 and possibly earlier. During this period, Robert often used Ghislaine to market and generally represent his newspapers publicly.
In 1985, and with Robert Maxwell’s full approval, The People — the Sunday edition of the Daily Mirror— ran a story claiming that efforts were being made to blackmail the paper’s publisher, Robert Maxwell himself. The blackmailer had reportedly threatened Maxwell with information regarding Ghislaine’s alleged relationship with David Manners, then-Marquis of Granby and the future Duke of Rutland. The article sought to paint Robert Maxwell as bravely resisting the “blackmailer,” but there is more to the story.
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