By Michael R. Sisak and Michael Balsamo | Related Press
NEW YORK — Ghislaine Maxwell, the jet-setting socialite turned convicted intercourse trafficker, is off to Florida to serve a 20-year federal jail sentence for serving to financier Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse underage ladies — returning to the identical state, however a far cry from the luxury life-style, the place she dedicated a few of her crimes.
Maxwell, 60, was moved final week to FCI Tallahassee, a low-security federal jail in Florida’s capital, from the Brooklyn federal jail the place she’d spent the final two years beneath shut watch in gentle of Epstein’s 2019 jail suicide, the federal Bureau of Prisons mentioned.
It wasn’t clear whether or not Maxwell can be held in restrictive housing or beneath different particular precautions, given her notoriety and long-standing considerations about her well-being behind bars.
Maxwell, who was convicted final December in Manhattan and sentenced in June, repeatedly complained about her remedy on the Metropolitan Detention Middle in Brooklyn, her dwelling since her July 2020 arrest.
Maxwell and her legal professionals complained that jail officers have been flashing a lightweight into her cell each quarter-hour, interrupting her sleep, and subjecting her to lots of of searches and pat downs. She additionally claimed that a guard on the Brooklyn facility bodily abused her and that she was punished for complaining about it.
A message searching for remark was left with Maxwell’s legal professionals.
Maxwell, who as soon as consorted with royals, presidents and billionaires because the daughter of a British publishing magnate, was convicted of luring teenage ladies for Epstein to abuse.
Her monthlong trial featured sordid accounts of the sexual exploitation of ladies as younger as 14, advised by 4 girls who described being abused as teenagers within the Nineties and early 2000s at Epstein’s palatial houses in Florida, New York and New Mexico.
Maxwell’s new dwelling, FCI Tallahassee, is about 360 miles (580 kilometers) from Epstein’s since-demolished mansion in glitzy Palm Seaside the place prosecutors say a few of the abuse occurred.
The jail, opened in 1938, has about 820 female and male inmates. In keeping with an inmate handbook, individuals locked up on the facility have entry to a variety of lessons and actions, together with portray, leather-based, artwork and ceramics, musical devices, crew sports activities equivalent to softball, basketball and volleyball.
The jail additionally gives yoga, Pilates, films and an inmate expertise present, in line with jail consulting agency Zoukis Consulting Group.
Maxwell is becoming a member of a brief listing of notable individuals who’ve served time at FCI Tallahassee, together with Maria Butina, the Russian undercover agent who tried to infiltrate conservative U.S. political teams, and Colleen LaRose, often known as “Jihad Jane” for offering materials assist to terrorists. Butina was launched in 2019 and deported to Russia. LaRose was launched in 2018.
Like many federal prisons, as The Related Press has reported, FCI Tallahassee has had its share of staff committing crimes lately — together with sexual abuse of inmates.
In March, former FCI Tallahassee recreation specialist Jimmy Lee Highsmith was sentenced to 4 years in jail for sexually abusing an inmate between March 2014 and September 2018.
In August 2021, former FCI Tallahassee meals service foreman Phillip Golightly was sentenced to 2 years in jail for sexually abusing an inmate in November 2019.
In 2006, a correctional officer and a federal agent have been killed in a gun battle on the jail’s grounds. The officer opened hearth as brokers tried to arrest him and a number of other different officers on expenses they gave contraband to feminine inmates in alternate for intercourse, officers mentioned.