Ghislaine Maxwell denied bail after pleading not guilty in Jeffrey Epstein abuse case

Ghislaine Maxwell has been denied bail after she pleaded not guilty to assisting Jeffrey Epstein's abuse of underage girls.

Ms Maxwell, 58, appeared at a New York federal court via video link from prison on Tuesday.

The former British socialite has been held in a Brooklyn jail since her July 2 arrest at her million-dollar New Hampshire estate.

She was charged with recruiting at least three girls, one as young as 14, for Epstein to abuse between 1994 and 1997 – which she denies.

US District Judge Alison Nathan rejected Maxwell's bid for bail after prosecutors portrayed her as an extreme flight risk.

Her trial is scheduled for July 12, 2021.

An indictment alleged that Maxwell helped groom the victims and was sometimes present for the abuse.

She is also accused of lying during a 2016 deposition in a civil case related to the financier's abuse of girls and women.

She faces up to 35 years in jail if convicted.

Maxwell appeared via livestream for the bail hearing, wearing her hair pulled back and dressed in a brown T-shirt and tortoiseshell glasses.

Alison Moe, a federal prosecutor, said the prosecution would take "no more than two weeks" to present its case and recommended three weeks for the trial.

She said three alleged victims will make statements later on Tuesday.

Epstein killed himself in prison in Manhattan in August last year while awaiting trial for sex trafficking offences.

He had been arrested in New York following allegations that he was running a network of underage girls - some as young as 14 - for sex.

In 2008, he was found guilty of procuring an underage girl for prostitution.

Maxwell, had kept a low profile since his death. Some of his alleged victims say she brought them into his circle to be sexually abused by him and his friends.

In court papers, Maxwell’s lawyers argued that Epstein’s death left the media “wrongly trying to substitute her for Epstein — even though she’d had no contact with Epstein for more than a decade".

They also stressed that she had "never been charged with a crime or been found liable in any civil litigation, and has always denied any allegations of claimed misconduct”.

Last week, they said that her detention at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn put her at "serious risk" of contracting coronavirus.

They insisted she was not a flight risk and asked the judge to release her from custody on bail signed by six of her associates and secured by a $3.75m property in the UK.

Under the proposed conditions, Ms Maxwell would surrender her passports from the US, UK and France and confine herself to a property in New York with electronic GPS monitoring.

But prosecutors said her wealth, multiple passports and and the length of her potential sentence meant there was a risk she could abscond.

“The defendant has not only the motive to flee, but the means to do so swiftly and effectively,” prosecutors wrote in court papers.

They cited her access to millions of dollars and the scant information about her finances provided by her lawyers.

Maxwell’s lawyers have said she “vigorously denies the charges, intends to fight them, and is entitled to the presumption of innocence.”

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