The Schoolgirl Serving Tea - Ghislaine Maxwell Trial Day 6
“Lots of photographs of young girls...unclothed...in almost every room.”
On the first day of the second week of the USA vs. Maxwell trial, the government’s second witness took the stand. Testifying under the pseudonym “Kate,” she described how she met Ghislaine Maxwell in 1994 when she was 17 years old. She was in Paris with her boyfriend, then 35, a friend of Maxwell’s from their time together at Oxford.
At the beginning of her testimony, it looked from the closed circuit broadcast like Maxwell, wearing a dark green long-sleeve shirt, was staring at Kate intently.
Kate remembered Maxwell having short hair and being “very impressive.” Maxwell was elegant and sophisticated, Kate recalled. “She was everything I wanted to be.”
Before she left the party they exchanged phone numbers. Then, Maxwell called Kate and invited her to her home in Belgravia, the same London neighborhood the younger woman lived in with her mother.
Kate remembered seeing a bunch of photos of Maxwell with an older man with slightly peppered hair. In all of them, Maxwell stared at the older man, Jeffrey Epstein, while Epstein started out of the picture at the observer.
“I had a really lovely time and I felt really special,” she said. “I felt I had found a new connection that could be really meaningful to me...she seemed as excited as I was to have a new friend.”
Kate was impressed by the connections Maxwell had, and all the famous friends she’d tell her about, like Prince Andrew and Donald Trump. And Maxwell began telling Kate all sorts of amazing things about her boyfriend, who she said was a philanthropist who liked helping young people.
A few weeks later, Kate met Epstein for the first time at Maxwell’s home. He was sitting on a chair, wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, talking loudly on the phone. Maxwell told Epstein, “this is the girl I told you about,” and that Kate was strong for her size (about 95 pounds at the time, Kate told the court).
“Why don’t you give his feet a little squeeze?” suggested Maxwell.
Kate massaged his feet. Then Epstein told her to go ahead and do his shoulders. He agreed that she was very strong. After Kate finished her massage, Maxwell and Epstein said something about a music producer—Kate had dreams of being a singer-songwriter—which she couldn’t quite hear. Then Epstein got another call and it was time to go. Maxwell ushered Kate out.
A few weeks later Maxwell called her again, saying that Epstein’s massage therapist had canceled on him. She asked if Kate could “do her a favor” by filling in.
Kate went to Maxwell’s London house, where “she led me up the stairs,” Kate testified, to a small, dimly lit room with a massage table. Epstein was standing in the room wearing a robe. Under his robe, which he took off, he was naked.
Maxwell handed Kate a bottle of massage oil, then closed the door.
The prosecution was careful to establish this as explicitly as possible.
“Who closed the door?” the government asked.
“Ghislaine Maxwell closed the door,” said Kate.
Then, Jeffrey Epstein initiated sexual contact with the 17 year old Kate.
When she came back down the stairs, Maxwell was waiting for her.
“How did it go? Did you have fun? Was it good?” she asked.
Later in her testimony, Kate described how Maxwell often seemed almost younger than her.
“Everything was fun and everything was silly...everything seemed to be just like a fun silly joke.”
Kate had sexual contact with Epstein again three days later. Here, the prosecution was once again careful to elicit the fact that it was Maxwell who closed the door, this time after already seeing Epstein standing in the room naked.
“Have a good time!” Maxwell told Kate.
When she was finished, Maxwell was waiting for her again.
“Did you have fun? Oh, you’re such a good girl. I’m so happy you were able to come, he likes you a lot,” Ghislaine told her.
“She sounded really pleased,” Kate remembered. “And I was pleased that she was pleased.”
Ghislaine Maxwell, Kate said, had the demeanor of a schoolgirl.
The Schoolgirl
With Maxwell, sexual topics would come up all the time.
“She would talk about the nature of boys and their willies,” Kate said. Maxwell would tell Kate how demanding Epstein was, and ask her if she could bring him anybody who would give him a blowjob.
“It was demanding for [Ghislaine],” Kate said. Maxwell’s job was to take care of Epstein’s needs.
When she was around 18, Kate traveled to Epstein’s Palm Beach home in Florida for what she says was the only time. There was a beautiful swimming pool, and “lots of photographs of young girls...unclothed...in almost every room.”
“I remember that they were shocking,” Kate said.
Later Kate testified that when she was 23 or 24 years old she visited Epstein’s notorious private island. There, she told the court, she saw a slim blond girl, “who seemed far younger than me, very young.”
While at the Palm Beach residence, Kate found a schoolgirl’s outfit folded on her bed. The prosecution asked her to describe it. She paused for a moment looking disturbed, and collected her thoughts. There was a short, pleated skirt, white socks, and white panties.
She asked Maxwell about it. Maxwell told her she “thought it would be fun for you to take Jeffrey his tea in this.”
Kate put on the outfit, she told the court, and Maxwell gave her a tray. She had Kate walk out to where Epstein was working out with his trainer.
The trainer didn’t stay. Kate had sex with Epstein again. Later, Maxwell asked her if she’d had fun.
“She told me that I was such a good girl...that I was one of his favorites…”
The Defense’s Riposte
The defense didn’t have a whole lot to work with. Earlier last week, when cross-examining Dr. Lisa Rocchio, they had tried to lay the groundwork for calling into question witnesses’ memories based on their use or abuse of drugs and alcohol. The prosecution was careful to cut off this route of attack ahead of time by having Kate testify about her substance abuse problems in their examination. Kate used cocaine, alcohol, and sleeping pills for years, and got sober in May, 2003.
She also told the prosecution that she had been awarded $3.25 million from the Epstein Victims’ Compensation fund, and had signed a waiver agreeing not to sue any of Epstein’s employees in return.
The prosecution elicited this testimony to preemptively guard against an attack from the defense, who have tried to portray the government’s victim witnesses as money hungry malingerers.
Bobbi Sternheim cross examined Kate for the defense. She portrayed Kate as an ambitious international model who had been involved with many powerful men in attempts to chase fame and fortune. She also implied that Bradley Edwards, who was in the courtroom with Kate today, coached her along with other survivors of Epstein as part of an implied plot to swindle the Jeffrey Epstein estate out of vast sums of money.
And Sternheim tried to make the case that Kate’s cooperation with the government in the trial was in exchange for the government’s help applying for a “U” visa. That visa is given to victims who help the government. Sternheim suggested that Kate’s lawyer Bradley Edwards had brought up the “U” visa in meetings with the government and had started helping her fill out the application form for the document.
Kate denied wanting a “U” visa, and said she was happy with her current “O” visa, which is given to people with “extraordinary ability,” because it “was not problematic to renew.”