Ian Maxwell, brother of convicted sex offender
Ghislaine Maxwell, defended his sister, saying she is the “real victim” in the
Jeffrey Epstein scandal and called Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre a “monster.”
In an interview with The Telegraph published Friday, he lashed out at Giuffre, who accused Epstein and Britain’s former Prince Andrew of sexual abuse and died by suicide at age 41 in April.
“I know who the monster is here and it’s not my sister, it’s Virginia Giuffre and her falsehoods that have had devastating ramifications for Ghislaine. I didn’t shed a tear when she died,” Ian told the outlet, as quoted by the New York Post.
Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of recruiting and grooming underage girls for Epstein’s abuse, including sex trafficking of minors. She is serving a 20-year sentence and has sought to overturn her conviction.
“My sister is the fall guy. Somebody had to pay the price for what Epstein did, and so the government and the media chose her,” Ian Maxwell said. “I genuinely believe that if Epstein were alive, he would be incarcerated and she would be free.”
He also argued that her trial “wasn’t fair, and her conviction isn’t safe.”
“Ghislaine has done nothing wrong, and the length of her conviction is outrageous,” he said.
Ian compared her sentence to that of Sean “Diddy” Combs.
“You have a situation where somebody like P Diddy stands in front of the same federal court on the same charge and receives four-and-a-half years for extreme physical battery, and my sister receives 20 years,” he said.
Ian said he learned of his sister’s arrest by the FBI while watching the news, recalling that agents “sent in a helicopter and 20 armed agents, as though she were a menace to society.”
He argued that “feminists should really support Ghislaine because she is a woman who has been treated abysmally by the system,” and said there is “still a chance that President Trump might respond to her plea for clemency.”
He said he speaks with his sister by phone and that she has kept her sense of humor.
“You can’t have this kind of experience and not turn it into something positive,” he said. “There’s an amazing book in it for a start.”
Ian added that if she had anticipated her arrest, “she would have flown to France at the outset because they don’t extradite their citizens.”
He also pointed to recently released Epstein files, claiming they contain documents that “entirely support her contention that she did not receive a fair trial.”
“But she has no access to a computer in prison, so she can’t read them,” he said. “Is it any wonder I’m angry?”
Describing himself as his sister’s “de facto spokesman,” Ian said the family remains united behind her.
He is the son of late media mogul Robert Maxwell, whose 1991 death at sea sparked one of the UK’s biggest financial scandals after it was revealed he had looted his companies’ pension funds.
Ghislaine is incarcerated at FPC Bryan, a minimum-security federal prison in Texas. The facility previously drew scrutiny after leaked emails showed her praising its cleanliness and saying she was “much happier here and more importantly safe,” while other inmates alleged she received “VIP treatment.”
She was transferred there in July from a higher-security facility.
“Blood is always thicker than water,” Ian Maxwell said. “The fact is she’s my kid sister and there’s no compassion for her, she needs to have someone on her side. That’s where family comes in.”