Jeffrey Epstein’s victims will not profit from Ghislaine Maxwell’s forthcoming tell-all book, a senior attorney told Newsweek.
Kate Mangels, a partner at the Kinsella, Holley, Iser, Kump, Steinsapir firm in Los Angeles, was reacting to a report in the Daily Mail on January 28 that Maxwell has been working on a memoir from her prison cell in order to counter alleged disinformation about her relationship with Epstein.
Under United States law, Maxwell can take all the profits from the book, along with associated documentaries, podcasts and films.
Maxwell, Epstein’s long-time girlfriend and associate, was found guilty in 2021 of sex trafficking women and girls for Epstein to abuse and is serving a 20-year prison sentence. She has maintained her innocence and has appealed her conviction.
Disgraced investment manager Epstein was arrested in July 2019 on federal charges of trafficking minors for sex in Florida and New York between 2002 and 2005. He died in a Manhattan jail cell in an apparent suicide two months later.
In 2008, Epstein had pleaded guilty to procuring a child for prostitution in 2005 and served 13 months in prison. He was accused of sexually abusing as many as three dozen underage girls.
Epstein is also alleged to have flown underage girls to his private island in the Caribbean and to have offered them to wealthy and influential associates for the purposes of blackmail. Aside from Maxwell, no other person has been criminally charged in relation to the claims.
Mangels said that attempts to stop people profiting from their crimes have not been successful.
“There have been legislative attempts to restrict this ability, but they have largely been ruled unconstitutional,” she told Newsweek.
“In the 1970s, following the Son of Sam killings in New York City, the New York legislature passed a law known as the Son of Sam Law to restrict a convicted criminal’s ability to profit off of selling their story. But this law, and similar laws in other states, has been found to be in violation of free speech rights under the First Amendment.”
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Mangels said that some states have forced criminals to let victims know if they have a book coming out.
“There are some state laws setting forth rules related to notifying victims about potential compensation, but they do not entirely restrict a convicted person from profiting. So Maxwell can legally benefit financially from telling or selling her story,” she said.
Documents detailing people connected with the sex offender were released on January 4 by a U.S. District Court in New York as part of a lawsuit brought by alleged victim Virginia Giuffre against Maxwell. The documents mentioned the names of more than 70 people, including former presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, as well as Prince Andrew.
It came after Judge Loretta Preska found that there was no legal justification for continuing to withhold the names from the public.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.