Lawyer says Ghislaine Maxwell’s jail conditions rival Hannibal Lecter

A lawyer representing Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell claimed that she has endured jail conditions similar to what fictional character Hannibal Lecter experienced in the 1991 film “The Silence of the Lambs.”

In a letter to U.S. District Court Judge Alison Nathan, Maxwell’s attorney Bobbi Sternheim requested that she be released from jail before her trial.

“My weekly in-person legal visits with Ms. Maxwell are conducted under the most humiliating circumstances that I have ever experienced in many decades of federal criminal practice. As disturbing and invasive as they are for no justifiable reason, I get to leave; Ms. Maxwell does not,” Sternheim wrote.

“The surveillance rivals scenes of Dr. Hannibal Lecter’s incarceration as portrayed in the movie, ‘Silence of the Lambs,’ despite the absence of the cage and plastic face guard,” she added.

Sternheim claimed that Maxwell has been subjected to “physical and emotional abuse by the correction officers,” and further claimed that her client was being made to live in “unsanitary conditions” and was receiving “insufficient nutrition.”

Her current living conditions have resulted in Maxwell losing 15 pounds since being incarcerated, as well as hair loss, according to her lawyer.

Maxwell was arrested in July of last year by the FBI in New Hampshire. She was charged with four counts of conspiring “to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts” during the 1990s as well as two counts of perjury. The British-born socialite has been denied bail five times thus far.

She is alleged to have helped in trafficking young women and underage girls on behalf of Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while in prison. Maxwell herself has been accused of sexually abusing girls as young as 15. She has continued to maintain her innocence.

As The Guardian reported, when she was denied bail for the fifth time in June, her lawyer David Markus claimed she was “subjected to more grueling conditions than any other inmate.”

Maxwell has offered $28.5 million raised by her friends and family as part of a bail package and has said she would agree to 24-hour armed guards and an electronic bracelet. She has also offered to renounce her British and French citizenships, but all offers have been denied.

During one of her prior requests for bail, a judge deemed her to be an “extreme risk of flight” and noted that she had a “demonstrated willingness and sophisticated ability to live in hiding.”

Sternheim shot back at this characterization in her letter, saying Maxwell has “a strong desire to fight the case against her and is determined to fight her charges at trial and clear her name.”

“There is no indication that she would attempt to flee given her personality profile and determination to be exonerated,” wrote Sternheim.

Maxwell’s trial is set to begin on Nov. 29.