Maxwell juror testifies he made a mistake when filling out questionnaire

A juror in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial, who failed to disclose that he was sexually abused as a child, told a judge on Tuesday he made a mistake when he filled out his jury questionnaire form.

The man, known as Juror 50, told Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan that he skimmed through the pretrial screening questionnaire that asked potential jurors whether they had ever been sexually abused and had checked a box indicating “no” mistakenly, according to The New York Times.

“This was one of the biggest mistakes I have ever made in my life,” the man told Nathan. “I didn’t lie in order to get on this jury.”

Maxwell was convicted in December on five out of six counts against her, including enticing minors to travel to engage in sex acts, transporting minors with the intent of having them engage in criminal sexual activity and perjury.

Juror 50 told Reuters in an interview that several jurors had issues with the victims’ faulty memories, so he shared his personal experience of being abused during deliberations.

“When I shared that, they were able to sort of come around on, they were able to come around on the memory aspect of the sexual abuse,” he said.

He told the judge that his former stepbrother and his friend had abused him when he was a child and that he told his mother about it when he was in high school.  The police were called but no charges were brought, he said,  according to The Times.

Juror 50 agreed to testify only after he was granted immunity from prosecution by the judge after his lawyer said he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself at the hearing, CNN reported.

The testimony from the victims was critical, as it established a pattern of abuse by Maxwell.

However, the juror’s comments to news outlets about his failure to disclose he had been sexually abused as a child have led to Maxwell’s lawyers to demand the verdict be thrown out.

Juror 50 was questioned for an hour by Nathan, who did not say when she would rule on the request by Maxwell’s lawyers to call for a mistrial.