Gone are the days when Ghislaine Maxwell lived the life of luxury as a British socialite or as Jeffrey Epstein’s partner in trafficking underage girls.
Instead, a grim road of prisons lies ahead where she may learn how it feels to be a target, according to the New York Post.
Maxwell was sentenced on Tuesday to serve 20 years in federal prison for her conviction on five counts of trafficking in underage girls. A lawyer for Maxwell has said she will appeal her conviction, according to The New York Times.
But for now, she will head to the Federal Corrections Institute Danbury where “[s]he will have a rough six to eight months,” said Jacqueline Polverari, who spent time there for mortgage fraud, according to the Post.
“I’ve already gotten emails from women who wrote to say that they ‘hear Maxwell will be coming this way.’ They’re preparing for her arrival, already requesting that they don’t want her in their dorms. And the camp counselor won’t put Maxwell where she is not wanted, for fear that she may get hurt,” she said.
“Danbury will not be a picnic for Maxwell.”
“Women are worse than men about [prisoners convicted of] sex crimes,” Polverari said, recalling her time at Danbury in 2015.
“You have mothers there. They see a white woman charged with a sex crime, and they think any one of their children could have been her victim. She would get a lot of flak. She would get the s*** beaten out of her a bunch of times,” she said.
Instead of living in an Epstein-owned mansion, Maxwell will share in an 8-by-8 foot cubicle in the roughly 1,000-person prison.
Is Ghislaine Maxwell’s sentence long enough?
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“There are 30 cubicles in each dorm,” Polverari said. “The dorms do not have locks or bars … You are never in handcuffs.”
Breakfast might not be that to which Maxwell accustomed herself.
“Sometimes there were maggots in the oatmeal,” Polverari recounted.
Food in general is likely to be an issue for Maxwell, a vegan who posted more than 100 complaints about the facility in which she was held awaiting trial.
“There is no vegan or vegetarian menu. She will have to eat like everybody else,” Polverari said.
However Ian Maxwell, her brother, said anything will be better than the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn where his sister has been held.
“Frankly, getting … out of the hell hole of MDC must be an absolute priority,” he said.
Maxwell will try to serve time in Britain, he said.
Danbury will be a pit stop for Maxwell.
“They will do a custody and security classification on her,” said Larry Levine, founder and director of Pink Lady Prison Consultants, a company that provides pre-custody consultation. “She will be classified and custody-scored. It is based on elements that include severity of offense, how much of a threat she is to the public, the length of her sentence and her criminal history. Those are the … main things.”
Levine said West Virginia’s FCI Hazelton, a medium-security prison, might be a likely destination.
“There, she would be locked up in a cell,” Levine said.
“She does not have a popular crime,” Levine said. “People will try to take her out. They will try to beat the crap out of her.”
He said officials “will want to put her in protective custody at Hazelton. If somebody from the outside pays off somebody who has a relative in prison, maybe somebody already serving a life sentence, they could put a sheet over her head, sharpen a toothbrush and stab this b****. Can you imagine the uproar if she gets killed?”
