But they have a "rest of their life." A murder victim doesn't. I don't think you will find too many survivors of the most unspeakable crimes and atrocities who, once rescued, would say "I wish I had been killed." That's not to minimize their suffering. Some non-murder crimes certainly deserve life in prison.
Ghislaine Maxwell
- Thread starter Samson
- Start date
But they have a "rest of their life." A murder victim doesn't. I don't think you will find too many survivors of the most unspeakable crimes and atrocities who, once rescued, would say "I wish I had been killed." That's not to minimize their suffering. Some non-murder crimes certainly deserve life in prison.
We make this so much harder then it needs to be.
Person experienced X.
Is X worse than death?
Well are you suggesting we kill people who have experienced X to ease their suffering?
No?
Well then conversation over, a bunch of inevitable philosophical blustering aside.
None of this either excuses or has anything to do with Epstein and Gladwell running a slave trading operation.
Person experienced X.
Is X worse than death?
Well are you suggesting we kill people who have experienced X to ease their suffering?
No?
Well then conversation over, a bunch of inevitable philosophical blustering aside.
None of this either excuses or has anything to do with Epstein and Gladwell running a slave trading operation.
LondonJohn
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- May 12, 2010
- Messages
- 21,162
One should exercise a degree of caution though, when it comes to those depositions in the civil case.
There are, for example, many legitimate reasons why someone such as Maxwell might a) be substantively factually innocent of the claims made against her by Giuffre, and yet b) settle the case by paying off Giuffre. And of course there is also the potential for Giuffre to have magnified or even invented some or all of her claims, in order to try to maximise her payday.
Please note though that I am not saying I believe Maxwell is significantly non-culpable, nor that Giuffre made stuff up. What I am saying is that it's improper to refer to depositions like those as necessarily statements of fact or truth.
The only arena which has any chance of testing and validating Giuffre's claims (and others' claims), and consequently proving Maxwell's culpability, is a criminal trial.
LondonJohn
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- May 12, 2010
- Messages
- 21,162
I take issue (in agreement with Darat) with the notion that anyone/everyone who's incarcerated as a convicted criminal - irrespective of the heinousness of their crimes - should have to live in substandard conditions and/or in fear of their personal safety.
The "punishment" part of modern jurisprudence has nothing to do with those sorts of things. By contrast, the punishment consists (or at least should consist) of 1) the conviction itself (and the lasting effect upon their future life, at least in the short term), 2) restriction of movement (for which prisons obviously fit the bill), and 3) restriction of personal choice (in prison, for example, prisoners can't just do whatever they want, eat/drink/smoke whatever they want, exercise whenever they want, wake up whenever they want, etc).
It's very unhelpful, reductive and regressive to observe the "lock 'em up and throw away the key!" approach being advocated and applauded. Don't get me wrong: if Maxwell is justly convicted of the crimes with which she's likely to end up being charged, I hope she gets a very long sentence of incarceration in a Federal prison. But at the same time, I hope that her living conditions - both physical and mental - are above the minimum threshold of human decency.
LondonJohn
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- May 12, 2010
- Messages
- 21,162
Absolutely correct. If it's proved in her criminal trial that she did indeed participate in the methodical planning of these offences over a very long time period, this will comprise an extremely large aggravation factor when it comes to sentencing. She will get many, many more years of incarceration that (for example) somebody who was convicted of similar offences carried out on a one-time unpremeditated basis.
And rightly so.
There is a factor of "making an example of them" in this to consider.
Now to be 100%, absolutely clear I agree completely that in civil societies responses to crimes (I find the whole punishment vs rehab vs this vs that debate to be mostly semantics) should never be cruel for the sake of being cruel.
But we don't want the next Maxwell to look at whatever sentence we give Maxwell and be able to run some sort of risk-reward cost benefit analysis and decide the risk is worth trying to do the same thing.
Responses to wrong doing sort of do have to just be... unpleasant or what's the point?
Now to be 100%, absolutely clear I agree completely that in civil societies responses to crimes (I find the whole punishment vs rehab vs this vs that debate to be mostly semantics) should never be cruel for the sake of being cruel.
But we don't want the next Maxwell to look at whatever sentence we give Maxwell and be able to run some sort of risk-reward cost benefit analysis and decide the risk is worth trying to do the same thing.
Responses to wrong doing sort of do have to just be... unpleasant or what's the point?
LondonJohn
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- May 12, 2010
- Messages
- 21,162
Yes.
Perhaps Vixen would do well to consider, for example, the archetypal case of a middle-aged man pulling up in his car alongside a 14-year-old on her way home from school, and (after some type of quick negotiation) offering her £100 if she would masturbate him.
The principle is pretty much exactly the same.
LondonJohn
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- May 12, 2010
- Messages
- 21,162
But being shut away from society - and away from friends and family aside from a pretty small number of visits per year - is unpleasant. Having to wear prison clothes, clean the prison, do whatever the prison officers tell you to do whenever they tell you to do it (including waking up, leaving your cell, exercising, going to the library, etc etc) is unpleasant. Being made to do menial work tasks in the prison is unpleasant.
And having to endure all of that for multiple decades is...... extremely unpleasant.
However, having to endure all of that while, at the same time, having to live in conditions which fall below the standards of human decency and/or living in fear of personal injury at the hands of other prisoners or prison officers, is unacceptable. Or at least it ought to be unacceptable in "westernised" nations in the 21st Century.
Without going too far down a philosophical rabbit hole, Maxwell lived at the peak of high society for decades.
There are people who would trade that for living their last few years in a life that was only "unpleasant within normal parameters" so to speak.
Not really. What you describe is a straightforward offer of a transaction, and most girls would run away. Epstein and Maxwell groomed these girls, sometimes for a long time, and used them to bring in other girls.
A closer analogy would be a sleazebag who goes up to a girl in a mall and says "You're so beautiful! You could be a model! Let me help you. Just come with me."
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Alligators are the new pigs, I guess.
As a non-violent prisoner, she will be sent to a medium-security facility at worst, and she could probably make a deal for minimum security. Such places are called Club Fed. There's no reason to think the entire U.S. federal prison system is "below the standards of human decency."
LondonJohn
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- May 12, 2010
- Messages
- 21,162
Oh yes, I know that (fortunately) US Federal and State prison stock has been being upgraded and improved - including the building of many new prisons for all categories of offender - over the past 20 years or so,
And I wasn't in any way implying that Maxwell - if convicted - would actually be likely to be placed in substandard conditions. Nor was I implying that Federal (or State) prison stock is generally substandard.
Rather, my point was wholly related to any arguments that it would somehow be a fair or just outcome for Maxwell (if convicted) if she were to be placed in substandard prison conditions.
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
These days in Europe, life is just twelve years. For example, if that suspected German guy were to be charged and convicted in Germany for the murder of Madeliene McCann, he would get just twelve years. At least Gordon Brown's UK government brought in the concept of 'whole life tariffs' or 'tariffs' to deal with the most heinous murderers.
So, for Maxwell to get 35 years for sex trafficking of minors seems disproportionate in comparison, but hey, that's America.
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
Bear in mind, when Virginia Guiffre met Prince Andrew, she was seventeen, a minor in the USA, a consenting adult in the UK. There is no way Maxwell could have flew her into the UK from the USA against her will. Guiffre herself admits that she too procured hundreds of women for Epstein, who preferred teenage girls but they were not exclusively minors, nd many did it for money.
Yes, it is highly traumatic for the young victims and the older ones to have unwanted men forcing themselves on them, and the shock and pain will live with some of them all of their lives.
However, whilst the press and the prosecutors are concentrating on the salacious sex crimes, IMV what about the extremely serious crime of blackmail (these were famous politicians and scientists being catered for by Epstein) and it is known there were tapes. Who was funding all this? If a foreign power then it all becomes a lot more sinister than some Madam grooming teenage girls. However, this belongs in the conspiracy thread, I am sure.
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
Maxwell and Epstein preyed on the most vulnerable in society. Giuffre herself was a runaway when she first started work at Mar Largo. Many of his victims saw massaging Epstein as easy money and they in turn recruited their friends, in some kind of Sex Ponzi scheme. These poverty stricken girls in dysfunctional homes (many lived in trailers) went back time and again for the $200 dollar hand outs for twenty minutes 'work'. In this, Epstein and Maxwell were no better than the Asian grooming gangs in the North of England, except Epstein catered for the men at the very top of the establishment. The list of scientists who dined with Epstein reads like a who's who of nobel prize winners.
There were also rich girls, girls who wanted their pictures exhibited in galleries and sold, in exchange for expensive courses abroad, paid for by Epstein. There is the mystery of where Epstein got all his money from.
I am sure many of these girls will have been starstruck. Mick Jagger is pictured t one of these dinners.
I have read the attorney's book about the case, Brad Edwards, who gives a clear lucid account. However, as you say, it is his job to get these girls maximum compensation from an extremely rich Maxwell and the Epstein estate worth circa $500,000,000 but first he needs to get the convictions.
There is always the other side to the story. Maxwell claims she finished with Epstein way back about twenty years ago so there is an element of #metoo from the Weinstein trial and the other scandals coming to light.
There does need to be perspective.
Last edited:
Why are you comparing her possible sentence in America for trafficking etc, with murder sentences in Europe? Why are you not comparing with the maximum sentence for murder in America?
Vixen
Penultimate Amazing
You think the death penalty is proportionate?
She hasn't been convicted yet, let alone sentenced. But she was part of a years-long criminal conspiracy that injured nobody-knows-how-many teenage girls. It wasn't one act and one victim. That's the basis for a lengthy sentence. There are people in the U.S. serving life sentences for non-violent drug offenses. Sex trafficking of children needs to be taken at least as seriously.