Ghislaine Maxwell sentencing - live: Jeffrey Epstein's ex-partner finally addresses court over sex abuse - before judge issues jail sentence

Here's our full story on the sentencing of Ghislaine Maxwell for her role in luring underage girls to massage rooms where they could be sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein.

The judge agrees to the defence's request that she recommend Maxwell be sent to the women's prison in Danbury, Connecticut.

The low-security facility housed the author of Orange Is The New Black, Piper Kerman, whose the memoir was adapted into the popular Netflix comedy of the same name.

Judge Nathan says that although she will make the recommendation, it will be up to the prison agency to make the final decision.

Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams has issued a statement in response to the sentence.

He said it held "Maxwell accountable for perpetrating heinous crimes against children".

"We again express our gratitude to Epstein and Maxwell's victims for their courage in coming forward, in testifying at trial, and in sharing their stories as part of today's sentencing," he added.

She also receives a fine of $750,000 (£615,000).

"I do conclude 240 months is both sufficient and no greater than necessary," Judge Alison Nathan says.

The 60-year-old looked straight ahead and showed no emotion as the sentence was delivered.

Judge Alison Nathan says the sentencing guideline is 188 to 235 months, but that that is "only one factor" to be considered.

"Maxwell is not being punished as a proxy of Epstein, but rather for her role in the criminal conduct," she says.

"She participated in some of the abuse. Her conduct was heinous and predatory."

Maxwell "normalised" the abuse committed by Epstein, she says.

She says a "substantial sentence" will send an "unmistakable message" to those who commit sexual abuse and engage in the trafficking of underage victims.

Judge Nathan says a "significant" sentence is necessary.

She says the court agrees "that whether you are rich or powerful or entirely unknown, nobody is above the law".

"Of course I must and I do take into account the history of the defendant," she says.

But she says she "largely rejects" the defence's arguments about Maxwell's treatment in jail.

"Overall the behavior appears to be consistent with a pattern of deflection of blame," she says.

"Ms Maxwell today acknowledged the courage of the victims, talked about the pain and anguish they expressed, to some extent acknowledged the pain and suffering.

"What wasn’t expressed was acceptance of responsibility."

For the first time beyond very brief statements such as confirming her name, the court is now hearing from Ghislaine Maxwell.

She says she "empathised deeply with all the victims in this case".

She says her association with Epstein "will permanently stain me" and that it "is the biggest regret of my life than I ever met him".

"I believe Jeffrey Epstein fooled all of those in his orbit," she says.

"His victims considered him a mentor, friend, lover. Jeffrey Epstein should have stood before you. In 2005. In 2009. And again in 2019. But today it is for me to be sentenced."

"I'm sorry for the pain that you have experienced," she adds.

"I hope my conviction brings closure. I hope it brings peace and finality.

"I also acknowledge the pain this case has brought to those that l love.

"It is my sincerest wish to all those in this courtroom that this day brings a terrible chapter to an end.

"May this day help you travel from the darkness into the light."

Defense lawyer Bobbi Sternheim is now addressing the court, and begins by praising the victims for their "courage".

She contests the sentence proposed by the prosecution, saying is the same as Jeffrey Epstein would have faced and that he is "far more culpable than Ghislaine Maxwell".

This is the full victim impact statement by Elizabeth Stein, which she is now reading a shortened version of in court:

I came to New York in 1991 at the age of 18 to attend FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) and immediately began to excel academically.

While at FIT, I took advantage of different volunteer opportunities and internships in the fashion industry to provide a foundation for my career.

In my sophomore year, I accepted a Christmastime internship at Henri Bendel, New York.

I performed well and was asked to stay on as a part-time employee. I worked at Henri Bendel until graduation.

In the fall semester of my senior year at FIT Ghislaine Maxwell came into the store, where she was a frequent customer.

Her usual salesperson wasn't there so I helped her. Ghislaine was electrifying and we hit it off immediately.

In this first meeting we spoke of our mutual love of fashion, of difficult fathers and formal upbringings, of boyfriends and of how we both saw New York as a chance to start over.

She told me that her boss (who I later came to understand was Jeffrey Epstein) was close friends with Les Wexner, the CEO and founder of The Limited, which owned Henri Bendel at the time.

When she completed her purchases, I offered to deliver them to her so she didn't have to carry them around all day.

This was a courtesy I frequently extended to my high-end clients. 

Later that day, I called her office for delivery instructions and was told to bring them to the Pierre Hotel close by the store.

When I arrived, the hotel concierge told me Ms Maxwell was in the bar and wanted me to meet someone. It was Jeffrey Epstein.

That night in the hotel was the first of many times they sexually assaulted me.

Afterwards, I tried to pretend everything was normal. I returned to my classes at FIT and continued work at Henri Bendel, but I started to crack.

I failed a course that was necessary for my degree and had to retake it to get my diploma.

Shortly after my first meeting with Epstein and Maxwell, I was offered a full-time position at Henri Bendel. It was a newly created position at the store, and it would have required me to leave FIT a semester short of completing my degree.

I had aspirations of going to law school and knew I could not do so without my undergraduate degree, so I declined it.

When Ghislaine found out she flew into a rage. I didn't understand why until she told me that she and Epstein were responsible for giving me that opportunity and that in turning it down I was being ungrateful.

I now know this was their modus operandi - give a gift or favour and then demand sex in return.

Nevertheless, I rebuffed the guilt-trip ploy, completed my coursework and got my FIT degree from FIT, at which point I left Henri Bendel and took a position at Bloomingdales.

I wanted to leave Epstein and Maxwell and the abuse they perpetrated against me behind as I started my professional life. I never wanted to or expected to see them again.

One day in the fall of 1995 Maxwell showed up at Bloomingdales, looking for me.

When I asked her how she knew where I was, she said she asked my colleagues at Henri Bendel.

She immediately began befriending me once again, asking me to go out socially.

I tried to resist but eventually she wore me down and I began spending time with them again.

They made me feel like they were friends, contemporaries.

In one instance they took me to Florida, insisted that I stay longer than planned which caused me to miss work and led to my being fired.

Seizing on this new vulnerability, they began trafficking me to their friends. By that time I was trapped.

I was assaulted, raped and trafficked countless times in New York and Florida during a three-year period.

At one point I became pregnant (by whom I am unsure) and aborted the baby.

Things happened that were so traumatising that to this day I'm unable to speak about them; I don't even have the vocabulary to describe them.

In the most literal sense of the word, Epstein and Maxwell terrified me.

They told me that if I told anyone, nobody would believe me and if they did, they would kill me and the people closest to me. I believed them. I was once bright, fun, outgoing and kind.

I loved life and people genuinely enjoyed being around me. After meeting Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, it felt like someone shut off the lights to my soul.

My secrets became too much for me to handle and I began doing whatever I could to try to get away from Maxwell and Epstein. I changed jobs, apartments, cities and even states to try to get away.

Everywhere I went, they found me. In 1997, I moved to Philadelphia with the hopes of finally starting law school.

They found me again and it was more than I could take. I was hospitalised with a nervous breakdown.

It would be the first of over two dozen hospitalisations in the decades following my involvement with Epstein and Maxwell.

In addition to my escalating mental health problems, I began to experience physical symptoms that doctors could never quite put their finger on. I received dozens of diagnoses but nothing ever quite fit.

I could no longer even pretend to be able to hold down a job or take care of myself in any meaningful way, and I had to move home once again.

Emotionally I cracked, and nobody thought I would ever get better. But I did not give up.

I was determined to do whatever I had to, to prove everyone wrong. I wasn't crazy, I was hurt.

For over a decade and a half I went to all kinds of medical specialists and was in and out of medical and psychiatric hospitals having tests and procedures, even submitting to clinical trials and an experimental implantable medical device.

Nothing helped.

In 2007, I moved back to Philadelphia to try once again to sort out my life. I began working as a paralegal again and started preparing to take the LSATs. I found a psychiatrist, physician and therapist who were willing to help me get to the bottom of things.

I had tried almost every psychological intervention possible in my efforts to get better, but my new psychiatrist suggested something I had not tried before, Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.

Just as I began to repair the emotional damage, I was diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome and was primarily bedbound for over a year. CRPS is a rare neuroinflammatory disorder characterised by intense, relentless physical pain.

Both CRPS and PTSD are psychophysical states in which the sympathetic nervous system is engaged and remains inappropriately hyper-aroused.

There is no cure. The mind and body are interconnected.

Despite all of this, I immersed myself in DBT and repaired my emotional health.

I began physical therapy and regained my physical mobility. I started to rebuild my life.

The arrests of Epstein and Maxwell in 2019 and 2020 respectively helped me immensely.

For the first time, I was finally able to disclose their abuse to close friends and medical providers.

Twenty five years after meeting them, my experience was validated. I could finally see the possibility of closure.

This past November and December, I commuted almost every day from my home in Philadelphia to attend Ghislaine Maxwell's trial in Manhattan.

For weeks I sat in the courtroom anonymously, only revealing my identity the day before the verdict. I had to see justice for myself.

At the age of 48, I feel as if I'm just starting my life. All those things I assumed I would have in life, the things that my siblings and friends have achieved: a career, success, a partner, family, a home, a legacy to be proud of leaving behind were jeopardised for more than two and a half decades.

The only pronounced difference between my life experience and theirs is that one day, when I was doing my job I met Ghislaine Maxwell who fed me to Jeffrey Epstein.

In more ways than one, they almost killed me. But I wasn't going to let them.

Overcoming what happened to me became my decades-long, full-time career. In that, I have been successful.

For the past 25 years, Ghislaine Maxwell has been free to live a life of wealth and privilege that is almost incomprehensible.

Meanwhile, I have had virtually none of the life experiences I might have had, had we never met.

For over two and a half decades I felt like I was in prison. She had her life. It's time to have mine.

She needs to be in prison so her victims can all finally be free.

Sarah Ransome has broken down in tears as she reads her impact statement.

This is the full victim impact statement by Ms Ransome, which she has been reading a shortened version of in court:

It has been a long journey to bring Maxwell to justice.

Sadly, the accurate count of victims will never be known.

My book, Silenced No More, chronicles it as a "journey to hell and back".

Although I have escaped the hellish trap set by Epstein, Maxwell and others, I continue, now 17 years later, to suffer from the horrific trauma it caused.

I came to New York at age 22, wanting to start my life over after an incredibly abusive relationship.

I hoped to attend FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) and work in the fashion industry.

Soon after arriving, I met an Epstein/Maxwell recruiter named Natalya Malyshev in a club.

She befriended me and, soon after that, arranged for me to meet Jeffery.

She described him as a kind philanthropist who could help me get into FIT and provide much-needed support, something which was alien to me.

Over the next seven to eight months, I became, against my will, nothing more than a human sex toy with a heartbeat and soul for the entertainment of Epstein, Maxwell and others.

Sometimes I was subjected to sexual predation multiple times per day, both in his New York mansion and on his private island, St Little James in the US Virgin Islands.

On one visit to the island, the sexual demands, degradation and humiliation became so horrific that I tried to escape by attempting to jump off a cliff into shark-infested waters, but was caught by Maxwell and company moments before jumping.

At the time, the extremely risky escape seemed more appealing than being raped one more time.

As the evidence at the trial of Ms Maxwell proved, and my own experience confirms, Maxwell was Epstein's right-hand woman.

She was the manager of several recruiters and many others who provided the means and cover for Epstein's predation.

In several instances, Ghislaine by her own hand forced me into Epstein's room to be raped.

Epstein and Maxwell were masters at finding young, vulnerable girls and young women to exploit.

Upon targeting a vulnerable girl/young woman, they would ingratiate themselves to her, giving her compliments and small gifts, telling her how special she was.

They would tell her that Epstein was a very wealthy, generous man whose primary purpose was to help the less fortunate.

He and Maxwell were sophisticated, worldly adults with deep ties to important people, world leaders and institutions who could give her the lifeline she needed to make her dreams reality.

However, soon after lulling me and others into a false sense of comfort and security, they pounced, ensnaring us in their upside-down, twisted world of rape, rape and more rape.

Like Hotel California, you could check into the Epstein-Maxwell dungeon of sexual hell, but you could never leave.

Ghislaine by her own hand forced me into Epstein's room to be raped.

The manipulation, intimidation, and emotional abuse used to control the victims took many forms.

In my case, Epstein and Maxwell used my damaged upbringing, naivety, lack of a long-term visa, lack of education and my desire to go to FIT to manipulate and ensnare me.

Once ensnared, to pacify and keep me they told me that I was exceptionally intelligent and that I had real potential to be someone and something in life, that my dreams of making my family one day proud of me were achievable and that Epstein and Maxwell's strong ties to FIT could make this happen.

With their help, my admission was almost assured.

"But". There was always a "but".

First, I had to write my application, which I did, but Maxwell had to review it and conveniently always found fault.

Then another "but" - I needed to lose 30 pounds because I was a "piglet" (Maxwell's numerous degrading descriptions of me).

Epstein and Maxwell put me on a strict Atkin's diet while simultaneously sending me to a psychiatrist who prescribed anti-depressants - among other drugs I did not need - that caused weight gain.

It was a classic no-win situation and they knew it - precisely what human traffickers seek.

I never lost the weight, my application was never good enough, and it never got submitted.

I thank almighty God that, in 2007, I managed to escape the horror by fleeing for my life to the UK.

Since then, I have been coping with the daily all-consuming fear that someday Epstein and Maxwell would harm me, my loved ones and my family, as Epstein repeatedly told me would happen if I ever dared to leave.

I frequently experience flashbacks and wake up in a cold sweat from nightmares reliving the awful experience.

I am hyper vigilant, experience dramatic mood changes and avoid certain places, situations and people. I will sometimes start crying uncontrollably and without apparent reason.

I have worked hard with several mental health professionals who have diagnosed me with extreme symptoms of anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, PTSD, and tendencies to self-harm.

Despite my earnest effort, I have not realised my God-given potential professionally or entered healthy personal relationships.

I have never married and do not have children, something I always wished for, even as a little girl.

I shy away from strangers and have difficulty making new friends because I fear they could be associated with Epstein, Maxwell and the enablers.

To this day, I attend AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meetings but I have had numerous relapses and know that only by the grace of God do I continue to live.

I have attempted suicide twice since the abuse - both near-fatal.

Last year, I travelled internationally to New York to attend Maxwell's trial.

That was both therapeutic and traumatising.

It was therapeutic to hear the testimony of the four brave victim-witnesses, whose experiences paralleled my own, to know that I was not alone and that our story was finally being told for the world to hear.

But it was also traumatising to relive the experience and flashbacks and the nightmares have increased.

I am grateful that the jury believed the victims and returned a guilty verdict.

But a question still tears at my soul: after all of this, how can the manager of this enormous sex trafficking conspiracy involving so many co-conspirators that snared 100s if not 1,000s of vulnerable girls and young women over three decades continue to maintain her innocence?

Who and what institution enabled this sex trafficking ring to continue?

Why haven't the institutions and important people that enabled them been exposed and brought to justice?

Reflecting on it, I know the answers to my questions.

Maxwell is today the same woman I met almost 20 years ago - incapable of compassion or common human decency.

Because of her wealth, social status and connections, she believes herself beyond reproach and above the law.

Sentencing her to the rest of her life in prison will not change her, but it will give other survivors and I a slight sense of justice and help us as we continue to work to recover from the sex-trafficking hell she perpetrated.

She will never, ever hurt another young woman or child in this lifetime.

For that, I am sure.

As for the important, high-profile enablers - governmental institutions, politicians, and very wealthy friends of Epstein/Maxwell here and abroad - so far their stature and power have protected them.

I hope that one day they will be exposed and we will be able to say that the United States truly is governed by the rule of law and not by powerful people.

To Ghislaine I say: "You broke me in unfathomable ways but what you didn't break is my spirit, nor did you dampen my internal flame that now burns brighter than ever before."