Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Photo / Getty Images
One of Jeffrey Epstein's alleged victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, has spoken out about Ghislaine Maxwell, claiming she is worse than the convicted paedophile.
Maxwell, the British former socialite, 58, is being held in a New York jail on charges of alleged sex crimes including trafficking a minor and perjury.
As Epstein's former girlfriend, Maxwell has been accused of helping him sexually abuse underage girls.
She has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against her.
One of their alleged victims, Giuffre, claims she was groomed and abused by the pair along with being forced to have sex with Prince Andrew when she was 17.
Andrew had denied those claims, saying he has no recollection of meeting Giuffre.
Speaking to CBS This Morning host Gayle King, Giuffre claimed that Maxwell was "worse" than Epstein and that she was the "mastermind" behind the sex trafficking.
"She is a monster. She did things even worse than Epstein did. She was vicious. She was evil. And she's a woman," she said.
She claimed that Maxwell was the one "pulling the strings" between the pair.
"Put it this way: Epstein was Pinocchio, and she was Geppetto. She was the guy controlling Jeffrey," Giuffre explained.
"She had his money, he had her contacts. But Ghislaine was much more conniving and smart than Epstein ever was."
Giuffre added that Prince Andrew should be panicking, saying Maxwell could incriminate "very well-known" people.
"He knows he's guilty. He needs to be held accountable. We need to show the world that the rich and the mighty can fall too," she said.
When asked if she believed the socialite's life could be in danger, Giuffre replied: "Absolutely. If she squeals on some of the people that ... she has videos on, they won't be happy with her talking about that.
She said "very-well known names" are involved in the tapes including government officials, politicians and royalty.
"They were taping everybody, every moment. When you walked into the New York mansion, to Palm Beach, everything was being filmed," Giuffre said, before adding that these people wouldn't have known they were being recorded.
Giuffre also spoke about the time she met Maxwell, saying she was reading about anatomy and massage when the socialite eventually offered her a job as a travelling masseuse.
"She told me ... if [Epstein] liked me, then I would get educated and I would become a real massage therapist. I mean it was a dream of a lifetime until I got there, and the abuse was immediate," she recalled.
"She could smell the vulnerability on a person. I told them a little bit about my past, and how I'd been abused. So immediately it was like ... the Cheshire smile is what I call it.
"I asked her 'why are you having all these ... girls come in and sleep with your boyfriend?' And she was like, 'So I don't have to do it all the time.' She made like a joke out of it."
Giuffre believed Maxwell really took girls to Epstein to keep him happy.
"She did it because she loves the control over people. Jeffrey was a sick peadophile. But she was the mastermind."
The alleged victim said she would like an apology from Maxwell and believed justice would be served if she was jailed "forever".
Epstein killed himself in August 2019, several weeks after he was confronted by two accusers at a bail hearing who insisted that he should remain in jail while awaiting sex trafficking charges that alleged he abused girls at his Manhattan and Florida mansions in the early 2000s.
Last year, Epstein killed himself in jail as he faced sex trafficking charges, robbing victims from having their date in court.
"It would have been great to look at him in court and say, 'You hurt me. You took away my innocence, you took away my youth'," Giuffre said.
"But he took that away from us too. I'm really hoping we get to this with Ghislaine."
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