How well does anyone really know Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite who became a ubiquitous figure on New York’s social scene soon after she stepped off Concorde in 1991? She jetted around Africa with former president Bill Clinton and attended his daughter’s wedding; she rubbed shoulders in Palm Beach with President Donald Trump and his wife, Melania; she palled around with Britain’s Prince Andrew. Denizens of her world describe the Oxford-educated hostess and trained helicopter pilot as “lovely”, “fun” and “vivacious”. 

But in a New York court hearing this week — held by video link, due to coronavirus — an accuser described Ms Maxwell very differently: as “a predator and a monster”. According to a six-count indictment, she is alleged to have recruited girls, as young as 14, to be sexually abused by her confidant, Jeffrey Epstein, who was arrested last July on sex trafficking charges and found hanged in his jail cell a month later.

Prosecutors claim Ms Maxwell not only groomed Epstein’s victims, whom she would chat up at shopping malls and movie theatres, but also participated in their abuse. In the course of the bail argument, they also disclosed something else about Ms Maxwell that few seemed to know: she is now married.