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Ghislaine Maxwell has been asked to monitor prison inmates who might be suicidal, her attorneys have claimed in unsealed court documents.
The 58-year-old is currently being held at the Metropolitan Detention Centre in Brooklyn following her arrest on 2 July, and has been charged with six counts of recruiting and grooming girls and young women to be sexually abused by both her and her former business partner and boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein.
Earlier in the year, Ms Maxwell’s lawyers, Mark Cohen and Jeffrey Pagliuca, complained that she was being woken up every 15 minutes in her cell by prison guards to check she had not harmed herself.
However, the New York Post reported on Tuesday that Ms Maxwell has now been tasked with keeping an eye on the wellbeing of other inmates.
“She has been made a suicide watch inmate, which is the highest and most trusted responsibility that an inmate can have,” her attorneys wrote as part of a motion that requests she be released to home confinement on a bail package totalling nearly $28.5m (£21.1m).
The attorneys added: “It is the height of irony that Ms Maxwell is being constantly surveilled as if she were a suicide risk when she, herself, is trusted enough (if she were ever released from isolation) to monitor inmates who are truly at risk of suicide.”
Ms Maxwell’s lawyers have accused the detention centre of subjecting her to unreasonable conditions, and said they are concerned that she will meet the same fate as Epstein.
He died by suicide in his New York prison cell in August 2019, while he was awaiting trial on charges relating to the trafficking and sexual abuse of minors.
The 58-year-old’s attorneys have argued that the conditions she is subjected to in prison, favour her bid to be released on bail.
Ms Maxwell will appear before a New York judge in the coming days in order to be released from prison before Christmas, according to reports that first appeared in The Daily Telegraph.
As much as $22m (£16.3m) of the bail will be provided by Ms Maxwell’s rumoured husband, tech CEO Scott Borgerson. The bail hearing will be the first time she has publicly acknowledged being married, according to ABC News.
Ms Maxwell’s brothers Kevin and Ian Maxwell alongside other unidentified close friends, will reportedly post the rest of the substantial bail money.
The Telegraph reports that Ms Maxwell will waive the right to be extradited to the UK or France where she also holds citizenship, and will wear an electronic tag if she is granted house arrest.
The 58-year-old will also request armed guards for her New York City residence while she awaits her upcoming trial.
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