Last picture of the Maxwell family together before Ghislaine's 'world exploded': Epstein's 'madam' met with all six of her siblings in London reunion - weeks before Jeffrey Epstein's 2019 arrest
- Ghislaine's older brother Ian has defended her to ABC and The Times of London
- On Monday morning, he told Good Morning America in an interview filmed in London that she is innocent and being 'tortured' in jail
- He claims that she has become a scapegoat for Jeffrey Epstein because his not alive to take the blame, after he committed suicide in prison on August 10, 2019
- Ian said his sister 'wishes she never met him' and that he ruined her life
- She is in jail in Manhattan awaiting trial on multiple sex trafficking charges
- Ian, one of her six siblings, also spoke of their father, the disgraced media tycoon Robert Maxwell who died in the 1990s when he fell into the Atlantic Ocean
- He had plundered the pension funds of the newspaper group he ran beforehand
- Ian called him 'extraordinarily well-connected' but said nothing of his crimes
- He told the Times that Ghislaine believes their father was murdered
- Ian also released a family photo showing Ghislaine and all six of her siblings Ghislaine Maxwell’s brother has released a previously unseen family picture showing the socialite with her six siblings just weeks before Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest in 2019.
The image shows the family’s last reunion in London and was taken weeks before Ghislaine’s 'world exploded' with the arrest of the US financier on federal charges for the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York.
The photo shows a smiling Ghislaine sitting in front of her siblings Anne, 73, Kevin, 62, twins Isabel and Christine, 70, Philip, 71, and Ian, 64, taken on what would have been the birthday of the family's controversial patriarch, Robert Maxwell, had he not fallen into the ocean almost 30 years earlier.
On Monday, Ghislaine's brother Ian - seen on the far right perched on the arm of a sofa - spoke out in her defense, calling her a 'patsy' for Jeffrey Epstein and claiming she is now being scapegoated because the American authorities 'lost' Epstein when he killed himself in his jail cell.
Upon Epstein's death, the focus immediately shifted to his former girlfriend and alleged madam Ghislaine, who has been accused and charged with six federal crimes relating to child sex trafficking. She has denied all claims against her.
Ian appeared on Good Morning America after speaking to The Times of London in an interview over the weekend to protest his sister's innocence.
Ghislaine Maxwell, 59, in June 2019 (pictured front) with her six living siblings. Ian Maxwell, her older brother, top right, shared it this weekend. A month after it was taken, Jeffrey Epstein was arrested and Ghislaine went into hiding with her husband, Scott Borgerson. The siblings, L-R, are: Anne, 73, Kevin, 62, twins Isabel and Christine, 70, Philip, 71, and Ian, 64
He claims she had her life ruined by Epstein, was not part of his criminal enterprise despite what multiple women say, and is taking the fall for it because someone needs to and Epstein is dead.
'She's a patsy for Jeffrey Epstein who they lost on their watch and they are taking it out on my sister and dammit, that's wrong.
'She is not Epstein. Epstein was guilty. He did time. And he was gonna do a hell of a lot more time. But she is not him.
'And I don't know how many times I have to say it. She's deserves to be treated as Ghislaine, presumed innocent, get on with the defense, tell us what you've gotta tell us, put it up, and then let the jury decide,' Ian fumed.
It is one of the most recent photographs of her. Only one other - what appeared to be a staged photo at an In-N-Out Burger in L.A. - has surfaced in the last two years.
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What became of Robert Maxwell's nine children?
Robert Maxwell (back row, centre) pictured with his wife Betty (sat with youngest daughter Ghislaine on her knee) and seven of their eight children at home in Headington Hill Hall, Oxford. When this photo was taken Ian (5) was 11 years old and attending preparatory school, while Isabel, then 17 (4) was at grammar school with their sister Christine (3), and youngest son Kevin, 8, (6) was at preparatory school. Second oldest son Philip, (1), had entered his second undergraduate yer at Balliol College, Oxford, while Anne (2) was also studying at the university, but at St Hugh's College.
Michael, Ghislaine's oldest brother
Robert and Betty Maxwell's first-born fell into a coma aged 15 after a car crash in 1961 and died eight years later, never having regained consciousness.
1. Philip, 71, the brilliant scientist who fled to Argentina
Philip Maxwell
'Poor Philip', as his friends always knew him, was a brilliant scientist and mathematician who won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, aged just 16.
But he so loathed his domineering father that, as soon as he could, Philip fled to Argentina to get 'as far away from [him] as possible'.
The pair fell out irretrievably when he married Nilda, an Argentine, in 1977, against Robert's wishes.
The marriage didn't last — Nilda moved out taking their daughter Marcella with her and a second marriage also failed.
Philip was last heard of living in a £65-a-week flat in North London trying to be a writer. The subject? His bullying father.
2. Anne, 73, ex-actress called 'ugly' by her father
Anne Maxwell
When her fledgling acting career floundered, her father's reaction was: 'What have you and Pope John Paul II got in common? You're both ugly and you're both failed actors.'
Having studied Italian and French at Oxford, she then trained as a Montessori teacher, married an osteopath and is now believed to be a hypnotherapist in Surrey, practising under another name.
She has kept out of the limelight since her father's death at the age of 68.
3. Christine, 70, one of the twins
Christine Maxwell
Christine and her twin sister Isabel made The Sunday Times Rich List in 1999 after amassing their £100 million in the dotcom boom.
She is the author of The Dictionary Of Perfect Spelling (a book with 20,000 words aimed at secondary school pupils) and is married to a Roger Malina, an astrophysicist at a French university.
They have two sons and a daughter and split their time between a Spanish-style mansion overlooking San Francisco and Aix-en-Provence in the South of France.
4. Isabel, 70, the second twin
Isabel Maxwell
Once described in The Jerusalem Post as 'a fireball' who is 'always in your face', Isabel was always the Maxwell to watch.
She never wanted to join the family firm, so after graduating from Oxford with a degree in modern languages, followed by a masters from Edinburgh, she became a TV reporter.
In 1981, she moved to California to work in TV before making a film set in 1968 starring rock singer Neil Young. 'It wasn't ET,' she said, '. . . more a labour of love.'
But technology was her future. She and twin Christine co-founded one of the earliest internet search engines, known as Magellan, in 1992.
Karine, the middle sister
Died of leukaemia aged just three in 1957.
5. Ian, 64, the 'fall guy' brother
Ian Maxwell
Taunted mercilessly at home — his father would ridicule him in front of visiting friends. When he joined the family business, he was compared unfavourably to his younger brother, Kevin.
In the aftermath, of their father's death, Ian, then 35, and Kevin, 32, assumed control of the company and stood trial for their part in their father's £460 million pension fraud.
They were acquitted, but the Maxwell name was mud for years and business opportunities were limited to overseas ventures. Ian's first wife was an American former college basketball star and model called Laura Marie Plumb.
They met when she moved to London to help set up a TV cable company. The couple married in 1991 — the year of Robert Maxwell's death — and the ensuing media attention put Laura under great strain. On the day that Ian and Kevin were arrested, she was photographed sobbing. The couple divorced in 1996.
6. Kevin, 62, Britain's biggest ever bankrupt
Kevin Maxwell
The cleverest son and driving force of the family, Kevin was crestfallen by his father's death, saying that he 'missed his presence and ability to dominate'. He admitted to being totally in awe of him.
The only Maxwell sibling ever to express remorse in public for the fallout from Robert Maxwell's crimes, Kevin made reference to the 'moral burden I will bear for the rest of my life'.
His first wife, Pandora Warnford-Davis called her father-in-law Robert the 'fat fraudster'.
When, in June 1992, Kevin was arrested and charged with fraud after hundreds of millions disappeared from the Maxwell empire's employee pension funds, she appeared at the window of their home at dawn and shouted: 'P*** off, or I'll call the police!' only to realise the early morning callers were the police.
In 2007, they divorced after 23 years and seven children together. Pandora was last heard of living in Oxford, renting out a room through Airbnb.
Soon after his arrest, Kevin became Britain's biggest ever bankrupt when a £407 million bankruptcy order was made against him.
Ghislaine Maxwell's older brother Ian on Good Morning America on Monday speaking in her defense
He added that his sister is the victim of a 'media lynch mob' and says she is being treated differently to other crime suspects, is 'tortured' in jail and cannot sleep.'The real problem is that the media frenzy about her, which had shifted from Epstein onto her, drove her absolutely mad.
'I'm not minimizing the seriousness of the allegations but my sister is fighting for her life... that's pretty serious too,' he said.
'Ghislaine wants to confront the accusers head-on and deal with this and get on with her life. 'She is as convinced as she can be that she will be exonerated. We as a family are behind her, solidly behind her.'
He says the last time he spoke to her was in June 2020, a month before she was arrested, and she told him: 'Ian, I don’t want you to be in a situation where someone is going to put pressure on you.
'I am going to take the pressure so that none of you have to — not Scott, not Kev — I am going to deal with it.'
He claimed that when Epstein killed himself in July 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, his sister had moved on with her life and was happily married to Scott Borgerson, the man she was found holed up with in New Hampshire last summer.
Ian says that she was not involved with Epstein by that point.
The marriage only became public in court papers.
Her brother revealed that he found out about it with the rest of the world.
'I think Ghislaine has just determined with him, obviously, that they want to keep a very low level of public knowledge about their lives,' he told the Times.
He added that she wanted to protect Borgerson's children.
'Ghislaine was married, with stepchildren, getting on with her life and then bang.
'She's married, has a husband, two stepchildren.
'She was simply seeking to protect her family.
'She was not running from law enforcement.
'Suddenly he dies and they've got this really serious problem... it seems to me inescapable that the authorities decided they had to do something about it,' he said.
Ghislaine managed to hide from public view for a year before the FBI arrested her in New Hampshire in an early morning raid.
Since then, she has been in jail in Manhattan.
Her attorneys have complained repeatedly about the conditions she has faced.
On Monday, her brother said they amounted to 'torture'.
'She's lost 20lbs, she's losing her hair, she can't concentrate... she has a flashlight shone in her cell every 15 minutes during the night so she has no sleep of any real quality.
'That is torture,' he said.
He also spoke of their father, the disgraced media tycoon Robert Maxwell who died mysteriously during a yachting trip in the Canary Islands in the 1990s after pillaging the pension funds of The Mirror newspaper group, saying that he was an 'extraordinarily well-connected man'.
'My father was an extraordinarily well connected man.
'She had grown up in that world and was very able to move in it freely,' he said, making no mention of their father's crimes.
In his interview with The Times, Ian said of his sister's relationship with Epstein: 'I know she wishes that she had never met him. He has ruined her life.
'The Ghislaine that we know has been buried in this caricature, this monstrous creature that has been invented as an abuser and a pimp.
'Ghislaine is very charming. She has a very good sense of humor.'
Maxwell has had multiple attempts at bail turned down.
She has agreed to renounce her British and French citizenship in an attempt to be released by the judge has rejected her efforts.'Ghislaine is an American. She's never been a flight risk. In the year or so between when Epstein died and when she was arrested, she was in the United States all the time.
'She was not running away from law enforcement,' her brother said.
She remains behind bars.
Multiple women claim she procured them for Epstein when they were underage girls, and facilitated his pedophile ring by organizing travel for them or meetings with Epstein.
She denies the charges.
Her brother told The Times: 'She did the house up or managed one or two of his properties.'
He added that Ghislaine believes firmly that her father was murdered on his boat - Lady Ghislaine - and said their childhood was difficult and filled with punishment.
'We were all physically punished, girls and boys; the girls were smacked and the boys belted, mostly for poor grades, laziness and lack of application at school.
'You didn’t want to be too close to home because it was quite tense.
'Meal times were always pretty tough. We had to stand up and account for what we’d done that day, that week, that year.'
He told how Ghislaine, the youngest, seemed to be their father's favorite of the children and how the other kids were 'stunned' when he named his boat after her.
'It was all a big mystery. Ghislaine was given this bottle, she crashed it against the side, the wrap fell off and there it was the Lady Ghislaine.
'She was stunned. We all were stunned,' he said.
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