Brother of Epstein confidant Ghislaine Maxwell says sister's jail conditions 'amount to torture'

The brother of former Jeffrey Epstein confidant Ghislaine Maxwell said his sister is enduring "grotesque" conditions that "amounts to torture" in the Brooklyn, N.Y., detention facility in which she's being held.

"No human being should have to go through what she's been put through," Ian Maxwell told the BBC. "It is really degrading … this is not the way that a democratic country should be running its prison system. It's grotesque and in that respect, it amounts to torture."

Maxwell, a former New York and British socialite, was arrested in July 2020 on charges related to the alleged sexual abuse of girls and young women by Epstein, the financier who took his life in 2019 inside a New York jail while awaiting trial.

Maxwell faces charges including the transporting of a minor for the purposes of criminal sexual activity and conspiring to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, according to news reports.

Her lawyers have previously said their client is being abused by jail guards and served inedible food and dirty water, which has resulted in stress and the loss of hair.

Ian Maxwell this week also criticized prosecutors for not revealing much about their case against his sister, including the identities of her three accusers and the time and dates of the alleged offenses.

Saying his sister is being held in a 6-by-9 foot cell with a concrete bed and a toilet, he called his sister's jail conditions a "grotesque overreaction" to Epstein's suicide. 

"Ghislaine is not a suicide risk," he said. "She has never been a suicide risk. She is being completely overmanaged."

A judge denied a $28.5 million bail for Maxwell in December, saying that she poses a flight risk.

An attorney for Maxwell and Epstein accusers, Gloria Allred, said that bail "should be out of the question" because it would be "very upsetting to the victims."