The family of Virginia Giuffre have said they are "outraged" after the US Department of Justice released transcripts of an interview with Ghislaine Maxwell.
Maxwell is a convicted sex trafficker and was for many years the girlfriend of paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison in 2019. During her two-day interrogation last month by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Maxwell denied claims of child sex trafficking and abuse.
The details from the interview were blasted by the family of the late Virginia Giuffre, the most prominent of Epstein's victims, Sky News reports.
"As the family of one of the most prominent survivors, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, we are outraged,” they said.
"The content of these transcripts is in direct contradiction with felon Ghislaine Maxwell's conviction for child sex trafficking.
"This travesty of justice entirely invalidates the experiences of the many brave survivors who put their safety, security, and lives on the line to ensure her conviction, including our sister."
The family added that the interview gave Maxwell a "platform to rewrite history" and they complained she was "never challenged about her court-proven lies".
Earlier this month, it was reported that Maxwell would move to a minimum-security prison in Texas. The family criticised the move as a "disturbing message that child sex trafficking is acceptable".
Ms Giuffre's family announced her death by suicide on April 25, at the age of 41. For years, she maintained Maxwell had introduced her to Epstein when she was just a teenager, and that she travelled with the pair while being sexually abused by Epstein and his associates.
She launched a civil claim against Prince Andrew for sexual abuse in August 2021, claiming he had sex with her in Maxwell's Kensington mews house when she was just 17.
The prince has strenuously denied the claims and no criminal charges have every been brought against him. He reached a "substantial" out--of-court settlement with Ms Giuffre in March 2022.
Ghislaine Maxwell was grilled at length about the Duke of York’s links to Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, transcripts released by the US Justice Department revealed.
The transcripts, published on Friday, show the convicted sex trafficker insisting she did not introduce Andrew to disgraced financier Epstein and that the duke’s alleged sex with Virginia Giuffre in her house could not have happened.
The Trump administration issued hundreds of pages of transcripts of interviews conducted by deputy attorney general Todd Blanche last month amid a fierce backlash over a previous refusal to disclose records from the Epstein case.
Maxwell said Epstein first met Andrew at a vineyard in Nantucket, an island off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in the early 2000s and that Sarah, Duchess of York, Andrew’s now ex-wife, was the one who had “pushed” the pair’s friendship.
The 63-year-old former girlfriend of Epstein said she was “sure” Andrew himself had suggested he meet Epstein through her.
Of the paedophile financier, Maxwell said: “First of all, let’s just state, I did not introduce him to Prince Andrew.
“I did not introduce him to Prince Andrew or to Sarah Ferguson. That is a flat untruth. I’ll start with that.”
She continued: “I would never have introduced them. It would never have occurred to me to introduce them.
“I couldn’t imagine them being friends. Two chalk and cheeses would never… for real, there’s nothing there to connect them.
“So he met Prince Andrew and then he had a really good relationship. I don’t like that word. It sounds clunky.”
She added: “I think Sarah is the one that pushed that. And they met and hung out, I want to say two or three times that had nothing to do with me.
“I wasn’t communicating with Andrew, I wasn’t in touch with him.
“And I know this because I was annoyed and I felt left out, and I felt disrespected and I was like, this is weird. I couldn’t even imagine Epstein and Andrew together.”
Later in the transcripts, Maxwell said allegations that Andrew and Ms Giuffre had sex in her London home were untrue because at the time of the alleged incident she was at her mother’s 80th birthday celebrations in the countryside outside the city.
Asked about a rumoured “black book” or “client list” Epstein reportedly kept of famous people he knew, the former British socialite said “there is no list”, adding “there is nothing like that”.
During her three-week trial in 2021, jurors heard prosecutors describe Maxwell as “dangerous”, and were told how she helped entice vulnerable teenagers to Epstein’s properties for him to sexually abuse.
She was sentenced to 20 years in prison at the federal court in the southern district of New York in June 2022.
Epstein was found dead in his cell at a federal jail in Manhattan in August 2019 while he awaited trial on sex-trafficking charges. The death was ruled a suicide.
