Ghislaine Maxwell Trial: Highlights From Day 4 of Ghislaine Maxwell’s Trial (Published 2021) (2024)

The fourth day of testimony in the sex-trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell began with an expert witness describing how sexual abusers prepare, or “groom,” their prospective victims and concluded with an insider’s view of life at Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach home.

That perspective was provided by Juan Alessi, 71, who said he had been a property manager at the Palm Beach home from about 1990 until 2002.

On the stand, Mr. Alessi read from a 58-page document titled “Household Manual” that listed ground rules for employees. Among other things, the manual told workers to “try to anticipate the needs of Mr. Epstein, Ms. Maxwell and their guests,” forbade them from discussing their personal problems with guests and instructed them: “Remember, that you see nothing, hear nothing say nothing except to answer a question direct to you. Respect their privacy.”

Mr. Alessi testified that he believed that section of the manual constituted “a kind a warning.”

“I was supposed to be blind and dumb,” he said. “To say nothing of their lives.”

Here are some takeaways from the trial.

A prosecution witness described how abusers “groom” child targets.

Dr. Lisa Rocchio, a clinical psychologist, testified that adults who sexually abuse children commonly engage in a process that can be thought of as having five basic steps: (1) selecting a victim, (2) obtaining access to and isolating the victim, (3) using “lies and deception and manipulation” to build “trust and attachment,” (4) desensitizing a victim to physical and sexual touching, and (5) maintaining control to coerce the victim into accepting continued abuse.

Dr. Rocchio said that “grooming” process could include giving gifts, building rapport through expressions of concern, bringing up sexual subjects in conversation and slowly escalating sexualized physical interactions with prospective victims.

The testimony offered jurors a way to link Maxwell to Epstein’s abuses.

Dr. Rocchio’s testimony was meant to bolster the government’s case by establishing that Ms. Maxwell played a key role in making girls vulnerable to Mr. Epstein.

The testimony dovetailed with the prosecution’s description of Ms. Maxwell in its opening statement: “The defendant took these girls on shopping trips, asked them about their lives, their schools, their families. She won their trust. She discussed sexual topics with them. She helped normalize abusive sexual conduct. She put them at ease and made them feel safe all so that they could be molested by a middle-aged man.”

A former employee at Epstein’s Palm Beach home detailed Maxwell’s pervasive control.

Mr. Alessi, who worked at the Palm Beach property for some 12 years, testified about the strict rules that Ms. Maxwell put in place there, from the placement of phone directories (always to the right of the telephones) to sharp limits on employees’ behavior.

Employees were never to look Mr. Epstein in the eye, even while answering a question from him, Mr. Alessi said. They were, however, to keep watch for any holes in the property fence that Ms. Maxwell’s Yorkie, Max, might escape through. (Max went everywhere with Ms. Maxwell, even on Mr. Epstein’s private jet. “The poor dog shake like crazy,” Mr. Alessi, who is from Ecuador, testified. “Because she didn’t like to be in the plane.”)

The employee recalled many young, topless women at the estate.

It was common for young women to visit Mr. Epstein in Palm Beach, Mr. Alessi said. “Many, many many females” showed up at the home, he testified, adding that most of them appeared to be in their 20s.

Women arrived to lounge by Mr. Epstein’s pool on hundreds of occasions, Mr. Alessi said. They were topless almost 80 percent of the time, he estimated.

Among those that visited the house were two girls who Mr. Alessi said appeared to be underage. One of them, now an adult, appeared on the stand earlier this week, identified only as “Jane.” She testified that Mr. Epstein had sexually abused her for years, starting when she was 14.

Mr. Alessi remembered Jane vividly. She was, he said on the stand, a “strikingly beautiful girl, beautiful eyes, long hair, long brunette hair, tall, very pleasant.”

Ghislaine Maxwell controlled every detail of life inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach estate, a former manager of the property, Juan Alessi, said Thursday during the fourth day of Ms. Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Mr. Alessi, 71, said that he had worked at the estate from around 1990 to 2002. He testified that he had a “cordial” relationship with Mr. Epstein before Ms. Maxwell arrived. But after her arrival in the early 1990s, he said, that dynamic changed.

He said Ms. Maxwell instructed him on how to speak to Mr. Epstein: “Mr. Epstein doesn’t like to be looked at in his eyes,” Mr. Alessi said Ms. Maxwell told him. “‘Never look at his eyes, look in another part of the room and answer him.’”

Mr. Alessi said there was a “tremendous amount of instructions,” including how dishes were to be presented and how the table was to be set. There were rules about how the employees should dress and how they should address Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, and guests.

Prosecutors said the rules of the house were documented in a 58-page “Household Manual.” Mr. Alessi, who left his job with Mr. Epstein before that version of the booklet was created, said he recognized most of it.

“Remember that you see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing except to answer a question direct to you,” one section of the booklet read. “Respect their privacy.”

Mr. Alessi said he took those instructions as “a kind of warning.”

Mr. Alessi said he remembered seeing two girls who appeared to be underage, including one, now an adult, who testified earlier in Ms. Maxwell’s trial using the name “Jane.”

He said he had first met Jane in 1994, and remembered the first time she visited the estate with her mother. “I don’t know exactly how old she was but she appeared to be young,” Mr. Alessi said. “I would say 14, 15.” (Earlier this week, Jane testified that she was 14 when she met Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell.)

He said he was instructed by Mr. Epstein or Ms. Maxwell to pick Jane up from either school or her home. He described Jane as a “strikingly beautiful girl” who was “very pleasant.” (Earlier this week, Jane testified that she remembered a Latin American man picking her up to visit Mr. Epstein; Mr. Alessi is from Ecuador.)

He said he only saw her interact with Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, but he did not say that he saw any sexual contact between them.

Mr. Alessi said that Mr. Epstein received around one massage per day in the beginning of his employment, but toward the time he left the job, Mr. Epstein was receiving around three massages a day.

Before federal prosecutors charged Ghislaine Maxwell with sex trafficking and conspiracy, they had indicted her longtime companion, Jeffrey Epstein, on those charges, accusing him of trafficking dozens of girls, some as young as 14, and engaging in sex acts with them.

But Mr. Epstein never faced those charges in court. He died by suicide in jail on Aug. 10, 2019, 35 days after he was arrested. If convicted, he would have faced up to 45 years in prison for what the indictment said was a conspiracy to sexually exploit vulnerable girls.

Prosecutors contend that between 2002 and 2005, Mr. Epstein and his employees brought the girls to his mansion on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and his compound in Palm Beach, Fla. There, the indictment said, Mr. Epstein and others plied the girls with gifts and cash, pressured them to perform naked massages and sex acts and sent them out to recruit other girls.

Ms. Maxwell’s lawyers are seeking to portray her trial as, in effect, an attempt to prosecute her for Mr. Epstein’s crimes. But in bringing charges against her, prosecutors argued that she was central to the conspiracy Mr. Epstein was accused of.

Mr. Epstein, a financier and former schoolteacher who befriended wealthy executives, celebrities and politicians, had been investigated in Florida more than a decade earlier in connection with the sexual abuse of underage girls. But he struck a secret deal with prosecutors and was released after serving 13 months for state prostitution crimes.

The federal charges, filed in Manhattan in 2019, came after a series of articles in The Miami Herald explored the unusual deal in Florida and the sexual abuse allegations.

Since Mr. Epstein’s death, federal authorities appear to have had time to broaden the case. Ms. Maxwell, who was arrested in July 2020, is charged with a longer list of crimes than Mr. Epstein was, and they date back further, to 1994. Like him, she faces one count of sex trafficking of a minor. But while he faced one count of conspiracy, she faces three, involving four accusers.

She is also charged with enticing and transporting a minor to travel on numerous occasions from Florida to New York to engage in illegal sex acts.

If convicted, Ms. Maxwell, 59, could face at least as long a prison term as Mr. Epstein could have.

Adults who sexually abuse children often use a methodical five-step process that involves selecting a victim, using “lies, deception and manipulation” to set the stage for abuse and then controlling their victims to carry out the abuse and avoid detection, an expert witness in Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial told jurors on Thursday morning.

That process is known as “grooming” and it is central to the prosecution’s case against Ms. Maxwell, who is on trial in federal court in Manhattan, and accused of helping her longtime companion, Jeffrey Epstein, abuse girls as young as 14.

Prosecutors have said that Ms. Maxwell played a pivotal role in Mr. Epstein’s abuse, bringing them into his world by taking some of the girls shopping, presenting herself as a mentor of sorts and instructing them on how Mr. Epstein liked to be touched.

The testimony of the expert witness, Lisa Rocchio, appeared to support the prosecution’s view of how Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein operated. But during cross-examination, the defense challenged that idea while suggesting that the behavior that the prosecution had presented as “grooming” might have been innocuous.

Calling Dr. Rocchio to the stand had been the subject of a pretrial dispute between prosecutors and Ms. Maxwell’s defense, who argued that her testimony would be unreliable, irrelevant and prejudicial.

The judge overseeing the case, Alison Nathan, ruled that Dr. Rocchio’s views on grooming would be allowed. But Judge Nathan agreed with the defense’s argument that Dr. Rocchio’s should not be allowed to testify that the presence of a third party, such as Ms. Maxwell, could facilitate grooming. On the witness stand on Thursday, Dr. Rocchio did not raise that issue.

Dr. Rocchio has not interviewed any of the four women whose testimony is expected to provide the main basis for the prosecution of Ms. Maxwell. Rather, she said in court, her testimony was based on 30 years of experience as a clinical psychologist during which she treated hundreds of people who had been sexually abused as children.

“Childhood sexual abuse is a process,” Dr. Rocchio told jurors, adding that it begins with the selection and identification of a victim.

Abusers first try to obtain “access” to their victims and isolate them, then use falsehoods and manipulation to “build trust and attachment.”

Next, Dr. Rocchio testified, abusers generally try to desensitize children, first by acclimating them to physical touching. That step in the process is often accompanied by physical proximity, like sitting close to a child. Abusers then often work at “normalizing sexual activity” by discussing sex, telling sexual jokes and engaging in massages.

Finally, Dr. Rocchio testified, “all of that escalates to sexual abuse.”

The process that she outlined appeared to correspond closely with what a prosecutor, Lara Pomerantz, described to jurors in her opening statement. Ms. Pomerantz said that the sexual abuse alleged in the case “started with Epstein lying facedown for so-called massages” and escalated, with Mr. Epstein touching the girls sexually and directing them to massage him while he masturbat*d, among other sexual activities.

When it was the defense’s turn to question Dr. Rocchio on Thursday, one of Ms. Maxwell’s lawyers sought to bolster an idea offered during the defense’s opening statement. As part of that statement, a defense lawyer, Bobbi Sternheim, told jurors, “What we have here is lawful conduct that is going to be labeled grooming.” She asserted that prosecutors, were giving that label to otherwise innocuous conduct, like “asking someone what they like to do, whether they like a movie, whether they like going shopping.”

On Thursday, while cross-examining Dr. Rocchio, another defense lawyer, Jeffrey S. Pagliuca, asked: “These behaviors that you are referring to as grooming be can also be non-grooming behaviors?”

Dr. Rocchio said that could be the case. But she went on to suggest that whether a certain behavior was grooming or not had to do largely with the intentions of the adult involved.

Grooming is not codified in law as a crime, but it is at the center of the sex-trafficking charges against Ghislaine Maxwell: “Grooming,” “groom” and “groomed” appear nine times in the federal indictment charging her of conspiring with her longtime companion, Jeffrey Epstein, to sexually exploit vulnerable girls.

Grooming, legal experts say, is a gradual process whereby an abuser wins the trust and cooperation of a potential victim, starting with interactions that seem normal and benign, like paying special attention or offering compliments and gifts.

Next the abuser acclimates the victim to physical touching and sexual references, breaking down ordinary boundaries. Gradually, the predator exposes the victim to sexual behaviors, like light touching, to desensitize them. The process is aimed at breaking down resistance and making the victim feel complicit or responsible when the activities escalate to sexual abuse or assault, so the victim is less likely to recognize the abuse or report it.

“A predator grooms their victims in order to earn their trust,” William F. Sweeney Jr., the head of the F.B.I.’s New York office, said in September after charging Robert A. Hadden, a former Manhattan gynecologist, in the sexual abuse of six female patients, including one minor.

The former film producer Harvey Weinstein and the former gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar were also accused of grooming their victims as a way to coerce sexual acts without necessarily using physical force: Mr. Weinstein dangled hopes for movie stardom and Dr. Nassar suggested to young gymnasts that his assaults were part of routine exams.

The concept of grooming in sexual abuse cases is only the word’s latest meaning, giving a dark, duplicitous connotation to a word whose usual meaning is tending to one’s personal appearance or hygiene.

In the 13th century, grooms were male servants who helped their employers with dressing and daily activities. By the 1600s, the word came to mean a worker who takes care of horses. In 1887, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word was first used to mean coaching someone, as in “grooming a successor.”

The first published use of the term in a sexual abuse context was in 1985, when the Chicago Tribune described “friendly molesters” who gained trust while “secretly grooming the child as a sexual partner.”

That use of the word has become more widespread in recent years with high-profile cases of Catholic priests who approached vulnerable families as helpers or mentors before sexually abusing children, and with the wave of #MeToo accusations of sexual assault, harassment and abuse in the workplace.

Jeffrey Epstein looms over nearly every aspect of the sex-trafficking trial of his former partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, but his suicide in a federal jail cell in Manhattan removed any possibility of hearing the evidence against him at trial.

Mr. Epstein was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correction Center at 6:30 a.m. on Aug. 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges. The New York City medical examiner determined he had hanged himself with a bedsheet on a night when he was alone because his cellmate had been transferred.

His death in Manhattan set off a rash of unfounded conspiracy theories on social media that were picked up and repeated by high-profile figures, including Mayor Bill de Blasio and former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. But investigations by the F.B.I. and the Justice Department’s Inspector General found no evidence of a conspiracy, proving Mr. Epstein’s death was a suicide, the Attorney General at the time, William P. Barr, later said.

It was not the first time he had tried to kill himself. A month earlier, after being denied bail on federal sex trafficking charges, Mr. Epstein was found unconscious in his jail cell with marks on his neck in what prison officials investigated as a suicide attempt.

The Friday morning before he died, thousands of documents from a civil suit had been released, providing lurid accounts accusing Mr. Epstein of sexually abusing scores of girls.

Investigations into the suicide found jail officials had made serious mistakes. Mr. Epstein was supposed to have been checked by the two guards in the protective housing unit every 30 minutes, but that procedure was not followed that night. One of the guards was not a full-fledged correction officer.

In addition, because of Mr. Epstein’s earlier attempted suicide, he was supposed to have had another inmate in his cell, officials said. But the jail had recently transferred his cellmate and allowed Mr. Epstein to be housed alone, a decision that also violated the jail’s procedures, the two officials said.

Two days after Mr. Epstein died, Mr. Barr said he “was appalled” by the suicide and sharply criticized the management of the jail. He ordered a full investigation. The warden was transferred.

The two guards, Michael Thomas and Tova Noel, were charged criminally with ignoring their duties and then lying about it. Prosecutors said the guards had been browsing the internet and napping rather than checking on Mr. Epstein every half-hour as they were supposed to the night he died. They were also accused of falsifying official logs, recording they had made the rounds. In May, they reached an agreement with prosecutors that allowed them to avoid prosecution and do community service.

This year, a trove of more than 2,000 pages of Federal Bureau of Prisons records obtained by The New York Times after filing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit suggested Mr. Epstein had gone to lengths to persuade jail officials that he was not suicidal after the first apparent attempt to hang himself in July 2019.

The notes and reports compiled by those who interacted with Mr. Epstein during his 36 days of detention show how he repeatedly assured them he had much to live for, while also hinting that he was despondent. After the first attempt, for instance, Jeffrey Epstein said he was living a “wonderful life,” denying any thoughts of ending it, even as he sat on suicide watch.

“I have no interest in killing myself,” Mr. Epstein told a jailhouse psychologist. He was a “coward” and did not like pain, he explained. “I would not do that to myself.”

In recent weeks, the country has watched two gripping trials with wide social resonance unfold on television and computer screens.

Video broadcasts allowed an untold number of people to watch the trial and acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two people during a protest over a police shooting in Kenosha, Wis. A similarly large audience watched the trial and conviction of three white men in Georgia charged in the murder of a Black jogger, Ahmaud Arbery. In the past, such access would likely have required a seat inside a courtroom.

So why is Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial not equally accessible? The answer has to do with the difference in jurisdictions — federal court in the case of Ms. Maxwell, and county courts in the other two.

There are specific, sometimes arcane rules that govern federal proceedings. Though the federal judiciary has experimented with pilot programs allowing cameras in civil cases, the broadcast of criminal cases has been barred since 1946 under Rule 53 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.

By contrast, some state and county courts for decades have had latitude to allow trial broadcasts. For instance, in 1993, the Los Angeles County Superior Court let Court TV broadcast the trial of Erik and Lyle Menendez, brothers who used shotguns to kill their parents but claimed they did so in self-defense after years of sexual and psychological torture.

Vivid scenes with weeping defendants and dramatic cross-examinations helped create a cultlike following among some of those who tuned in. Soon afterward, Court TV and the E Channel both covered O.J. Simpson’s murder trial live from Los Angeles County. Those proceedings, too, drew devoted audiences.

But the televised trials also had their critics, who complained that the national audience encouraged lawyers, judges and witnesses to grandstand.

The first attempt to prosecute the Menendez brothers ended with jurors unable to agree on a verdict. The judge handling the case, Stanley M. Weisberg, believed that the television coverage had affected many potential jurors for the retrial and barred electronic coverage of the second trial to “protect the rights of the parties, the dignity of the court and assure the orderly conduct of the proceedings.”

In 1994, the U.S. Judicial Conference, which sets policy for federal courts, voted down a proposed amendment to Rule 53, which would have allowed cameras in criminal proceedings. The conference also rejected a similar proposal to allow the recording and broadcast of civil proceedings, concluding “the intimidating effect of cameras on some witnesses and jurors was cause for concern.”

People who want to keep track of legal proceedings remotely in federal cases in New York may have an easier time when verdicts are appealed. The Second Circuit, which hears appeals in New York State, as well as in Connecticut and Vermont, has a web page for the “livestream audio” of oral arguments. Those who tune in cannot watch what is happening inside the courtroom but can listen to what is being said.

The sex trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, a former girlfriend and longtime associate of Jeffrey Epstein, is set to begin Monday. Here are some of the events that led to the highly anticipated trial:

July 7, 2019

Mr. Epstein was arrested at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.

Federal prosecutors accused Mr. Epstein of engaging in criminal sex acts with minors and women, some as young as 14.

Aug. 10, 2019

Mr. Epstein killed himself in his Manhattan jail cell.

Mr. Epstein hanged himself in his jail cell in the Metropolitan Correctional Center; he was not under suicide watch at the time of his death. He had just been denied bail on federal sex trafficking charges.

March 2020

Ms. Maxwell sued Mr. Epstein’s estate.

Ms. Maxwell said in the lawsuit that Mr. Epstein and Darren Indyke, a longtime lawyer for Mr. Epstein and the executor of his estate, both promised to pay her legal fees, but she said they hadn’t. Her legal fees mounted as more women claimed she helped Mr. Epstein recruit them for sexual activity when they were underage.

July 2020

Ms. Maxwell was arrested in New Hampshire.

The indictment listed three minor victims who say they were recruited by Ms. Maxwell from 1994 to 1997 for criminal sexual activity.

July 2020

Ms. Maxwell asks for release on $5 million bond.

Her lawyers asked a federal judge in Manhattan to release her from jail on $5 million bond. Judge Alison J. Nathan of the Federal District Court in Manhattan denied the request after prosecutors argued that Ms. Maxwell posed a high risk of fleeing before her trial.

December 2020

Ms. Maxwell calls jail “oppressive.”

Ms. Maxwell asked again to be released, this time on $28.5 million bond, arguing that the conditions of her Brooklyn jail were “oppressive.” But once again the request was denied, after prosecutors said the probability she would flee was extremely high. Prosecutors also said the conditions in jail were reasonable, pointing to her personal shower, phone and two computers.

March 2021

Ms. Maxwell is charged with sex trafficking a 14-year-old.

A new indictment accuses Ms. Maxwell of grooming an additional minor. She is charged with sex trafficking a 14-year-old girl who engaged in sexual acts with Mr. Epstein at his Palm Beach, Fla., estate.

November 2021

Ms. Maxwell goes on trial.

Opening arguments are set for Monday.

Ghislaine Maxwell faces six counts in her federal trial, which relate to accusations that she facilitated the sexual exploitation of girls for her longtime companion, the disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The six counts center on the accounts of four accusers. The charges include:

• One count of enticement of a minor to travel to engage in illegal sex acts, in which Ms. Maxwell is accused of coercing one girl — identified as Minor Victim 1 in charging documents — to travel from Florida to New York, between 1994 and 1997, to engage in sex acts with Mr. Epstein.

• One count of transportation of a minor with intent to engage in illegal sex acts, which accuses Ms. Maxwell of bringing the same girl from Florida to New York on numerous occasions.

• One count of sex trafficking of a minor, which charges that between 2001 and 2004, Ms. Maxwell recruited, enticed and transported another girl — identified in the charges as Minor Victim 4 — to engage in at least one commercial sex act with Mr. Epstein.

• And three counts of conspiracy, which are related to the other counts. The conspiracy counts in the indictment are more expansive, involving all four accusers and homes in the United States and in London. These charges involve accusations that Ms. Maxwell worked with Mr. Epstein to secure underage girls for sex acts, for example, by encouraging one to give Mr. Epstein massages in London between 1994 and 1995.

Ms. Maxwell, 59, could face a lengthy prison term if convicted. Conspiracy to commit sex trafficking of minors carries a maximum 40-year sentence; the other charges have maximum penalties of five or 10 years.

When Ms. Maxwell was arrested in July 2020, she was also charged with two counts of perjury, accusing her of lying under oath in 2016 during depositions for a lawsuit related to Mr. Epstein. In April, Judge Alison J. Nathan granted the defense’s request to sever the perjury counts, which will be tried separately.

Before her arrest on charges of trafficking teenage girls for Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell was a globe-trotter, described by the authorities as taking international flights to the United Kingdom, Japan and Qatar.

But Ms. Maxwell was taken into custody last year in a place with a decidedly different flavor: the small town of Bradford, N.H., in a rural area near several state parks and about 25 miles west of Concord, the state capital.

The arrest of someone connected to a high-profile case surprised many in Bradford, said Andrew Pinard, chairman of the town Board of Selectmen.

“She was not seen in the community, ” he said by phone not long before Ms. Maxwell’s trial began in Manhattan. “People were not aware she was there, she was a non-presence.”

According to court documents filed by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, Ms. Maxwell took pains to avoid attention.

She had been hiding for about a year before her arrest, prosecutors wrote, adding that she had switched her email address and registered a new phone number under the name “G Max.” And the 156-acre property where Ms. Maxwell had been living was acquired in an all-cash purchase using a “carefully anonymized” limited liability company, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors wrote that Ms. Maxwell appeared to have passports from the United States, France and the United Kingdom as well as access to significant amounts of money.

While arguing that she posed “an extreme risk of flight” and should be held in custody before her trial, they provided details of her arrest on the morning of July 2, 2020.

The property in Bradford was barred by a locked gate and patrolled by a private security guard, prosecutors wrote. Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation announced themselves as they approached the main house and directed Ms. Maxwell to open the door, prosecutors added, then watched through a window as she instead tried to flee to another room in the house, “quickly shutting a door behind her.”

After getting into the house, prosecutors said, F.B.I. agents found Ms. Maxwell in an inner room and saw a cellphone wrapped in tin foil on top of a desk — “a seemingly misguided effort to evade detection.”

A news report from Bradford after the arrest described some people stopping at the end of a driveway, near a sign that bore the name “Tuckedaway,” to muse on the fact that Ms. Maxwell had been living there.

As Ms. Maxwell’s trial approached last month, Mr. Pinard said that people in Bradford were more chagrined than intrigued by the town’s fleeting connection. He said few locals would be likely to seek out gavel-to-gavel coverage of her trial.

“They’ve got more important things to worry about,” he said. “Like Covid, their property taxes and their children having opportunities in school.”

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By the end of her testimony on Wednesday, the first accuser to take the stand in the sex-trafficking trial of Ghislaine Maxwell was crying into a bundle of tissues.

During several hours of cross-examination of the witness, identified only as “Jane,” a defense attorney for Ms. Maxwell asked questions that sought to cast doubt on the story that Jane had shared a day before: of a troubled family and financial situation that left her vulnerable to abuse by the notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, who is accused of luring teenage girls for Mr. Epstein to abuse.

Jane is now a working actress, and the lawyer for Ms. Maxwell, Laura Menninger, appeared to suggest that Jane’s testimony was just another performance, and that she was motivated by financial gain.

Later, when Alison Moe, a federal prosecutor, had an opportunity to question Jane again, Ms. Moe asked her what it meant to be awarded $5 million from a fund set up to compensate victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual exploitation.

“I wish I would have never received that money in the first place,” Jane said, crying. “Hopefully this just puts it to an end and I can move on with my life,” she added.

Three more accusers are expected to testify against Ms. Maxwell, whose trial began on Monday in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Ms. Maxwell, a longtime companion of Mr. Epstein, was arrested in 2020, about a year after Mr. Epstein hanged himself in a Manhattan jail cell. He had also been charged with trafficking girls.

Here are some takeaways from the third day of the trial:

The defense suggested Jane actually came from a supportive family with means.

Ms. Menninger began her cross-examination with questions about Jane’s applications to attend the Interlochen summer camp in Michigan. She read from a recommendation that said Jane and her two brothers, who also attended the camp, came from “a strong, loving family background” and that they represented the “rebirth of the von Trapp family” from “The Sound of Music.”

Ms. Menninger read from documentation that said the cost of the camp was over $4,000 per child for the summer, but that Jane and her siblings never applied for financial aid or scholarships for the three summers they attended. Jane said she did not recognize the document but recognized her signature and believed it was her application.

The defense questioned Jane’s account of Ghislaine Maxwell’s involvement in her abuse.

Ms. Menninger used her cross-examination to focus on what Jane told federal investigators in 2019 and 2020 about the sexual abuse she said she faced at the hands of Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell. Ms. Menninger implied that those recounts differed from what she testified about on Tuesday.

“Two years later, now you remember that Ghislaine called your home to make appointments?” Ms. Menninger asked Jane on Wednesday.

“Right,” Jane responded.

“That memory has come back to you in the past two years?” Ms. Menninger pressed.

“Memory is not linear,” Jane replied.

The defense suggested that Jane’s testimony was just another performance.

During her cross-examination of Jane, who is an actress on a soap opera, Ms. Menninger asked Jane two questions: Is an actor “someone who plays the role of a fictional character” and “someone who takes lines borrowed from a writer”?

“Yes,” Jane replied to both.

Ms. Menninger asked if characters in soap operas had “tangled interpersonal relationships,” and if they responded in a “melodramatic and sentimental” way. She asked if Jane had played a number of different characters, including a protective mother, a prostitute, a car-crash victim and someone stalked by serial killers.

Jane answered yes, and quipped, “Not my favorite story line,” when asked about her role as a prostitute.

When it was time for a final set of questions from the government, the prosecutor asked Jane if she knew the difference between acting and testifying in court.

“Acting on television is not real and testifying in court is real and is the truth,” Jane replied. She said that she was not acting on the witness stand.

A former boyfriend said Jane told him about some of the abuse.

An ex-boyfriend of Jane who testified as “Matt” said Jane told him that she had “a godfather, an uncle, a family friend-type person who helped her mom pay the bills,” but never told him what she had to do to get the money. She only said, “It wasn’t free,” Matt told the jury Wednesday.

Matt said that Jane told him that Mr. Epstein had an adult female friend who “made her feel comfortable” spending time with the financier as a teenager — but did not mention Ms. Maxwell by name. It was only after Ms. Maxwell’s 2020 arrest that Jane confirmed that she was the woman, he said.

Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.

Each day at her trial, Ghislaine Maxwell sits in the courtroom at the corner of two long tables, flanked by her legal team — no fewer than four lawyers, hailing from a range of backgrounds and law firms.

Jeffrey S. Pagliuca and Laura Menninger, two Colorado-based lawyers at the firm Haddon, Morgan and Foreman, have represented Ms. Maxwell for at least five years, including in civil litigation brought by women who accused Jeffrey Epstein, her longtime companion, of sexual abuse.

Christian Everdell, a partner in the New York office of the international law firm Cohen & Gresser, is an alumnus of the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, which is prosecuting Ms. Maxwell. During his decade-long tenure as a federal prosecutor, Mr. Everdell was part of the office’s terrorism and international narcotics unit and its complex frauds team.

As an assistant U.S. attorney, Mr. Everdell contributed to the Justice Department’s investigation of the drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, which led to Mr. Guzmán’s conviction in another district. (Mr. Everdell brought charges against leaders of a Colombian drug trafficking organization that worked closely with Mr. Guzmán’s Sinaloa cartel, a partnership that figured in the case against Mr. Guzmán.)

Bobbi C. Sternheim, who delivered the defense’s opening statement on Monday, is a veteran criminal defense lawyer in New York whose clients have included one of Osama bin Laden’s earliest and most trusted aides, Khaled al-Fawwaz. In 2015, Mr. Fawwaz was convicted of participating in a global conspiracy to kill Americans and received a life sentence.

A former president of the New York Women’s Bar Association and counsel to the law firm Fasulo, Braverman & Di Maggio, Ms. Sternheim has represented defendants in organized crime and racketeering cases, according to the firm’s website. She has also been appointed numerous times by federal judges to represent defendants in cases eligible for the death penalty.

At the trial, Ms. Maxwell frequently passes notes to her lawyers and leans over to speak with them during breaks. At the close of each day, she sometimes embraces them.

When Ghislaine Maxwell was arrested in July 2020, one of her accusers, Annie Farmer, read a statement to the judge, urging her to deny bail to Ms. Maxwell, who was charged with helping to recruit girls to be sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein.

“She is a sexual predator who groomed and abused me and countless other children and young women,” Ms. Farmer told the judge, who ordered Ms. Maxwell detained.

On Friday, Ms. Farmer, now 42, took the witness stand in Ms. Maxwell’s federal sex-trafficking trial in Manhattan to tell her story to a jury. She is the fourth accuser to testify but the first to do so under her full name. The previous three asked to be identified by pseudonyms or first names.

“My name is Annie Farmer,” she said as she took the stand on Friday, before spelling her name aloud.

Ms. Farmer’s story is already somewhat well known, in part because she has sued Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein’s estate, and she has spoken out in court hearings and to the news media.

She and her sister, Maria Farmer, made early complaints about Mr. Epstein’s conduct to the authorities. Maria Farmer has said she went to the New York Police Department and called the F.B.I. in 1996 to lodge complaints about Mr. Epstein’s troubling physical contact and threats she had received, The New York Times reported in 2019.

Those were the earliest known allegations made to the authorities about Mr. Epstein’s conduct, but the sisters have said there was no follow-up by either agency. Records show F.B.I. agents came to speak with them about a decade later.

In her lawsuit, Annie Farmer said that her sister, Maria, an artist and graduate student in New York, met Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell at an art show, and that Mr. Epstein took an interest in Maria’s artwork and offered to help her in her art career. Maria eventually accepted a job offer from Mr. Epstein to purchase art for him, the suit said.

Later, Mr. Epstein offered to help Annie Farmer get into college, but, according to the lawsuit, the offer was only a ruse to get her to come to New York so he could abuse her.

The suit describes Mr. Epstein taking Annie and Maria to the movies in New York, positioning himself between them and caressing and petting Annie against her will, without Maria’s knowledge.

The lawsuit also says that Annie was 16 in 1996 when Mr. Epstein flew her to his ranch in New Mexico to attend what she was led to believe was an educational program for high school students. After arriving, she realized that she was the only participant in the program. She also met Ms. Maxwell there, who seemed charming and friendly, the suit said.

According to the suit, Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell took her shopping and lavished her with gifts, including beauty products and new pair of cowboy boots — part of a process that prosecutors have said was “grooming,” to lower her defenses.

Upon their return to the ranch, Ms. Maxwell began pressuring Annie to give Mr. Epstein a foot massage, the lawsuit said. Later, Ms. Maxwell directed Annie to take off all her clothes and lie on the massage table, where she “touched intimate parts of Annie’s body against her will,” the lawsuit said.

The next day, according to the suit, Annie woke up to find Mr. Epstein climbing into bed with her, saying, “I want to cuddle,” and pressing his body against hers, leaving her “frozen in fear.”

David Boies, one of Ms. Farmer’s lawyers, said her lawsuit was ultimately settled with Mr. Epstein’s estate, in an agreement that required the dismissal of all claims against Mr. Epstein’s employees, including Ms. Maxwell.

Mike Baker contributed reporting.