Things don’t look to be going exactly as planned for Ghislaine Maxwell as she makes her way through jury selection, en route to a trial where she is alleged to have groomed underage girls to be sexually abused by the now late Jeffrey Epstein.
On Wednesday, Maxwell lost a request to exclude a psychologist who has studied the “grooming” of sexual crimes victims from testifying, Reuters reported.
The psychologist, Lisa Rocchio, will be called by prosecutors as a witness. She specializes in “treating patients who have suffered sexual abuse”.
Jeffrey Pagliuca, a lawyer for Maxwell, said the defense “intends to question the credibility of witnesses based on any prior histories of substance abuse or failures to disclose their accusations against Maxwell promptly,” Reuters wrote.
Rocchio said this week during a hearing that younger woman are likely to disclose sexual abuse later in life and, while false allegations do occur, they are in the very small minority.
Maxwell’s lawyers have argued that Rocchio’s testimony should be inadmissable because they are “based mainly on her personal experience as a practitioner and lacked scientific backing,” the report said.
The defense plans to call their own experts to show that allegations against Maxwell have “no support in the scientific community”.
U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan then decided she would allow Rocchio’s testimony.
Jury selection is almost complete and the trial is set to begin around November 29 in Manhattan federal court.
