After news broke that Jeffrey Epstein’s child trafficking accomplice Jean-Luc Brunel was found dead in a Paris jail cell, Ghislaine Maxwell’s family has now revealed they are fearing for her safety.
Maxwell’s family broke their silence after Brunel’s shocking death by hanging on Saturday.
Brunel was charged with procuring underage girls for Epstein and was awaiting trial in France for his role in the child sex trafficking operation.
“I can confirm that Mr. Brunel was discovered at 1:30 a.m. last night dead in his cell,” said Antoine Pesme, a spokesperson for the Paris public prosecutor’s office.
“He was alone in the cell.
“According to the first findings, it is a suicide by hanging.
“An investigation in search of the causes of death is however opened.”
Prosecutor Remy Heitz said earlier that Brunel “is suspected of having committed acts of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment on various minor or major victims and of having, in particular, organized the transport and accommodation of young girls or young women on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein.”
“It’s really shocking,” Ian Maxwell, one of Ghislaine’s siblings, told The New York Post.
“Another death by hanging in a high-security prison.
“My reaction is one of total shock and bewilderment.”
Maxwell added that the family “fears for her safety” at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn where she is currently detained.
Maxwell said of her treatment there:
“Despite the psychiatrist advising to the contrary, she was deemed a suicide risk and they are continuing to wake her up every 15 minutes in the night.
“It’s a complete violation of prisoner rights and human rights.”
Maxwell told The Post his younger sister is not suicidal but said it was “ironic” that Epstein and Brunel, who both died of apparent suicides, were not on suicide watches when they died in prison.
Brunel’s lawyers said: “Jean-Luc Brunel has never stopped claiming his innocence.
“He has multiplied his efforts to prove it.
“A judge had released him a few months ago, and then he was re-incarcerated in undignified conditions.”
Spencer Kuvin, an attorney who has represented several of Epstein’s victims, said: “It almost seems like the entire ring of people who were doing this that their conscience is getting the better of them now that they are being held accountable for their actions.
“Of course, the alternative conspiracy theory is that it’s like someone is trying to clean up shop.”
“Jeffrey Epstein has told me that he has slept with over 1,000 of Brunel’s girls,’’ an Epstein victim wrote in a court affidavit filed in 2015.
“Epstein, Maxwell, and Brunel loved orgies with kids — that is having sexual interactions with many young teenagers at the same time.
“Sometimes as many as 10 underage girls would participate in a single orgy with them.
“I personally observed dozens of these orgies.”
From CNN:
Brunel was arrested at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport in December 2020 on counts of “rape and sexual assault, rape and sexual assault on a minor under 15, rape and sexual assault on a minor over 15, sexual harassment, criminal associations and human trafficking to the detriment of minor victims for the purposes of sexual exploitation.”
He was released under judicial supervision for a few days in November 2021, before being returned to prison by decision of the Paris Court of Appeals.
He appealed the decision as the prosecution prepared its case.
Brunel’s arrest was part of a probe launched in 2019 by French prosecutors, targeting “acts of sexual nature likely to have been committed by Jeffrey Epstein and possible accomplices,” based on checks and cross-checks carried out on information provided to the Paris public prosecutor’s office and exchanges with US authorities.
