Legal team allege she is being held in worse conditions to other inmates due to the “Epstein Effect”

Lawyers for Ghislaine Maxwell have released a photograph of the British socialite, who is in a US prison facing sex trafficking charges, showing her with a bruised face.

Maxwell, 59, who is accused of procuring underage girls for the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein to abuse, has been in jail since last year while awaiting trial. She denies the allegations. Since her arrest last summer, she has only been seen in court sketches during hearings.

New indictment also adds sex trafficking conspiracy charge as US prosecutors expand criminal case

Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite accused of aiding in her former partner Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of minor girls, faces two more charges, a new Manhattan federal court indictment filed on Monday reveals.

This indictment also identified a new accuser in the case, referred to as “minor victim-4” in court papers, and expanded the timeframe of Maxwell’s alleged participation in Epstein’s abuse by seven years – from 1994 to 2004, rather than from 1994 to 1997. Maxwell now faces a total of eight counts.

Maxwell’s lawyers have asked for her release on a $28.5m bail package, and pointed to her marriage as a reason she wouldn’t flee

The British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell’s latest argument for bail in her sex trafficking case claimed that she and her husband had discussed a divorce of convenience “to protect him … from the terrible consequences of being associated with her”, according to Manhattan federal court papers filed Wednesday.

Maxwell has been jailed since her 2 July arrest for alleged involvement in the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking of minor girls. Maxwell had been a close confidante of Epstein as he cultivated a circle of powerful friends and associates across the world.