Ghislaine Maxwell's brother says she has legions of supporters who are afraid to speak out and get 'canceled'

• Ghislaine Maxwell supporters don't speak up since they're afraid of getting canceled, her brother says.
• Ian Maxwell told Insider his sister gets supportive mail in jail.

Ghislaine Maxwell's brother says his sister has received supportive mail in jail, but people are afraid to defend her in public because they're afraid of being "canceled."

"She deserves support and love and affection. And one of the reasons that this has not happened from third parties - or is so rare that it doesn't really matter - is because of their fear of being canceled," Ian Maxwell told Insider in an interview. "And opprobrium, and losing their jobs, and having their kids teased at school, and much, much worse."

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have accused Maxwell of sexually abusing teenage girls and grooming them for sex with Jeffrey Epstein, the well-connected financier who was arrested on similar charges in 2019 but killed himself in jail before his case went to trial. Her trial is scheduled to begin in November.

Ghislaine Maxwell has pleaded not guilty to the charges against her. Ian Maxwell told Insider that reports of her relationship with Epstein have been overblown and that the Justice Department is prosecuting Maxwell only because of officials' embarrassment over Epstein's suicide.

Ian Maxwell said he isn't the only person supporting his sister. Their other five surviving siblings also believe in Ghislaine's innocence, he said, but he's designated himself as their public face. Friends of hers, he noted, have also filed letters of support in her failed bail applications. And she gets a lot of mail while incarcerated in Brooklyn's federal jail.

"Obviously there's a lot of cuckoo mail, and mail you don't want to be sharing with your nearest and dearest," he said. "But there is also a huge postbag of supportive mail, from Americans who recognize that what's happening to her is unjust."

According to Ian Maxwell, one reason people don't think they can defend his sister - or at least protest her onerous jail conditions that he said have made it impossible for her to prepare for her case - is because of Virginia Giuffre.

Giuffre has accused Maxwell, Epstein, and other powerful figures, including Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz, of sexual misconduct. She's brought civil litigation against Maxwell that has produced volumes of evidence regarding Maxwell's relationship with Epstein. (The Duke of York and Dershowitz have denied the allegations against them.)

Prosecutors haven't included Giuffre as a victim in their case against Maxwell, but they have accused Maxwell of lying in a deposition taken for one of Giuffre's lawsuits. Ian Maxwell believes the depositions and files give an overstated impression of Ghislaine Maxwell's role in Epstein's life.

"There is an image out there with her being next to Prince Andrew with his arm around her and Ghislaine in the back," Maxwell told Insider. "And that image is a very, very powerful image that has been gone around the world and has set the tone. Certainly, it is the image in people's minds of this whole horrible business."

Ian Maxwell said he believes his sister will ultimately be exonerated and that the claims against her are "a complete fantasy," comparing her situation to the Duke lacrosse team scandal. What Ghislaine Maxwell wants to do, he said, is to demonstrate through her experience the American judicial system is unfair to people who have been accused of crimes.

"One of the things that she wants to do is to shine a light through her experience on the fate of the half-a-million pretrial detainees in America this morning," Ian Maxwell said. "Many of them who don't have representation, many of whom have been there months and years, and many of whom don't have access to the computers and all the rest of it. It's just wrong."