Ghislaine Maxwell’s former friends and lovers to appear on Channel 4 documentary

Disgraced socialite is currently in a US prison awaiting trial on sex abuse charges

Ghislaine Maxwell's former friends and lovers will appear in a new documentary about the disgraced British socialite, Channel 4 has announced.

Maxwell is in a US prison awaiting trial on charges that she recruited three teenage girls for financier Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse in the Nineties.

Channel 4 said that its new documentary, Who is Ghislaine Maxwell?, will feature interviews with former friends, lovers, colleagues, rivals and confidants, “many of whom have never spoken publicly before”.

The film will gain “unique and valuable insights into” Maxwell's “personal life and true nature”, the broadcaster added.

“Rarely does a woman face the heinous charges to which Ghislaine Maxwell must answer in a New York court this summer,” said Dorothy Byrne, producer of the documentary and former head of news and current affairs at Channel 4.

Read more - From Ghislaine Maxwell’s ‘veneer of respectability’ to a ‘creepy’ birthday song: Most startling moments in Lifetime’s Surviving Jeffrey Epstein documentary

“She was the golden child of the notorious fraudster Robert Maxwell, his Lady Ghislaine. An Oxford graduate, a socialite across two continents, who became the associate of the notorious paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and then founded a charity to save the oceans.

"A woman of many faces who has lived several different lives. But who is Ghislaine Maxwell really and what does her story tell us about high society in London and New York?"

Channel 4’s head of factual, Danny Horan, added: “This exploration of Ghislaine's life will include revelatory brand new testimony from those who knew her best.”

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Maxwell, who also has UK citizenship, has been held without bail on the grounds that she remains a threat to flee and has not been fully forthcoming about her finances.

In 2019, Epstein took his own life in jail in New York while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

Maxwell recently claimed that she is facing sex abuse charges because prosecutors wanted a substitute to replace him with, amid the media “frenzy” after he died.

Additional reporting by PA.