Jeffrey Epstein’s girlfriend, socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, has been arrested by the FBI and charged with transporting a minor for the purposes of criminal sexual activity and conspiring to entice minors to travel to engage in illegal sex acts.

Acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Audrey Strauss, said in a press briefing, “Maxwell was among Epstein’s closest associates and helped him exploit girls who were as young as 14 years old”.

Ghislaine Maxwell, 58, was arrested in New Hampshire nearly one year after Epstein was arrested for the sex trafficking of minors. Epstein was found dead by apparent suicide in his Manhattan jail cell one month after he was arrested.

Strauss said of Maxwell, “She pretended to be a woman they could trust. All the while, she was setting them up to be sexually abused by Epstein — and in some cases, by Maxwell herself. Today, after many years, Ghislaine Maxwell finally stands charged for her role in these crimes.”

The six count indictment alleges that as early as 1994 Maxwell “enticed and groomed multiple minor girls to engage in sex acts with Jeffrey Epstein,” and alleges a pattern of behavior, explaining how Maxwell took the girls shopping and to the movies, asked them about their families and their lives at school and then attempted “to normalize sexual abuse”, which Maxwell did by taking off her clothes in view of their victims, and even involving them in “sexualized massages”.