Ghislaine Maxwell Says Father Hit Her With Hammer in 'Traumatic Childhood'

Ghislaine Maxwell's father once beat her with a hammer during a "traumatic childhood" characterized by "corporal punishment," her lawyers said.

Media tycoon Robert Maxwell would "rant at the children until they were reduced to pulp" and hit his daughter over the hand with a hammer as a punishment when she was 13, according to a court filing seen by Newsweek.

The story of what her lawyers described as Ghislaine Maxwell's difficult childhood came out after a judge was advised by probation officials to give her 20 years in prison for sex trafficking young girls for the late financier Jeffrey Epstein to abuse. She was found guilty following a high-profile trial in December 2021.

Robert Maxwell was a former member of Parliament and owner of newspapers including tabloid the Daily Mirror, and U.K. sister titles, as well as the New York Daily News in America.

He died after falling off his yacht in 1991, sparking conspiracy theories alleging foul play. Ghislaine Maxwell's lawyers told the court in New York he "died under suspicious and unresolved circumstances and under a cloud of business impropriety" in their court filing.

There were accusations that he was an Israeli spy, which he responded to with denials and threats of legal action, The Guardian reported in 2019.

Following the probation officials' recommendation, her lawyers submitted a lengthy court filing requesting a more lenient sentence.

It read: "Mr. Maxwell employed corporal punishment on his children. Ghislaine vividly recalls a time when, at age 13, she tacked a poster of a pony on the newly painted wall of her bedroom.

"Rather than mar the paint with tape, she carefully hammered a thin tack to mount the poster. This outraged her father, who took the hammer and banged on Ghislaine's dominant hand, leaving it severely bruised and painful for weeks to come."

The court filing described how the newspaper magnate's children would "be put on trial" during Sunday lunch with authors or businessmen in a "Maxwellian Drama."

Robert Maxwell would pick a child and question them "on a particular topic" and expect them to respond with reference to his "rules of life" including the three C's, concentration, consideration and conciseness.

The court filing read: "If the child stumbled, didn't speak on point, or gave a wrong answer, Mr. Maxwell would demand them to answer which of the principles they had forgotten to apply and the reason for that failure.

"The dressing down was always painful in the extreme with everyone around the table feeling uncomfortable.

"Mr. Maxwell, a man of large physical stature with a booming voice, would explode, threaten, and rant at the children until they were reduced to pulp.

"Mr. Maxwell was relentless, with children ending up in tears, punishments being doled out, and the whole family in utter distress."

The document suggests she fell for Jeffrey Epstein after her father's death and was more vulnerable to him because of her trauma.

It reads: "By 1991, Ghislaine had relocated to New York to launch The European, an international magazine, as part of the Maxwell publishing conglomerate. Within that year, Ghislaine's father died under suspicious and unresolved circumstances and under a cloud of business impropriety."

It adds: "She had a difficult, traumatic childhood with an overbearing, narcissistic, and demanding father. It made her vulnerable to Epstein, whom she met right after her father's death. It is the biggest mistake she made in her life and one that she has not and never will repeat."

Some of the way Ghislaine Maxwell's lawyers described her childhood appears to have echoes of her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

Her team has said she was required to entertain the rich and famous by her father as important people would be ever present in the family home.

The filing read: "As the children grew, they took part in the hosting of guests, having been instructed by their parents to be attentive to the needs of the guests."