In a packed lower Manhattan courthouse on June 28, Ghislaine Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison for conspiring with Jeffrey Epstein to recruit, groom and abuse underage girls. Federal Circuit Judge Alison J. Nathan said before rendering sentence that “the damage done to these young girls was incalculable.”

In Maxwell’s defense, lawyer Bobbi C. Sternheim said that Ms. Maxwell’s life had been clouded by two men: “her narcissistic, brutish father” Robert Maxwell, wealthy British media tycoon and former member of parliament, and “the controlling, demanding, manipulative” Jeffrey Epstein.

Maxwell herself spoke in court on Tuesday—her first public remarks since her July 2020 arrest—dressed in prison scrubs and with her ankles shackled. She acknowledged “the pain and anguish” of the victimized women who had addressed the court before her, but stopped short of apologizing or accepting responsibility for her crimes, claiming that “it is the greatest regret of my life that I ever met Jeffrey Epstein.”