In late 2021, Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of crimes, including sex trafficking of a minor, after being arrested by the FBI in July of 2020, due to her association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In the months following the trial, one of the jurors, Scotty David, referred to as juror number 50 in court, revealed in media interviews that he had been a victim of child sexual abuse.
After assurances that the juror wouldn't be prosecuted, he answered questions from federal Judge Alison Nathan of the Southern District of New York about why he didn’t reveal his experience with abuse on the questionnaire during the jury selection process. Question 48 on the form asked potential panelists if they or a friend or family member had ever been sexually harassed or abused.
In the Manhattan courtroom, he admitted that he should have revealed the abuse in the questionnaire. He said that he was abused as a child by his stepbrother between the ages of nine and ten and didn't disclose this to anyone until he told his mother when he was high school. His mother contacted the police, but no charges were filed.
Maxwell’s lawyers have asked for the verdict to be set aside, saying that if this information had been disclosed on the questionnaire, they would have objected to his service during the jury selection process. This is part of a long standing policy in the US that allows survivors of abuse to be excluded from juries based on their histories of abuse.
📸: Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash
See the entire article here: Ghislaine Maxwell juror grilled in court for not disclosing he was abused as a child
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