A Brooklyn prison that is currently home to British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell and disgraced American singer R. Kelly is being bashed for its unsanitary conditions, sewer system, and other issues - and not only by the socialite's lawyers this time.
Maxwell's legal team has filed numerous complaints about their client's prison conditions as they've made five attempts to get her out of jail on bail but to no avail. According to the woman's lawyers, Maxwell has been lacking sleep and proper nutrition at the Metropolitan Detention Centre (MDC), where the water was "undrinkable" and food contained melted plastic covering.
"The MDC — especially the East Building where Ms Maxwell is held — is permeated with mold and vermin", Maxwell's attorney Bobbi C. Sternheim wrote in one letter to the judge in April. "Cockroaches and rodents are plentiful and glue tracks have been placed in Ms Maxwell's day area to help remediate the problem".
The MDC has now also accepted some 100 people from the nearby Manhattan Metropolitan Correctional Centre – where Maxwell's pal Jeffrey Epstein died in August 2019 – after the Department of Justice announced in August that it was shutting the facility down.
Ghislaine Maxwell, center, appears in Manhattan Federal court flanked by her attorneys, Bobbi C. Sternheim, left, and Jeff Paugliuca, right, and a US Marshal, rear, during her arraignment on a superceding indictment, Friday, April 23, 2021, in New York
© AP Photo / Elizabeth Williams
But according to civil rights attorney Andrew Laufer, the MDC is really "not any better" than the facility where Epstein was held before committing suicide.
"They both have very similar habitability problems. Heating and cooling are very poor, sanitary conditions, infestation of insects, sewage — you name it. It's just a mess", Laufer told the Insider.
According to attorney Jenna Dabbs, the transfer of detainees, most of whom are awaiting their trials and thus are considered innocent under the law, is unlikely to make things better for the MDC.
"Without thoughtful advance planning, this transition will unquestionably jeopardise the constitutional rights, including access to legal counsel, of those whose lives have been entrusted to these facilities", she told the Insider.
4 September 2021, 10:53 GMT
Dabbs works as an attorney at Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP, which is representing the Federal Defenders of New York. In May 2019, the group sued the Bureau of Prisons over alleged violations of "civil liberties" at the Brooklyn prison.
Ghislaine Maxwell is fighting eight counts of sex trafficking and perjury charges, while R. Kelly is accused of molesting, abusing, and trafficking minors and his ex-girlfriends, as well as knowingly infecting them with herpes and engaging in racketeering. His trial is ongoing.