Ghislaine Maxwell trial must show even royals are not above the law

Her words echoed those of the American lawyer representing the victim Virginia Giuffre in her civil suit against Prince Andrew.

David Boies said Maxwell and her long time partner Jeffrey Epstein acted in concert with others. "The scope and scale and duration of their sex trafficking crimes depended on many wealthy and powerful collaborators and co-conspirators," he said, "They too are not above the law."

Aren't they? Of course, they should not be. But the thread connecting each high profile sex crimes conviction in recent years – R Kelly, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Jimmy Saville – is the way these predators acted with impunity.

Their crimes were committed in plain sight and enabled by infinite blind eyes turned by their celebrity and wealth, and the power created by those two shields.

If the powerful believe they are above the law then no wonder, the evidence suggests they could, until now, indulge their perverse fancies.

Epstein, who died by suicide in prison while awaiting trial in 2019, had previously been arrested on sex abuse charges but was given an astonishingly lenient 18 month sentence that allowed him to go to the office five days a week. Prosecutors determined he had created a "cult-like" network of girls aged 13 to 16, often from disadvantaged backgrounds, who were sexually abused.

After this laughable spell in county jail, he was released five months early in 2009. Compensation has been paid to victims from Epstein's estate, but it is not know how many victims who have come forward were abused post-2009 and who might have been spared the ordeal had he been imprisoned.

In contrast, Maxwell is facing a combined possible sentence of 65 years in prison.

Maxwell hunted vulnerable young girls and women and groomed them into sexual playthings for middle aged men. Her targets were often from disadvantaged backgrounds. Women and girls already suffer from being disbelieved when they try to talk about abuse, but those from troubled or economically difficult backgrounds suffer all the more.

With so many girls involved and so many suspected predators, how many people share, if not a criminal responsibility, a moral culpability for what went on?

There is no doubt people knew this was happening.

At a structural level, the Metropolitan police force has been asked why it chose not to launch a full criminal investigation of alleged trafficking crimes committed by Epstein and Maxwell over a span of a decade that were uncovered in the UK by Channel 4 News.

In America, police and prosecutors dealt lightly with Epstein over several years. R Kelly, the singer convicted of eight counts of sex trafficking and one of racketeering, hid in plain sight for decades. His marriage to a teenager in the 1990s barely caused pause; a video of him having sex with a teenage girl became fodder for stand up comedy routines.

Kelly targeted not just vulnerable women and girls but vulnerable black women and girls, an arguably even more marginalised and group.

Efforts to bring him to justice were a non-starter until finally Kim Foxx, an Illinois state's attorney, called for victims to speak out while state prosecutors in New York made the step of framing his crimes as racketeering.

How many people looked away long enough for Kelly to commit his crimes? Law enforcement, staff members who literally cleaned up after the mess, rich and powerful associates - exactly the same list as with Epstein and Maxwell and on and on.

There is no sympathy here, not one jot, for Maxwell, but it is striking that the only person tried and convicted in connection with what has been presented as a wide-ranging trafficking ring is a woman. Maxwell broke the female code that we look out for one another. She was there to provide a respectable veneer and big sister or aunt-like support for these girls, all the while betraying them. Yet where are the men who were involved, who abused these girls? What of them?

It seems that the surest route to jail for them is for Maxwell to flip, to take a plea deal from the New York authorities and name names.

Whether she will or not seems touch and go. Perhaps she feels a sense of protection towards them, perhaps she's frightened, perhaps the district attorney's office feels she has nothing solid enough to offer. That all remains to be seen.

One name certainly familiar is that of Prince Andrew who, one imagines, is in a dry sweat. Had Maxwell, the Duke's long standing friend, been cleared of all charges, he might have felt the winds of scandal blowing over but five guilty verdicts must instead feel like impending disaster.

The Duke of York strenuously denies any charges against him but, with the civil case pending, Maxwell's established guilt is a blow to his chances.

In Britain, there is little greater symbol of power than the monarchy. Maxwell's conviction should mark a seminal moment in the ongoing campaign for change of the #MeToo movement; that enablers of the abuse of women are guilty and should face a reckoning.

This is vital, the idea of collective responsibility for protection and detection of abuse. Power must also be challenged; the idea of anyone, from any social status, being above the law, using their money or influence to evade the law, cannot continue to stand.

What more bold a symbol of positive progression for women and girls would there be than to see a member of the royal family face questioning on an equal footing to any other person?

With absolutely no suggestion of guilt or innocent, those from the very upper echelons of society must no longer be afforded immunity from facing justice.

There is untold bravery in the women who speak out to hold abusers to account, powerful or otherwise, and not least in the face of collective complicity. One way to take a hammer to complicity is by ensuring, truly, that no one indeed is above the law.