Ghislaine Maxwell the triple threat: victim, abuser, traitor

ABSTRACT

The conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell on five counts of sex trafficking illuminated a wilful blind spot in sexual abuse discourse—the existence of women who perpetrate sex crimes. This article unpacks why sexually aggressive women make us so uncomfortable, by examining how the law treats women who transgress traditional ideas of femininity. To deny the reality of feminine agency, the law treats violent perpetrators who are women as victims, mad or bad. The publicity of Maxwell’s sentencing hearing, however, meant that the harms of her perpetration could not be swept under the rug of a traumatised victim narrative, forcing us to not only confront our discomfort with women who are perpetrators, but also women who are perpetrators and victims. This article explores ideas about feminine agency, culpability and wickedness through a construction of Maxwell as equal parts victim and perpetrator. Situating Maxwell within Claudia Card’s moral grey zone framework provides opportunity for a nuanced analysis of the intersections of abuse, psychological trauma and wilful infliction of harm. By re-working how we understand sexual abusers who are women, we also re-work our understanding of atrocity as fundamentally human, allowing for a redrafting of the gendered coordinates of sexual violence.

KEYWORDS:

• female perpetrator
• Ghislaine Maxwell
• sexual abuse
• trauma
• victimhood

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).