A biographer has spoken out this week to say that the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell was able to lure”young girls and minors” to the late billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein because they saw “the woman figure as protector.”

“The most troubling aspect of it is young girls and minors certainly will look at the woman figure as the protector and they felt initially safe because of Maxwell’s presence,” author Barry Levine told Newsweek. “Her and Jeffrey were this couple that would mentor young women, give them scholarships and so forth, help them through their troubles, give them money for their families.”

“Her presence in that relationship certainly helped to recruit and groom a lot of these girls,” he added. “These girls were not prepared that this woman would be as much a predator and a monster as Jeffrey. From depositions and testimonies, it’s clear that Ghislaine was just as much a predator as Jeffrey was.”

Levine’s new book “The Spider” explores how Maxwell fell for Epstein when she moved to New York after her father died mysteriously in 1991. Epstein was mourning his own father’s death at the time as well, as he had just died in December of that year.

“I spent a lot of time in the book trying to explore a little bit of what had been Maxwell’s mindset when she first met Jeffrey Epstein,” Levine said. “This was right after the violent death of her father, who had died going overboard on the yacht and so forth. Ghislaine was completely dysfunctional when she first came to New York. She came under Jeffrey’s wing and Jeffrey took on this role of a father figure, lover, mentor, confidante to her and so forth.”

“For a time I think Ghislaine was really under his spell,” he added. “She was also counting on Jeffrey to finance her and support her and I think she realised very quickly that she was either going to live this life with him or not at all. That’s why she seemingly just went along with this and groomed these women and recruited these young girls and so forth.”

In the end, Levine believes Maxwell played a major role in Epstein’s operation.

“Jeffrey and Ghislaine kind of became a predatory Bonnie and Clyde of sorts,” he said. “The most troubling thing about Ghislaine’s involvement is that she was willing to go through this because she believed that she was in love with him and wanted him to marry her in some weird, warped way. She allowed all this to carry on in a way to please Jeffrey.”

Maxwell is currently in prison awaiting trial on charges related to her allegedly grooming young girls for sex with Epstein, and sometimes participating in the abuse herself. Epstein killed himself in prison last year while awaiting trial for sex crimes of his own.