The brother of Ghislaine Maxwell, the alleged former madam of the late billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, is speaking out this week to claim that his sister is currently “fighting for her life” in prison as she awaits trial. However, he added that she is “eager” to confront her accusers in court.

“I’m not minimizing the seriousness of the allegations, but my sister’s fighting for her life,” Ian Maxwell, 64, told “Good Morning America,” adding that the conditions at the Brooklyn detention center where Ghislaine is being held are “torture.”

Ian claimed that Ghislaine is being used as a “patsy” for Epstein’s suicide while in custody, going on to say that she is eagerly awaiting her day in court to fight the sex-trafficking charges that she has been hit with.

“Ghislaine wants to confront the accusers head-on and deal with this and get on with her life,” he said. “She is not Epstein. Epstein was guilty. He did time. And he was gonna do a hell of a lot more time. But she is not him.”

“She deserves to be treated as Ghislaine, presumed innocent,” Ian added. “She is as convinced as she can be that she will be exonerated. We as a family are behind her, solidly behind her.”

Ian showed off a photo of a Maxwell family reunion from June of 2019, saying that at the time, Ghislain was “getting on with her life” and was married with two stepchildren.

“And then bang!” he said of the “extraordinary development out of left field” moment in which Epstein was arrested soon afterwards.

“Suddenly he dies, and they’ve got this really serious problem,” Ian added of Epstein’s suicide in prison in August of 2019. “And it seems to me inescapable that the authorities decided they had to do something about it.”

Despite the fact that Ghislaine has been accused of abuse as well, Ian believes officials are only targeting her to make up for Epstein killing himself on their watch.

“Why is Ghislaine Maxwell being treated differently? She’s a patsy for Epstein … whom they lost on their watch,” he said. “They are taking it out on my sister. Dammit, that’s wrong.”

A lawyer representing the Maxwell family agreed that Ghislaine was suffering from “the Epstein effect.”

“She’s being held because of her association with Epstein from all those years ago, which is absurd. You can’t hold someone in detention based on guilt by association,” he said. “The government wants to keep her in custody to torture her, to break her down.”

Ian believes Ghislaine’s public image has been tarnished because it has “been whipped up by a lynch mob media performance.”

“The real problem is that the media frenzy about her, which had shifted from Epstein onto her, drove her absolutely mad,” he said.

Maxwell was arrested last summer on charges related to her allegedly grooming young girls for sex with Epstein, and sometimes participating in the abuse herself. She was then remanded to prison after a judge deemed her to pose a significant flight risk given her vast amount of wealth and her International connections. At this time, Maxwell is set to remain behind bars until the start of her trial, which is scheduled for July of 2021.