Virginia Giuffre: Inside story of Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew abuse accuser

Prince Andrew and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual assault accuser Virginia Giuffre described her early years as nothing but “pain and abuse”. Here’s a look at her life.

Virginia Giuffre was 16 and trying to get her life back on track when she fell into the clutches of billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell in 2000.

In many ways, she was the perfect target.

She was reportedly sexually abused by a family friend at seven, ran away from home, and was in and out of foster care during her teens. By the time she was 14, she was sleeping on the streets of Florida where she found nothing “except for hunger and pain and abuse”, she previously told media.

By the time Maxwell found her working as a spa locker room attendant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, Giuffre was ready to change her fortunes and take opportunities that came her way.

Virginia Giuffre, with a photo of herself as a teen, when she says she was abused by Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Prince Andrew, among others. Picture: Getty Images

A younger Virginia Giuffre. Picture: AFP/US District Court for the Southern District of NY

The teenager was sitting outside the club reading a book about massage therapy when Maxwell, who she thought was a “nice older lady”, approached her.

“[Maxwell] had an awesome English accent, and she started conversing with me about what I was reading. She said, ‘Wow, you’re really interested in massage. That’s so interesting! Because I actually know somebody who’s looking for a travelling masseuse’,” Giuffre recalled.

Maxwell offered her an interview for the chance to train as a massage therapist. She was so excited that she ran up to her father, Sky Roberts, who was working at the resort’s tennis courts, and said “you’re not going to believe it”.

A young Virginia Giuffre.

The job was a dream come true and would give her the opportunity to escape her abusers and travel the world as a professional massage therapist, or so she thought.

Giuffre arrived at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion for what she thought was a job interview. He was lying down, naked, and Maxwell told her how to massage him.

They asked questions about who she was and what she was doing. “They seemed like nice people so I trusted them, and I told them I’d had a really hard time in my life up until then – I’d been a runaway, I’d been sexually abused, physically abused,” she said.

“That was the worst thing I could have told them because now they knew how vulnerable I was.”

Virginia Giuffre, an alleged victim of Jeffrey Epstein, centre, exits from federal court in New York, U.S. in mid 2019. Picture: Jeenah Moon/Bloomberg

It marked the beginning of years as a sex slave. Giuffre said she went from being abused by Epstein to “being passed around like a platter of fruit” to his adult male associates, and flown around the world on private jets for that purpose.

Led by Epstein and Maxwell, she said her abusers included businessmen, politicians, academics, and royalty – specifically, Prince Andrew. The prince later said he had no memory of meeting Giuffre.

Giuffre said Epstein brought her to Maxwell’s London residence in 2001, when she was 17, where she was introduced to Prince Andrew. She said she was taken to a club, served Vodka and danced with the prince.

She said Maxwell then told her the prince was going back to the house and she was expected to “do for him what you do for Epstein”. A now famous photograph was taken at the house that night, showing Prince Andrew with his arm around Giuffre, while Maxwell smiled in the background.

Giuffre said they had sex in the bathroom and a bedroom. “He wasn’t rude or anything about it. He said, ‘Thank you,’ and some kind of soft sentiments like that and left,” Giuffre previously said.

Civil court documents outlined further claims that Prince Andrew sexually assaulted her three times – at the London residence that night, and later at Epstein’s homes in Manhattan and the Virgin Islands.

Prince Andrew strongly denies having sex with Giuffre. He later settled a civil case with her for an undisclosed amount.

Epstein lost interest in Giuffre in about 2003 because, at 18, she was too old for him. She convinced him to pay for her massage therapy training, so he sent her to classes in Thailand and to pick up a local girl and bring her to the US.

Giuffre met her future husband, Robert Giuffre, and they escaped to Queensland, and eventually Western Australia.

In the years that followed, the couple got married and had three children – Christian, Emily and Noah. It wasn’t until she was holding her newborn daughter that she realised she had to speak up about the years of abuse she and many others had suffered.

She filed a civil lawsuit against Epstein in 2009 under the pseudonym Jane Doe 102. They reached a settlement outside court.

Epstein took his own life in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. Maxwell was found guilty in 2021 on five counts of sex trafficking for her role recruiting young girls to be abused.

In 2021, Giuffre filed a suit against Prince Andrew over the alleged abuse when she was 17. The matter was settled in 2022.

Giuffre kept a low profile in the following years, but it now appears she was fighting a private battle.

By the time she took her own life on Friday, she was estranged from her husband and children, living away from them on a rural farm, and embroiled in a family domestic violence order where she was the alleged culprit.

Her worrying post on Instagram earlier in April sparked alarm for her health – Giuffre said she was involved in a serious collision with a school bus going at 110km/h. She posted a selfie of her battered and bruised body in hospital.

Police only had a record of a minor prang that resulted in $2000 worth of damages, but her brother later told media that the photo may have been from a serious incident in January.

She was a fierce campaigner for survivors of sexual assault until she died.

Her lawyer Sigrid McCawley and her agent Dini von Mueffling described her as one of the strongest people they had ever known.

Originally published as Virginia Giuffre: Inside story of Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew abuse accuser