Virginia Giuffre’s father rejects idea she committed suicide

The father of Prince Andrew’s accuser, Virginia Giuffre, says he does not believe she took her own life, in the continuing fallout over the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre, with a photo of herself as a teen, when she says she was abused by Jeffrey Epstein, among others. Picture: Emily Michot/Miami Herald/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

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The father of Prince Andrew’s accuser, Virginia Giuffre, says he does not believe she took her own life, contradicting a family statement and fuelling speculation that flourished online in the days after the 41-year-old was declared dead at her farm north of Perth.

Sky Roberts told television host Piers Morgan on Friday he could not believe his daughter’s death, “and for them to say she committed suicide. There is no way that she did. Somebody got to her.”

Mr Roberts acknowledged he had not spoken to his daughter in recent years. Ms Giuffre was declared dead at her farm at Neergabby on the evening of March 25.

The family statement describing the death as suicide was issued just hours after Ms Giuffre’s death, via her spokeswoman Dini Von Muelling, and is thought to have come from relatives including her brother, who is also called Sky.

His wife Amanda Roberts has shared a note for sex abuse ­survivors that Ms Giuffre wrote by hand, presumably soon before she took her own life.

Virginia Giuffre's brother, Sky Roberts, and his wife Amanda. Picture: Facebook

The note, which Ms Giuffre’s sister-in-law posted on social media, says: “We are not going to go away. Mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers need to show the battlelines are drawn and we stand together to fight for the ­future of victims.

“Is protesting the answer? I don’t know, but we’ve got to start somewhere.”

Ms Giuffre was the victim of notorious sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and she successfully sued him for defamation. After evidence from that civil suit was made public, Epstein was found dead in prison in Manhattan. His death was ruled a suicide.

In 2021, Ms Giuffre filed ­another civil suit alleging that Epstein trafficked her to his friend Prince Andrew when she was 17.

She said Andrew had sex with her three times, including at the London home of socialite Ghislane Maxwell. In 2022, Maxwell was found to have been Epstein’s co-conspirator in a decade-long scheme to sexually exploit and abuse minors. She is serving 20 years in a US prison.

Andrew has consistently denied Ms Giuffre’s allegations and said he did not recall ever meeting her. In 2022, he settled with Ms Giuffre without admitting any wrongdoing.

On Friday, broadcaster and former newspaper editor Morgan hosted a discussion about Ms Giuffre’s life in which ­Andrew’s ex-girlfriend and ­defender Lady Victoria Hervey ­alleged the famous photo of Ms Giuffre and Andrew at ­Maxwell’s home in 2001 was “a collage”.

She said she went to the house where the picture was taken with a photographer. Showing her own photographs, Lady Hervey said the landing on which Andrew and Ms Giuffre were pictured standing was not big enough for each of them in real life.

“They would have no legs,” Lady Hervey said.

Biographer Tom Bower, whose 2023 book Revenge revealed the extent of the falling out between the Sussexes and the rest of the royal family, quipped at Lady Hervey: “You can mock up your photographs too.

“She was used and abused and utterly destroyed … by ruthless men and by systems.’’