Virginia Giuffre, a former sufferer of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring who mentioned she was once “handed round like a platter of fruit” as a youngster to wealthy and strong predators, together with Prince Andrew of Britain, died on Friday at her farm in Western Australia. She was once 41.
Ms. Giuffre died by means of suicide, in keeping with a commentary from the circle of relatives. Ms. Giuffre (pronounced JIFF-ree) wrote in an Instagram publish in March that she was once days clear of loss of life of renal failure after being injured in a crash with a college bus that she mentioned was once touring at just about 70 m.p.h.
In 2019, Mr. Epstein was once arrested and charged by means of federal prosecutors within the Southern District of New York with intercourse trafficking and conspiracy, and was once accused of soliciting teenage women to accomplish massages that turned into increasingly more sexual in nature.
Slightly a month after he was once apprehended, and an afternoon after paperwork had been launched from Ms. Giuffre’s a hit defamation swimsuit in opposition to him, Mr. Epstein was once found hanged in his cell within the Metropolitan Correctional Middle in Decrease New york. His dying, at 66, was once dominated a suicide.
In 2009 Ms. Giuffre, recognized then handiest as Jane Doe 102, had sued Mr. Epstein, accusing him and Ghislaine Maxwell, his co-conspirator and the daughter of the disgraced British media multi-millionaire Robert Maxwell, of recruiting her to enroll in his sex-trafficking ring when she was once a minor beneath the guise of changing into a certified masseuse.
In 2015, she was once the primary of Mr. Epstein’s sufferers to surrender her anonymity and move public, promoting her tale to The Mail on Sunday, a British tabloid.
“Mainly, I used to be coaching to be a prostitute for him and his pals who shared his hobby in younger women,” Ms. Giuffre was once quoted as announcing in Nigel Cawthorne’s ebook, “Virginia Giuffre: The Peculiar Lifestyles Tale of the Masseuse Who Pursued and Ended the Intercourse Crimes of Millionaires Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein” (2022).
“Ghislaine informed me that I’ve to do for Andrew what I do for Jeffrey,” she mentioned.
Ms. Giuffre accused Mr. Epstein, a millionaire financier, and Ms. Maxwell, a British socialite, of forcing her to have intercourse with Prince Andrew, often referred to as the Duke of York. He flatly denied the accusations, however relinquished his royal tasks in 2019.
In 2021 she sued the prince, who’s the more youthful brother of King Charles II, for sexually assaulting her at Ms. Maxwell’s house in London and at Mr. Epstein’s houses in New york and Little St. James within the Virgin Islands.
A broadly printed {photograph} confirmed Prince Andrew together with his hand round her waist; he mentioned he had no reminiscence of the instance.
After Prince Andrew agreed to settle the swimsuit by means of Ms. Giuffre in 2022, he praised her in a commentary for talking out and pledged to “show his feel sorry about” for his affiliation with Mr. Epstein “by means of supporting the battle in opposition to the evils of intercourse trafficking, and by means of supporting its sufferers.”
The agreement incorporated an undisclosed sum to be paid to her and to her charity, now known as Talk Out, Act, Reclaim.
In interviews and depositions, Ms. Giuffre mentioned she was once recruited to the intercourse ring in 2000 whilst operating as a locker room attendant in President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago hotel in Palm Seashore, Fla. Via her account she was once studying a therapeutic massage remedy guide when she was once approached by means of Ms. Maxwell and was once invited to change into Mr. Epstein’s touring masseuse. She mentioned that the pair then groomed her to accomplish sexual products and services for rich males.
She sued Ms. Maxwell for defamation in 2015; they settled on an undisclosed sum in 2017. Ms. Maxwell’s trial and conviction in 2022 had been considered as a prison reckoning that Mr. Epstein had denied the judicial gadget — and his sufferers — by means of striking himself. Ms. Maxwell was once sentenced to two decades in jail.
Virginia Louise Roberts was once born on Aug. 9, 1983, in Sacramento to Sky and Lynn Roberts. When she was once 4, the circle of relatives moved to Palm Seashore County, the place her father was once a upkeep supervisor at Mar-a-Lago.
She mentioned she ran clear of house after having been molested by means of an in depth circle of relatives buddy since she was once 7. She was once positioned in foster houses, boarded with an aunt in California, fled to the previous hippie haven of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, lived at the streets when she was once 14 and spent six months with a 65-year-old intercourse trafficker who abused her.
In comparison to dwelling at the streets and incomes $9 an hour for her summer season process at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Epstein’s be offering to make $200 a therapeutic massage — a number of instances an afternoon — was once, Mr. Cawthorne wrote, one who “Virginia had made up our minds for herself she may no longer refuse.”
However her mandate went way past. She informed the BBC in 2019 that she was once “handed round like a platter of fruit” to Mr. Epstein’s pals and ferried all over the world on non-public jets.
In 2002, when she was once 19, she enrolled within the Global Coaching Therapeutic massage Faculty in Thailand to change into a certified masseuse and was once assigned to recruit a tender woman for the hoop. There, she met Robert Giuffre, an Australian martial arts trainer, they usually married.
The couple had 3 youngsters and lived in Australia, Florida and Colorado prior to settling in Perth in 2020. They’ve since separated. An entire listing of survivors was once no longer right away to be had.
Ms. Giuffre informed The Miami Bring in in 2019 that the beginning of her daughter in 2010 triggered her to talk publicly about her victimization. She additionally defined why she had at the start agreed to let Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell groom her as a masseuse and to offer sexual products and services.
“They looked like great other folks so I relied on them, and I informed them I’d had a truly exhausting time in my existence up till then — I’d been a runaway, I’d been sexually abused, bodily abused,” Ms. Giuffre mentioned. “That was once the worst factor I may have informed them as a result of now they knew how susceptible I used to be.”
Hank Sanders contributed reporting.
