Virginia Giuffre, who was a victim of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation and described herself as being “passed around like a platter of fruit” to wealthy and influential men, including Britain’s Prince Andrew, passed away on Friday at her farm in Western Australia. She was 41 years old.
According to her family, Ms. Giuffre (pronounced JIFF-ree) died by suicide. In March, she mentioned on Instagram that she was close to death due to renal failure after sustaining injuries from a car accident involving a school bus she claimed was moving at nearly 70 miles per hour.
Her family released a statement labeling her “a strong fighter against sexual abuse and trafficking” and “a beacon of hope for many survivors.”
In 2019, Mr. Epstein was arrested by federal prosecutors in New York and charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy, accused of soliciting teenage girls for increasingly sexual massages.
Just a month after his arrest and a day following the release of documents related to Ms. Giuffre’s successful defamation case against him, Mr. Epstein was discovered dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. His death, ruled a suicide, occurred when he was 66.
In 2009, Ms. Giuffre, then only identified as Jane Doe 102, initiated a lawsuit against Mr. Epstein, alleging that he and Ghislaine Maxwell, his associate and daughter of former British media mogul Robert Maxwell, lured her into his sex-trafficking ring when she was a minor, pretending to offer her a position as a professional masseuse.
By 2015, she became the first of Mr. Epstein’s victims to break her silence, going public with her story in the British tabloid The Mail on Sunday.
“In essence, I was being groomed to act as a prostitute for him and his associates who were interested in young girls,” Ms. Giuffre was quoted as saying in Nigel Cawthorne’s 2022 book, “Virginia Giuffre: The Extraordinary Life Story of the Masseuse Who Pursued and Ended the Sex Crimes of Millionaires Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.”
“Ghislaine instructed me to do for Andrew what I did for Jeffrey,” she recounted.
Ms. Giuffre accused Mr. Epstein, a wealthy financier, and Ms. Maxwell, a British socialite, of compelling her to have sexual encounters with Prince Andrew, also known as the Duke of York. He categorically denied the allegations but stepped back from his royal duties in 2019.
In 2021, she filed a lawsuit against the prince, claiming he had sexually assaulted her at Ms. Maxwell’s London residence and at Mr. Epstein’s properties in Manhattan and Little St. James in the Virgin Islands.
A widely circulated photograph depicted Prince Andrew with his hand around her waist. He stated that he had no recollection of the event.
After agreeing to settle Ms. Giuffre’s lawsuit in 2022, Prince Andrew acknowledged her bravery for speaking out and vowed to “show his remorse” for his connection to Mr. Epstein “by supporting the fight against the horrors of sex trafficking and helping its victims.”
The settlement included a sum that was not disclosed, to be given to her and her charity, now named Speak Out, Act, Reclaim.
In her interviews and depositions, Ms. Giuffre revealed that she was recruited into the sex ring in 2000 while she worked as a locker room attendant at Mar-a-Lago, the resort owned by then-President Trump in Palm Beach, Florida. She stated that while studying a massage therapy manual, she was approached by Ms. Maxwell, who invited her to become Mr. Epstein’s traveling masseuse. Both women then groomed her to provide sexual services to affluent men.
Ms. Giuffre sued Ms. Maxwell for defamation in 2015 after she called her a liar; they reached a confidential settlement in 2017. Ms. Maxwell was later convicted in 2021 on charges of sex trafficking and additional offenses. This verdict was seen as the legal accountability that Mr. Epstein had thwarted by taking his own life. Ms. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years behind bars.
Virginia Louise Roberts was born on August 9, 1983, in Sacramento to Sky and Lynn Roberts. When she was 4, the family relocated to Palm Beach County, where her father was a maintenance manager at Mar-a-Lago.
She shared that she left home after being abused by a family friend starting at age 7. She moved between foster homes, stayed with an aunt in California, ran away to the Haight-Ashbury area of San Francisco, lived on the streets at 14, and spent six months with a 65-year-old sex trafficker who mistreated her.
Compared to the hardships of street life and making $9 an hour at her summer job at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Epstein’s proposal of $200 per massage multiple times daily was one Ms. Giuffre felt she couldn’t refuse, as noted by Mr. Cawthorne.
However, her responsibilities extended far beyond that, she told the BBC in 2019: She explained that she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” to Mr. Epstein’s associates and traveled worldwide on private jets.
At 19, in 2002, Ms. Giuffre enrolled at the International Training Massage School in Thailand to pursue a career as a professional masseuse, where she met Robert Giuffre, an Australian martial arts instructor. The two married and had three children: Christian, Noah, and Emily. They lived in Australia, Florida, and Colorado before settling in Perth in 2020, although they have since separated. Details regarding survivors have not been fully disclosed.
Ms. Giuffre mentioned in a 2019 interview with The Miami Herald that the birth of her daughter in 2010 motivated her to publicly discuss her experiences as a victim. She elaborated on her initial decision to work as a masseuse for Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, providing sexual services.
“They appeared to be kind people,” she said. “I confided in them about my difficult past — having been a runaway and having suffered sexual and physical abuse. That was the worst possible thing I could have shared, as it made me vulnerable to them.”
If you’re experiencing thoughts of suicide, please call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Alternatively, visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.
Hank Sanders contributed reporting.
