Virginia Giuffre, who roiled the British monarchy with detailed allegations of being coerced as a teenager into sex with Prince Andrew as part of a suspected sex-trafficking network led by financier Jeffrey Epstein, died April 25 at her home in Western Australia. She was 41.
A statement by her publicist, Dini von Mueffling, said Ms. Giuffre died by suicide.
A message posted on Ms. Giuffre’s social media account on April 1 said she was being treated for renal failure after a car accident near Perth in Western Australia. Police described the apparent incident as a “minor” crash between a bus and a car and had no reports of serious injuries.
After spending much of her life in South Florida — where she met Epstein — Ms. Giuffre had lived on and off in Australia since her marriage to an Australian martial arts instructor in 2002.
Amid the public unraveling of Epstein’s matrix of sex, money and power — allegedly involving scores of young women who claimed they were lured into its orbit — Ms. Giuffre (pronounced JOO-fray) emerged as one of the most prominent accusers in a saga capped by Epstein’s death in 2019 in his Manhattan jail cell. The 66-year-old Epstein, investigators said, hanged himself with a bedsheet.
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In court papers, lawsuits and interviews spanning nearly a decade, Ms. Giuffre recounted how she — then named Virginia Roberts —first came under Epstein’s grip as a 16-year-old and described her travel on private jets to hideaways and parties to be “passed around like a platter of fruit” to his influential friends.
Among them, she said, was Andrew, the younger brother of then-Prince Charles (now King Charles III) and once second in line to the throne. Ms. Giuffre’s allegations of being forced repeatedly into sex with Andrew touched off a media firestorm and legal battles for Andrew, who did not face criminal proceedings but was eventually stripped by the monarchy of his formal duties and titles including “his royal highness.”
A civil lawsuit filed by Ms. Giuffre against Andrew ended in 2022 with a reported $16 million settlement by the prince, who borrowed some of the payout money from his mother, Queen Elizabeth II. (Andrew denied that he engaged in sex with Ms. Giuffre but acknowledged that she suffered as “an established victim of abuse.”)
Ms. Giuffre also helped shed light on the predatory role of Epstein’s girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was later described by prosecutors as always on the lookout for girls she could cajole into meeting privately with Epstein.
The girls were then often ensnared into his web of sex-for-favors at locales such as his Manhattan townhouse and his private islet, Little St. James, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Maxwell, the daughter of media tycoon Robert Maxwell, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2022 for sex trafficking.
A photo taken in 2001 in Maxwell’s London homeappears to show Andrew with his arm around the bare midriff of 17-year-old Ms. Giuffre. Maxwell is in the background, smiling.
“My whole life revolved around just pleasing these men and keeping Ghislaine and Jeffrey happy,” Ms. Giuffre said in a deposition as part of a 2016 defamation suit against Maxwell. “Their whole entire lives revolved around sex.” (The defamation case was settled out of court by Maxwell in 2017 for an undisclosed sum; the deposition records were made public in 2019 just days before Epstein’s death, which was later ruled a suicide.)
Epstein’s death closed the prosecution into his alleged crimes but did not cool speculation about his wider associations. In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi released what she called the “first phase” of Justice Department files on the case. Some information was omitted to protect the more than 250 women and girls allegedly victimized by Epstein and Maxwell.
The newly released documents did not bring any significant new revelations into Epstein’s contacts. Many of the names were previously noted in court documents, police reports or other disclosures. (In court records, Ms. Giuffre alleged links by some politicians and other well-known figures to Epstein’s sex trafficking, but no charges have been filed.)
Former president Bill Clinton acknowledged taking trips on Epstein’s private jet in connection with work for the Clinton Foundation but insisted that he knew nothing about the financier’s “terrible crimes.” President Donald Trump also had known Epstein for decades.
“Terrific guy,” Trump said of Epstein in 2002. “… He’s a lot of fun to be with.” After Epstein’s 2019 arrest, a lawyer for the Trump Organization said in a statement that the two men had “no relationship.”
Ms. Giuffre said her first contact with Maxwell came in 2000 at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, where Ms. Giuffre’s father worked on the maintenance crew. She had landed a summer job as a 16-year-old spa attendant when Ms. Giuffre, by her account, was offered a job working for Epstein as a traveling masseuse.
“I ran over to my dad who works on the tennis courts at Mar-a-Lago, and he knows I’m trying to fix my life up at that point, which is why he got me the job there. I said: ‘You’re not going to believe it dad,’” Ms. Giuffre told the BBC public affairs program “Panorama” in 2019.
She said the grooming as a “teen sex slave” began almost immediately. Maxwell, she said, took her to Epstein’s Palm Beach home to massage him while he was naked and “instructed” her to perform oral sex on him.
Ms. Giuffre shared details with them about her turbulent childhood: sexually molested by a family friend at age 11 and then living in foster homes and finally on the streets of South Florida as a 14-year-old runaway, she told the Miami Herald.
At one point, she ended up under the hold of a Miami pimp, Ron Eppinger, who kept her confined to an apartment that was part of an underground brothel network. After Eppinger was arrested in 2000, Ms. Giuffre reunited with her father in West Palm Beach, she said. Eppinger pleaded guilty in 2001 in U.S. District Court in Miami to charges including involvement in trafficking for prostitution.
Ms. Giuffre later realized that it was a mistake to reveal her past to Epstein and Maxwell. “They knew how vulnerable I was,” Ms. Giuffre told the BBC. She claimed that Maxwell then used her to help find other girls for Epstein.
“His appetite was insatiable,” Ms. Giuffre said. “He wanted new girls, fresh, young faces every single day — that was just the sickness that he had.”
Andrew’s gambit
In the 2021 civil suit in federal court in Manhattan,Ms. Giuffre alleged that Maxwell and Epstein introduced her to Andrew when she was 17. She claimed that she was forced into sex with the prince on three occasions — the first time in March 2001 after she was taken by Maxwell to a London nightclub, Tramp, where she danced with Andrew and then went to Maxwell’s apartment.
Three months after Epstein’s death, Andrew arranged a one-on-one interview with the BBC’s Emily Maitlis at Buckingham Palace. He hoped the openness would help him salvage his reputation, but Andrew was widely seen as arrogant and tone deaf to the severity of his association with Epstein. “Nuclear explosion level bad,” wrote Charlie Proctor, editor of the Royal Central website.
“Do I regret the fact that he [Epstein] has quite obviously conducted himself in a manner unbecoming? Yes,” Andrew said.
“Unbecoming?” Maitlis responded. “He was a sex offender.”
Andrew: “Yeah, I’m sorry. I’m being polite.”
Andrew told Maitlis that he went to New York in December 2010 to end his friendship with Epstein, who had just finished a 13-month jail sentence in Florida for soliciting prostitution. (Under a plea deal, Epstein was allowed to leave custody for up to 12 hours a day to continue working as a money manager and adviser.) Andrew, who spent four days as Epstein’s houseguest, said he felt breaking off ties by phone was the “chicken’s way of doing it.”
To the BBC, Andrew added that he had “no recollection” of meeting Ms. Giuffre and “categorically” denied engaging in sex with her. When asked about the photo of them together, he questioned its authenticity by saying “public displays of affection are not something that I do.”
In one of the interview’s many unexpected twists, he took issue with Ms. Giuffre’s claims that he sweated profusely during one of their encounters. He claimed to have a “peculiar medical condition” related to adrenaline overload during the 1982 Falklands War that left him unable to perspire.
Ms. Giuffre’s lawyers responded by demanding medical proof and seeking witnesses from the London club about Andrew’s state of sweat. The out-of-court settlement was later hammered out.
Thailand escape
Virginia Louise Roberts was born in Sacramento on Aug. 9, 1983, and grew up in Loxahatchee, Florida. She was taken into foster care after child welfare authorities suspected she was abused by a person she described as a family friend.
Her break from Maxwell and Epstein came in September 2002, when she was 19, during a trip to Thailand to attend massage training. The real purpose of the journey, she claimed, was to return to the United States with a Thai girl recruited by Maxwell for the Epstein ring.
At the massage classes, she met martial artist Robert Giuffre, and they were soon married. Ms. Giuffre said she severed ties with Maxwell and Epstein and moved to Australia with her new husband.
By late 2005, investigations into Epstein were taking shape. Police in Palm Beach opened an investigation after allegations by the 14-year-old Florida girlthat she was molested after being asked to give him a massage in exchange for money.
Epstein’s legal team, which included Harvard Law School professorAlan Dershowitz, managed to strike various settlements and deals, including the daily work-release during the 13-month jail sentence that was harshly criticized by victim rights groups and others for its leniency.
Ms. Giuffre dropped a defamation lawsuit against Dershowitz in 2022, saying she could no longer be sure of the identity of the man she once believed to be Dershowitz. “I have long believed that I was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to Alan Dershowitz. … I now recognize I may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz,” she said in a statement shared by her lawyers. Dershowitz, in turn, agreed to drop his defamation countersuit against Ms. Giuffre.
In 2009, civil suits by Ms. Giuffre and other alleged victims of Epstein — all listed anonymously as Jane Does — were settled for amounts undisclosed at the time. (Documents unsealed in 2022 showed Ms. Giuffre received $500,000).
Ms. Giuffre said she decided to go public with her allegations following the birth of her daughter in January 2010; she earlier had two sons.
“I just couldn’t imagine bringing her into a world where I know what happened to me, and I know what I went through,” she said. “That was when I said, ‘We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to hold these people accountable.’”
In 2015, Ms. Giuffre created the nonprofit group Victims Refuse Silence, which was relaunched under the name Speak Out, Act, Reclaim, or SOAR, in 2021. She appeared in the 2020 Netflix documentary miniseries “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich.”
Ms. Giuffre and her family lived in Australia from 2002 until 2013 and then spent several years in the United States. Australian media reported that the family moved to Perth in 2020 and that the couple later separated. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.
“I wasn’t chained to a sink,” she told the BBC of her years with Epstein and Maxwell, “but these powerful people were my chain.”
