'Deeply loving, wise, and funny'—Remembering Virginia Giuffre

Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent victims of the financier Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring, died by suicide on Friday in Australia at the age of 41.

Giuffre sued Epstein in 2009—initially identifying only as “Jane Doe 102”—in a lawsuit that accused him and Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the British media magnate Robert Maxwell, of recruiting her to join his sex-trafficking ring when she was a minor. 

Giuffre, who was born Virginia Louise Roberts in 1983 in California, first met Maxwell in 2000 when she was working as a locker room attendant at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. Giuffre said Maxwell initially hired her as a masseuse for Epstein, but the Epstein and Maxwell effectively made her a sexual servant. 

In 2015, six years after suing Epstein, Giuffre was the first of his many victims to go public with her story, giving up her anonymity in an interview with the British tabloid The Mail on Sunday.

Epstein was arrested and charged by federal prosecutors with sex-trafficking and conspiracy in 2019. Just a few weeks after he was arrested, and one day after documents were released from a defamation suit that Giuffre and her lawyers had filed against him, Epstein was found dead in his cell in Manhattan. He was 66 at the time and his death was determined to be a suicide. 

Beyond the allegations against Epstein and Maxwell themselves, Giuffre also accused the pair of forcing her to have sex with their friends and acquaintances, including Prince Andrew, whom she claimed to have met in London in 2001.

The prince denied the accusations, most famously in a BBC Newsnight interview in November 2019, but gave up his royal duties later that year. In 2021, Giuffre sued the prince for sexual assault. The two sides settled the following year, and the prince agreed to pay an undisclosed sum of money to Giuffre and to her charity Speak Out, Act, Reclaim, which is dedicated to providing a safe and empowering space for survivors of sex trafficking to reclaim their stories.

In announcing her death, Giuffre’s family described her as “a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking” and “the light that lifted so many survivors.”

According to the BBC, Giuffre's representative, Dini von Mueffling, described her as "one of the most extraordinary human beings I have ever had the honor to know.

"Deeply loving, wise, and funny, she was a beacon to other survivors and victims. She adored her children and many animals. It was the privilege of a lifetime to represent her."