Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice - 26

Even as a toddler, Ellie was a character: mischievous, hilarious, stubborn, and strong as an ox. At eighteen months old, she’d wandered off while we were exploring an animal sanctuary called Walkabout Park in New South Wales. I looked everywhere for her and was becoming hysterical when I finally found her, fearlessly chasing kangaroos. I called her my own miniature Tarzan.

I was inspired by my daughter. More and more, I wanted to set a courageous example for her and for my boys too. Through Churcher, I’d heard that Brad Edwards, the Florida lawyer who’d helped Churcher find me, had filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the federal government’s nonprosecution agreement with Epstein. Edwards believed that the agreement, which promised that Epstein and his coconspirators would not be federally prosecuted if he pleaded guilty to state charges, had violated the Crime Victims’ Rights Act of 2004. The CVRA asserts that crime victims have the right to meaningfully confer with prosecutors in cases brought against those who’ve victimized them. Epstein’s victims had not only not conferred with prosecutors, we’d been kept in the dark completely. Churcher said Edwards had filed his 2008 suit against the US attorney’s office on behalf of two unnamed women. If I wanted to join as “Jane Doe 3,” she said, Edwards would probably be interested. So I called him.

Edwards was thrilled to hear from me. In his book Relentless Pursuit , he described how he felt: “Finally, someone from Epstein’s inner circle wanted to talk, and wanted to help.” In our first conversation, he explained to me that the CVRA suit was seeking to invalidate Epstein’s nonprosecution agreement so that one of the most dangerous child molesters in human history could finally be charged and tried for all his crimes.

All along I’d known that I was just one of many victims hurt by Epstein and Maxwell. But in the nine years since I’d escaped their grip, this idea had remained abstract—thousands of these girls and women probably existed, but I didn’t think I’d ever know their names, let alone meet them. Now, Edwards said he was working closely with some of those women, and he offered me the opportunity to join them. Churcher had told me that Epstein had already made sixteen out-of-court settlements with other victims, much like the one I’d agreed to; more were likely in the works. As I talked with Edwards, I wondered if at least some of us could band together.

On April 7, 2011, I had a phone call with Edwards and another lawyer, Jack Scarola, who said he was representing Edwards in another lawsuit. [*] The three of us introduced ourselves, and Scarola asked me to describe the basic chronology of my time with Epstein. He asked about my level of sexual experience when I first met Epstein and about how I was recruited. He asked me what I was paid by Epstein and about how soon Epstein had begun trafficking me to his friends. I answered to the best of my ability.

“Are you able to name some of those people for me?” Scarola asked.

I demurred. “No, not at this stage. I just—some of these people are really influential…I don’t want to start another shitstorm with a few of them…. I don’t know if I want to. I’m really scared of where this is gonna go.”

Scarola said he understood. “Why are you providing this cooperation?” he asked.

“I’m out to help the bigger picture,” I answered. “I think that this has gone on long enough.” Referring to Epstein, I said, “It’s a big slap in my face that he can get away with hurting me so bad, let alone so many other girls, and laugh about it.”

At the end of the call, Scarola said, “Okay, Virginia, is there anything else that you would like to add?”

There was. As the mother of three children, I felt it was my duty to stand up to predators like Epstein and Maxwell, I said. I mentioned Ellie in particular. “I would put my neck on the line to make sure she never has to go through what I had to go through,” I said. Joining Edwards’s CVRA case, I said, was “what I would want somebody to do for my daughter or my sister or my friend.” In the end, I said, I was just trying to do the right thing. “That’s what I feel like I’m doing,” I said. “I’m making a small dent in this big world we live in.”

I had resolved yet again to find a new therapist. In September 2011, I met with a psychologist in her seventies named Judith Lightfoot. I liked her immediately. Her intake notes (which have been made part of my court file, so I now have a copy) provide a snapshot of what we covered in that first session. Lightfoot asked me about my relationship with my mother. Based on my answers, she circled both “distant” and “non-existent” on a preprinted form. She asked the same question about my connection to my dad (“non-existent”) and my brothers (Danny: “distant”; Skydy: “v close”).

According to Lightfoot’s notes of what I told her, I’d been “entrapped” from age thirteen to age nineteen, and I suffered from flashbacks and anxiety. When I said that I’d been raped by an older man and that I’d then been sexually trafficked, I could tell Lightfoot had never heard of Epstein (she spelled his first name “Geoff”). But she didn’t need to know who he was to understand how much he’d hurt me. I told her about our first encounter and how he and Maxwell had made me undress and perform sexual acts. I also told her how they’d trained me “how to please a man.” At one point, Lightfoot asked me how I defined my purpose or the meaning of my life. My answer: “To be the best—do no harm.” By the end of the session, she had concluded that I was suffering from PTSD, but she told me she believed she could help me reframe some of my thinking about past traumas. At the end of the intake form, she wrote, “Remarkable young woman—supportive therapy needed.”

I felt fortunate to have found a therapist I trusted, and increasingly I was feeling optimistic about life. Partly that was because I’d discovered something that was really helping Tyler: Floortime therapy. I loved the teacher. She put effort into really seeing Tyler, not just scrutinizing me as a mother, which I appreciated. Sometimes our sessions were an hour, other times we were there all day—whatever it took to get Tyler talking. “He’s a person,” this teacher kept saying of my son. “He deserves to be respected.” Previously, I’d been guessing at what he wanted—and then handing it to him if he nodded or smiled. Now I abandoned that approach and instead got down on the floor to play with Tyler at his level. If Tyler wanted a toy I had in my hand, my job was to get him to express his desire verbally—to help him see the link between talking and getting what you want. “You just need to find your words,” the teacher told Tyler. She was kind but not coddling. She treated him as if he was capable.

When I first insisted that Tyler say the word for a piece of Lego or a ring of keys before I gave it to him, there were tears of frustration—mostly his, but sometimes mine too. But little by little, over many months, Tyler transformed from a frustrated, nonverbal child to a thriving chatterbox. We got Tyler weaned from his pacifiers, and his tantrums subsided. He still lived in his head some of the time, but now he was becoming precociously articulate.

For so long, I’d thought I’d lost my second son. Now, Tyler had been found. He started preschool at a sweet little place called Noah’s Ark Learning Centre, and he began to make friends. In April 2012, when he turned five, we threw a party for twenty-five kids at our house—so many that I thought I needed two clowns, not one, to entertain them all. Alex hated clowns, so he spent the day inside moping. But Tyler was thrilled, especially when he saw the cake. He’d asked for a “hammerhead shark cake,” which was so specific that I’d had to download a photo to take to the bakery, just so they could get it right.

The joy of bonding with my sons made me miss my brothers. I thought again about returning to the United States. I truly believed what I’d written on the final page of Tyler’s baby book: “Family is what matters most!” But how could I make my family a priority when they were so far away?

In addition, I wanted to be more available to help Brad Edwards. The lawyer and I had kept in touch, and I saw him as a hero. Working initially with a survivor of Epstein’s abuse named Courtney Wild, Edwards had been among the first lawyers to begin piecing together how Epstein and Maxwell had enticed girls to recruit other girls. Wild had been fourteen years old in 2002, when she was first molested by Epstein at his Palm Beach mansion. Six years later, she’d walked into Edwards’s office, and they’d been a team ever since. Edwards seemed tireless and meticulous. Had I lived in the United States, I would have already joined forces with him. Now that felt like the next move I wanted to make.

Robbie and I talked about it. We knew we could get visas this time, as we had more money in the bank. Robbie was torn—he loved our life in Australia, but he also wanted me to be happy. My brother Danny assured him he’d have no trouble finding work in the States. Finally, Robbie said yes. So at the end of the summer in 2013, we sold our house and began the process of packing our things and saying our goodbyes. We weren’t leaving for good, we told our friends and Robbie’s family. But America beckoned, and I had work to do.

Skip Notes

* Epstein had filed a bogus lawsuit against Brad Edwards alleging that he and one of his victim clients, as well as a law partner, had formed a criminal enterprise and conspiracy to defraud Epstein. That suit, and Edwards’s countersuit alleging malicious prosecution, would later be settled out of court in 2018.