Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice - 39

On January 12, 2022, my case against Prince Andrew got the green light. The prince’s lawyers had argued that he was protected from liability by the settlement I’d signed with Epstein way back in 2009. But Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected that. “Prince Andrew Can’t Avoid His Day in Court, a Judge Rules,” the New York Times headline said. The British press went nuts, calling the decision “a huge blow for Prince Andrew” ( The Evening Standard ) and warning of a coming “hugely expensive and reputation-shredding court case” ( Daily Mail ). Already, the case had been credited with causing “Abolish the Monarchy” to trend on Twitter. Now, the day after the judge’s decision, the queen stripped the prince of his royal and military titles, prompting the Sun to run with this front-page headline: “Throne Out.” The Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II was coming up in June—it would be the international celebration marking the seventieth anniversary of her accession to the throne. Clearly, the British media—and the royal family itself—were already weighing how Prince Andrew’s troubles might affect that day.

On January 19, Prince Andrew deleted all his Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook profiles. Three days later, Saturday Night Live took a swipe at him, with Weekend Update host Colin Jost saying, “This week, Britain’s most eligible bachelor, Prince Andrew, officially deleted his Twitter account after he realized that’s not the app with all the dancing teenagers.” Four days later, the prince formally denied my charges, but his response was met with ridicule. My lawyers, meanwhile, were seeking to depose the prince’s former assistant and to see medical records, if any existed, that could prove the prince’s assertion that he’d lost the ability to sweat.

The prince was not without his supporters. On January 31, a former girlfriend of his, a socialite named Lady Victoria Hervey, took to Instagram to say that in her opinion, I was “a complete whore.” Then, just in case anyone had forgotten that this story is not just about sexual abuse but also about class, she added that I was “just a ghetto opportunity whose [ sic ] seriously mixed up.” Never one to shirk her public duty, Lady Victoria—the daughter of the sixth marquess of Bristol, half sister of the seventh marquess, and sister of the eighth marquess, whatever all of that means—would give many mean-spirited interviews about me in the coming months.

The paparazzi, meanwhile, had tracked my family down in Perth. In February, the Daily Mail published this important news: “Prince Andrew’s accuser Virginia Giuffre is spotted vaping with foils in her hair outside salon in Australia as she prepares to take oath and be quizzed by the duke’s lawyers for her sex assault lawsuit.” You can imagine how unflattering the accompanying photos were. I looked like a half-crazed, metal-spiked witch (who also was trying to quit smoking). Ah, the things we women do in the name of beauty. But most women don’t have to worry about such things being captured by photographers. I tried not to let it bother me.

The world didn’t know it, but settlement discussions with Prince Andrew’s team were suddenly moving quickly. After he’d stonewalled us for months, the scheduling of his deposition, which was to take place on March 10, seemed to motivate him. Also, the newest addition to the prince’s legal team, Andrew Brettler, an American who’d worked for two Hollywood figures facing their own #MeToo allegations (the actor Armie Hammer and the director Bryan Singer), was less reluctant than some of his British counterparts to face reality. David Boies would later credit Brettler with keeping the settlement talks on track. Siggy, meanwhile, felt we couldn’t have been in a better position. She was ready to try the case, and she believed strongly that if we went to trial, we’d prevail. “I’m going to ask for the moon,” she told me—which we’d already agreed had to be more than mere money. After casting doubt on my credibility for so long—Prince Andrew’s team had even gone so far as to try to hire internet trolls to hassle me—the Duke of York owed me a meaningful apology as well. We would never get a confession, of course. That’s what settlements are designed to avoid. But we were trying for the next best thing: a general acknowledgment of what I’d been through. After my lawyers hashed out the basic details on Zoom, I then participated in two days of mediation talks. Finally, at 2:30 a.m. Florida time, the prince’s lawyers agreed to the statement we’d been pushing for. Siggy called me immediately and read it to me through tears, both hers and mine.

“Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre’s character,” the statement read in part, “and he accepts that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks.” Yes, indeed, including attacks from the prince’s own camp! “It is known that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked countless young girls over many years,” the statement continued, acknowledging vastly more about Epstein’s predatory behavior than the prince himself had in his fateful BBC interview. “Prince Andrew regrets his association with Epstein, and commends the bravery of Ms. Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others. He pledges to demonstrate his regret for his association with Epstein by supporting the fight against the evils of sex trafficking, and by supporting its victims.”

In that moment, I would have given anything to be in the same room with Siggy. “Thank you, Siggy, for all that you’ve done for me,” I told her shakily over the phone. She responded by repeating her assertion that representing me had been her complete honor. “At the end of my life,” Siggy would tell me later, “when I look back on the best moments, that phone call will be one of them.”

On February 15, the settlement was announced. We issued a joint statement that made clear Prince Andrew would pay me money, though the amount was kept confidential (later it was reported that his mother, the queen of England, had footed the bill). The statement said he would also make a “substantial donation” in support of victims’ rights to my nascent nonprofit organization. I agreed to a one-year gag order, which seemed important to the prince because it ensured that his mother’s Platinum Jubilee would not be tarnished any more than it already had been.

Because of the time difference, the settlement announcement came in the middle of our night in Australia. That meant when we woke up the next day—Alex’s birthday—our street was choked with paparazzi. The Giuffre family has a tradition: on their birthdays, all the kids get to go shopping to pick out their own gifts. I still wanted to do that, but Robbie wasn’t sure we’d be able to get out of the driveway. For a moment, I considered going out and throwing myself at the mercy of the reporters. My plan was to say I was pleased with the settlement, then explain that it was Alex’s sweet sixteen and politely ask if we could have our privacy back. But then I came to my senses. Were I to try that and then attempt to take Alex to the mall, the headlines would surely read: “Epstein Survivor Rushes Out to Start Spending Prince Andrew’s Money” or some such. Robbie and I talked about it, and in the end, we promised Alex a rain check, and we all stayed home and got a cake, beer, and flowers delivered.

Three days later, Jean-Luc Brunel was found dead in the French prison where he’d been held for more than two years. He had hanged himself. I did not give any interviews. Two months earlier, a few weeks before Maxwell was convicted, my French lawyer had gotten in touch, saying Brunel was about to be let out on bond. I’d told the lawyer that I couldn’t come back to Paris at that moment, but I needed him to go to court for me and argue against Brunel’s release. That effort had succeeded, but now Brunel was dead. “The suicide of Jean-Luc Brunel, who abused me and countless girls and women, ends another chapter,” I tweeted. “I am disappointed that I was not able to face him in a final trial and hold him accountable for his actions, but gratified that I was able to face him in person in Paris, to keep him in prison.”

That same day, a consultant I’d hired to help me get my charity organized received this email, whose subject line read simply, “Explain.” The email read: “Maybe Virginia can explain how this sellout from Andrew provided justice to all the girls effected by this…SHE SOLD EVERYONE OUT and is just as bad as Epstein, Maxwell the now dead Jean and Andrew. #nosympathy.” We decided not to respond to the sender of this email, though she signed her name. But I’d like to address what she said here. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, of course, but to equate me with four of my abusers is wrongheaded and even cruel. As with Maxwell, I’d sued Prince Andrew in federal court, which meant a financial settlement was always going to be the prime form of punishment if we were successful. But I’d gotten more out of him than that: an acknowledgment that I and many other women had been victimized and a tacit pledge to never deny that again. Finally, my receipt of funds from the settlement has enabled me to finally make good on a long-standing goal of mine: to spend less of my energy unpacking the past and more on helping people in the present. In November 2021, I’d relaunched my nonprofit (now called Speak Out, Act, Reclaim, or SOAR) with a new website and had set about updating its mission statement and the way it would be run. Respectfully, I was attempting to help survivors of abuse—the opposite of what Epstein had done. I only wish it hadn’t taken me so long.

All through this period, I was buoyed by the knowledge that Robbie and I had organized an amazing vacation: a hard-to-get reservation on the Ningaloo Coast, a coral reef so pristine that it has been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The kids were excited to swim alongside whale sharks. Me, I just wanted to get some sleep. My neck was hurting so much, and the painkillers I was taking were making me dizzy and disoriented. But just when we were getting ready to travel, Robbie and Alex came down with COVID. I called Ningaloo to cancel. Then I got COVID too. Over the next several days, my blood-oxygen level went lower and lower. When my hands and feet went numb and my left arm felt as if it had fallen asleep for good, Robbie didn’t wait for an ambulance. He packed me in the car and took me straight back to the hospital.

I’ve told you how cunning an enemy trauma can be. It hides in the shadows, then takes control of one’s psyche without warning. That’s what happened as I lay in that hospital bed in Perth: all my feelings of sadness and shame overtook me. I was worn out by the near-constant pain in my neck. I was weary of defending myself against vicious, hurtful words: liar, sellout, extortionist, drug addict, whore. I was sick of the nightmares: greedy, heaving men on top of me, men whose faces I recognized and would never forget, men whose faces I didn’t recognize. Alarmingly, I see now, I wasn’t afraid anymore; instead, I just felt hollowed out. So when my trauma tricked my brain into telling me lies, I listened: “It would be better for everyone if you weren’t here,” my brain said. “You bring nothing but stress and worry into your husband and children’s lives. Why should they suffer because Jeffrey and Ghislaine caused you pain? You have let your family down. They deserve better. They will be happier without you.” My trauma took aim at my very existence: “Aren’t you exhausted? Unconsciousness would be a relief. Robbie and the kids are safe at home, so none of them will find you. It won’t hurt a bit. The pills are on the bedside table. It will be easy. You can just quietly slip away.”

I believed my brain, so I reached for the painkillers that I had smuggled into the hospital and I swallowed as many as I could—later they’d estimate 240 pills—before I passed out. I’m told that I was revived with Narcan, the opioid overdose treatment. My fragile self-worth had imploded. All that remained were the shards of me.

Oh, the look on Robbie’s face when they told him. He couldn’t bear the thought of me disappearing, and he wanted to strangle me for trying to disappear. “What were you thinking, Jenna?” he demanded, but in my mind, I had no answer for him except: “I was thinking I needed to be dead.” Indeed, just days later, after I got out of the hospital, I would try to kill myself again, with more pills. It was only because our son Alex came to check on me that I did not succeed. For a second time, I woke up in the hospital, revived once more by Narcan. After that, it would be a long time before my thoughts of self-annihilation would truly begin to subside. Only then could I promise my husband and kids that I would try with all my might to believe that I mattered.

There is a huge framed picture on our wall in Perth, right at the center of our home. I placed it there, at the landing at the bottom of the stairs, so that everyone in the family can see it multiple times a day. It’s a photograph of a cove on Magnetic Island in Queensland—a place where years ago, before Ellie was born, Robbie and I had taken our young sons on our first family vacation. We had no money back then—we were living paycheck to paycheck—but after Robbie was rear-ended by that Sydney police officer, he’d gotten a settlement to cover his medical expenses, and we’d used it to take our boys, ages two and three, on this trip. I remember we caught the ferry to Nelly Bay Harbour, and we didn’t come home for six whole weeks.

When I think about places where I have been truly happy, Magnetic Cove tops the list. The island was crawling with koala bears, and the fishing was ridiculously good. Mackerel, tuna, sea perch—you could catch them all, and Robbie and the boys did. For my part, I walked the palm-fringed beaches collecting bits of coral and other treasures. This trip of ours was in 2009. In 2022, as I recovered from my attempts to take my own life, it felt like an eon ago. But I still thought about that vacation almost every day. In my brain, Magnetic Island had come to symbolize a path I hadn’t taken. I imagined I might have lived a beautiful life there, free from all troubles, safe from all dangers, anonymous. In this fantasy, I did what most people who endure childhood trauma do: process it privately, sometimes without telling a single person other than perhaps a trusted therapist. In other words, in this fantasy, I’d made a choice that was the polar opposite of the one I’d made in real life. This idyll would never be my reality—I knew that—but imagining it helped me.

I’ve said that I am a visual person—always have been. Since childhood, I have been able to remember images, faces, details others miss. If I make a notation in the margin of the book I’m reading, my brain registers the placement of that scribble so I can easily find it again. I am buoyed by bright colors. So it makes sense that in my darkest time, I turned to something visual for comfort. In the weeks after I tried to kill myself, I must have stared for hours at that oversized photo of Magnetic Island. I’d bought it for Robbie in happier times. I really, truly, wanted to be happy again.

But there was something else that helped me just as much or maybe even more. I’ve told you how much music has helped me throughout my life. And I’ve described how we Giuffres enjoy music together as a family. Well, Alex was recording music now—mixing it in his room on his computer, commissioning beats and vocal tracks from various musicians he’d connected with online. Now Alex played me one of his favorite compositions. It was called “Smile Sadness,” and it started with a spare ukulele track, then segued into Alex’s rapping lyrics that could have been plucked straight out of my brain: “There are demons in my mind / Circling me like a haze / It’s amazing / I can’t get up today / I’ve gotta push for it / I cannot go back / If I go back, I’ll be in a fucking trap.” But it was another line in the song that really made me sit up straight: “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Listening to that song, that’s when I vowed to get better, once and for all. For Alex. For Tyler. For Ellie. For Robbie, of course. But most of all, for myself.

In April, Judge Alison J. Nathan had rejected Maxwell’s request for a new trial, denying her claim that her jury could not have been fair or impartial because one juror failed to disclose his own experience of sexual abuse. Now it was late June, and the day had finally come for Maxwell to be sentenced.

Because of my health problems, my doctors said I couldn’t fly to New York to deliver a victim’s impact statement, as I’d long planned to do. But Siggy said she would read it for me in open court. Even before she got a chance to do so, however, a copy of my statement that had been provided to the court made headlines. “Prince Andrew’s Sex Accuser Says Ghislaine Maxwell ‘Opened Door to Hell’ for Abuse,” blared UK’s Daily Mirror , atop a story that quoted from my statement:

“Ghislaine, twenty-two years ago, in the summer of 2000 you spotted me at the Mar-a-Lago Hotel in Florida and you made a choice. You chose to follow me and procure me for Jeffrey Epstein. Just hours later, you and he abused me together for the first time.

“Together, you damaged me physically, mentally, sexually and emotionally. Together, you did unspeakable things that still have a corrosive impact on me to this day. I want to be clear about one thing: without question, Jeffrey Epstein was a terrible pedophile. But I never would have met Jeffrey Epstein if not for you. For me, and for so many others, you opened the door to hell. And then, Ghislaine, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, you used your femininity to betray us, and you led us all through it.”

At Maxwell’s sentencing hearing on June 28, 2022, Annie Farmer, Sarah Ransome, and another Survivor Sister, Elizabeth Stein, were in the courtroom to deliver their victim-impact statements in person. Siggy read mine. Judge Nathan listened to everyone, including Maxwell’s lawyers and the prosecutors, then told all those assembled: “The damage done to these young girls was incalculable.” Then she revealed that Maxwell, then sixty, would be sentenced to twenty years in prison, plus five years of supervised release; she was also ordered to pay a $750,000 fine. With good behavior, she could leave prison in her late seventies.

The Survivor Sisters rejoiced. Together, we’d succeeded in sending one of our most malicious abusers—the woman who’d used her gender to trick so many of us into feeling safe, even as she put us in the worst sort of danger—to prison. We hadn’t gotten what I’d once told Gayle King I really hoped for: an apology. Judging by the jailhouse interviews Maxwell had begun giving, she was unrepentant. Nevertheless, she’d been held accountable. Despite all her haughty denials, despite her attempts to diminish us as money-grubbing opportunists, a judge and a jury had seen through her. For all of us, that was the best thing: we’d been believed.

Unfortunately, any happiness I felt about Maxwell spending most of her remaining years in prison was dampened by the fact that right around this time, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia—a chronic, long-lasting condition that causes heightened pain and tenderness throughout the body, as well as fatigue and sleep problems. This was not exactly good news, although there was some relief in knowing I wasn’t crazy: the pain was real.

In October, I bought Robbie a used powerboat. He’s always loved the water, and this vessel had enough beds, couches, and benches down below that our whole family could sleep on board at the same time. Its previous owner had painted its name— The Renaissance —on the hull in a dark blue script. I told Robbie he could change that, but he said no, The Renaissance was perfect. For us, he said, a revival was long overdue. I knew what he meant: he was hoping I could renew my interest in life. I wanted that too. I was taking it one day at a time. As usual, I relied on music to lift me up. Alex was playing me more and more of his tunes, and I couldn’t have been more proud of him. I also clung to Sara Bareilles’s song “Brave,” which I’d first heard right around the time I’d said goodbye to my father for the last time. “Sometimes a shadow wins,” she sang, describing my lowest feelings perfectly. But then, she helped me rally: “Maybe there’s a way out of the cage where you live / Maybe one of these days you can let the light in / Show me how big your brave is.”

On November 8, 2022, I announced a settlement between me and lawyer Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard professor emeritus (and friend of Epstein’s) who I’d sued for defamation in 2019. In a joint statement, I said, “I have long believed that I was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to Alan Dershowitz. However, I was very young at the time, it was a very stressful and traumatic environment, and Mr. Dershowitz has from the beginning consistently denied these allegations. I now recognize I may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz.”

When I had sued Dershowitz in 2019, I’d alleged that he had made defamatory statements about me after I accused him. He had countersued seven months later. This settlement put an end to both of those claims. No payments were made by either of us to the other. And we agreed that we would say nothing about one another, other than the agreed statements we made in a joint release. (In that release, Dershowitz said of me that he had “come to believe that at the time she accused me she believed what she said…She has suffered much at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, and I commend her work combating the evil of sex trafficking.”)

The next day, I got an email from Dr. Annie Farmer. Annie and her sister Maria had been fighting for justice longer than any of the Survivor Sisters, and I’d gotten to know them both over the years. Annie’s words meant everything to me because she so clearly understood my emotional state. “Hi Virginia, I just wanted to send a note because I imagine everything transpiring over these last few days (and throughout this long legal fight you’ve been battling) has been really difficult. I just wanted to let you know that you are on my mind and I’m sending big hugs and lots of love. You have focused for years now on helping others and being a strong voice in this fight. I know your advocacy will continue, but I also hope that you can find the space you need for rest and healing and soaking up time with your family with some relief from all the pressure these cases have brought with them. Xoxo annie.”

I had badly needed some peace. My family had too. Now, at long last, we would set about trying to find it again.