Virginia Giuffre: The Survivor Who Brought Down Powerful Men

Virginia Louise Roberts was born on August 9, 1983, in Sacramento, California. Her childhood was marked by instability—her parents divorced when she was young, and she spent time in foster care. By age 14, she was living on the streets. At 15, she was placed in a group home for troubled teens, where she later said she was physically and emotionally abused.

In 2000, at age 17, she moved to Palm Beach, Florida, to live with her father, who worked as a maintenance manager at Mar-a-Lago. She got a job there as a spa attendant. That's where she met Ghislaine Maxwell.

According to Giuffre, Maxwell approached her while she was reading a book on massage therapy. Maxwell struck up a conversation, told her she knew someone looking for a traveling masseuse, and offered her a career-changing opportunity. It was the beginning of her exploitation by Epstein and Maxwell.

Giuffre has described in harrowing detail what happened after Maxwell recruited her. She was flown to Epstein's private island, Little Saint James, and to his mansions in Palm Beach, New York, and New Mexico. She says she was trained by Maxwell on how to massage—and sexually please—Epstein. She was passed among his powerful friends.

Flight logs from Epstein's private jets confirm that Giuffre flew on his planes extensively between 2000 and 2002. She was photographed with Prince Andrew at Maxwell's London townhouse in 2001—a photo that would later become crucial evidence in her legal battles.

Giuffre has alleged that she was trafficked to powerful men including Britain's Prince Andrew, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, and French modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel. All three men have denied her allegations. She was just 17 years old at the time of most of the alleged abuse.

In 2002, Giuffre met Robert Giuffre, an Australian martial arts instructor, while she was in Thailand on what she believed was a trip to procure another girl for Epstein. Instead, she married Robert and escaped Epstein's orbit. The couple settled in Australia and raised three children together.

For years, Giuffre kept her story private. But in 2008, she began speaking to journalists. Her first major interview was with the Daily Mail in 2011, in which she publicly named Prince Andrew for the first time as one of the men she was trafficked to.

Her account has remained remarkably consistent over more than a decade of public statements, court filings, and interviews. She has faced aggressive legal pushback from the men she accused but has never retracted her core allegations.

Giuffre's most high-profile legal battle was against Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth's third child. In August 2021, she filed a civil lawsuit in New York federal court, accusing the Duke of York of sexually abusing her when she was 17.

Prince Andrew vehemently denied the allegations. In a disastrous 2019 BBC Newsnight interview, he claimed he had no memory of meeting Giuffre and offered bizarre defenses—including that he couldn't have been sweating the night they met because he had temporarily lost the ability to sweat after an adrenaline overdose during the Falklands War.

The case against him was damaging. In January 2022, a federal judge allowed the lawsuit to proceed. The following month, Buckingham Palace announced that Andrew had been stripped of his military titles and royal patronages. And in February 2022, Prince Andrew settled the lawsuit for an undisclosed sum—reportedly around 12 million pounds—without admitting liability. The settlement included a substantial donation to Giuffre's charity for abuse victims.

Giuffre has also been involved in legal battles with Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor who represented Epstein. She accused him of sexually abusing her when she was a minor. Dershowitz fiercely denied the allegations and sued her for defamation. In a stunning turn of events, the two reached a settlement in 2022 in which Giuffre acknowledged she may have been mistaken in identifying Dershowitz as one of her abusers. Dershowitz also dropped his countersuit.

Giuffre has also sued Ghislaine Maxwell for defamation. That case was settled in 2017 for an undisclosed amount. The depositions from that case later became central evidence in Maxwell's criminal trial.

Giuffre has become one of the most vocal advocates for survivors of sex trafficking. She founded Speak Out, Act, Reclaim (SOAR), an organization that helps survivors of trafficking and abuse.

She has been a vocal critic of the 2008 plea deal that allowed Epstein to avoid federal prosecution and serve just 13 months in a Florida jail. "I was told that I was the first girl to come forward, but I wasn't," Giuffre said in a 2019 interview. "There were many before me, and there were many after me. And that plea deal silenced all of us."

Her courage in speaking out has inspired other survivors to come forward. Her testimony has been cited in court documents, congressional hearings, and numerous investigative reports.