Since the Jeffrey Epstein saga seized the national consciousness toward the end of 2018, a kind of recurring parlor game has emerged for politicians on both sides of the aisle, gambling websites, late-night hosts, and podcasters. When a new batch of court documents was set to be unsealed amid the sprawling legal proceedings, these far-flung sets of Epstein watchers sprung into action, speculating about who would next be named in the case, or who might be added to what is now sweepingly known as the Epstein list.
What often went unsaid at these junctures was that in many instances the documents in question were the product of one Epstein victim’s quest, over several years, to bring attention to the horrors she said she suffered at the hands of the late financier and his convicted accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell. Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s account of her relationship with Maxwell and Epstein is out in a new memoir, Nobody’s Girl, which details some of the inner workings of their operation.
After Giuffre accused Maxwell of sexual abuse in 2015, the British socialite went beyond denying the allegations and branded Giuffre a full-blown liar. That claim, in turn, prompted Giuffre to sue Maxwell for defamation, leading to the streams of discovery and depositions that animated so much of the criminal scrutiny and amateur sleuthing that followed. (The defamation suit was settled in 2017. Maxwell was ultimately found guilty of sex trafficking of a minor among other infractions and is serving a 20-year prison sentence.)
It was one of the many ways in which Giuffre, who grew up in Palm Beach County and died by suicide in Australia in April, shaped the conversation around Epstein and Maxwell. Giuffre claimed that she was forced into sex with Prince Andrew at 17 years old after Epstein trafficked her to him among other wealthy and prominent friends. (Andrew has repeatedly denied this.) In 2022, Giuffre and Andrew settled a lawsuit she brought against him, but the allegations sent the royal family into an ongoing spiral. On Friday, just days before the publication of Giuffre’s much-awaited memoir, Andrew announced that he would no longer use his royal title.
Giuffre met Maxwell while working as a spa attendant at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, as she recounted in an excerpt from Nobody’s Girl, which Vanity Fair exclusively published last week, and after breaking free from Epstein’s clutches, she became the foremost voice in the fight for justice for his scores of victims. Amid the current wave of outrage surrounding Trump, Maxwell, their prior relationship, and the possibility of a presidential pardon, Giuffre’s posthumous memoir may offer few surprises. Still, the book is among the fullest and most vivid pictures to date of Epstein’s and Maxwell’s modi operandi.
