HER courage inspired countless victims of child abuse to stand up against their tormentors.
But the frail-looking mother of three was haunted by fear and guilt from the moment in 2011 when she pulled the dog-eared photograph out of the envelope where it was stored at her Australian bungalow.
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“I’m not sure that I should be showing this to you. He’s a British prince,” stammered 27 year old Virginia Giuffre.
Taken nearly a decade earlier, when she was just 17, the snap showed Prince Andrew’s arm skimming her bare waist beneath her cut-off top while Ghislaine Maxwell grinned proprietorially in the background.
Virginia blushed with embarrassment as she told me that this was ‘evidence’ of her first sordid tryst with the then 41-year-old Royal.
The encounter was arranged by American paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, who was employing her as a ‘sex slave’, and Ghislaine, his madam and girlfriend.
Virginia served coffee to me under the watchful eye of her husband, Robert, as she elaborated on how, in March 2001, the pair flew her to London on the luxuriously equipped jet at the heart of their sex-trafficking ring, the so-called ‘Lolita Express.’
“I’m telling you things even my husband didn’t know,” she said.
The expression on Robert’s face changed from shock to rage as she recalled how Maxwell assigned her to a bedroom in her elegant Belgravia townhouse and briefed her about how, “You’re going to dance with a prince tonight!”
“She said I needed to be ‘smiley’ and bubbly and very happy to be around him and give a lot of energy to him because he is the Queen’s son,” Virginia recounted.
The photo was snapped by Epstein on Virginia’s cheap Kodak camera.
In the smear campaign she would endure until her death, it was alleged it was concocted by digital trickery.
She also would have to live with accusations that she was a ‘gold-digging prostitute’ who ruthlessly betrayed her family when she gave The Mail on Sunday permission to print the photo on February 27, 2011.
But the naïve explanation that she gave me for the picture rang painfully true: “I wanted something to show my mom,” she said.
It was the beginning of a scandal that lasted more than a decade before Andrew agreed to pay her a reported £12 million settlement.
I’m not sure that I should be showing this to you. He’s a British prince
Virginia Giuffre
While he did not admit liability and has always denied any wrongdoing, his reputation was in the gutter and he was left utterly humiliated – cast out from the Royal Family and stripped of his titles and patronages.
Epstein committed suicide and Ghislaine was sentenced to prison. Virginia seemed to have triumphed.
She bought a horse farm and a sprawling beachfront mansion.
‘Trysts with Andrew’
But she buried her face in her hands as she told me she still was mortified by memories of her trysts with Andrew and businessmen and world leaders.
She was paid for them by the hour by Epstein and Ghislaine.
Her initiation into a world in which they demanded cult-like obedience took place in the master bedroom suite of the Palm Beach villa where Epstein was a near neighbour of Donald Trump’s.
The windows of its sauna and steam rooms were tinted and it was lit by a gigantic chandelier.
Epstein’s sex toys were stored neatly in chests of drawers.
The walls of another room were covered from floor to ceiling with photos of nude girls and young women.
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French doors opened to a spiral staircase that led to the pool.
Epstein was lying face down on a massage table, with his head resting on his folded arms as Ghislaine taught her the routines to which she eventually would ‘treat’ Andrew.
Virginia’s first thought was that he was athletic looking despite his silver hair, and charming.
“He asked me a whole bunch of questions – did I have any diseases? How many people had I slept with? Within the first hour, he knew my life story,” Virginia recalled.
Who was Virginia Giuffre?
VIRGINIA Roberts – later Virginia Giuffre, 41, was an American-Australian campaigner and a prominent victim of the sex trafficking ring of Jeffrey Epstein.
She made claims against Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, as well as Brit socialite Ghislaine Maxwell – Jeffrey Epstein’s ex-lover.
Giuffre alleged in court documents that she was procured by Maxwell, 63, the daughter of disgraced tycoon Robert Maxwell, as a teenage “sex slave” for Epstein.
She released a manuscript just hours before Epstein’s death, which added to more than 2,000 documents of a lawsuit pending against the former financier and his pals.
The legal documents were released in a defamation case involving Giuffre, who has claimed in court documents that Prince Andrew slept with her three times.
In 2019, Virginia Roberts claimed that she had sex with Prince Andrew in a toilet when she was 17, after a night where he had allegedly been plying her with vodka in a posh London club.
On February 15, 2022, it was announced that Prince Andrew settled the lawsuit – sparing him a humiliating court battle.
Gloated at her vulnerability
At 11, she was sexually molested by a family friend.
At 12, she was smoking pot.
At 14 she was living on the streets and was recruited by an upscale prostitution ring run by another paedophile.
Epstein gloated at her vulnerability.
“He said, ‘So you’re a bad girl in a good girl’s body,’” she recalled.
She told me that even more than the sex, it weighed perpetually on her mind that she accepted his offer to become a recruiter for his harem.
“I’d get $200 for a girl’ she said.
“I once asked Ghislaine why she got as many girls as she did for Jeffrey. They seemed to have a grounded but non-monogamous relationship.
She replied, “It takes the pressure off me to have sex with him.’”
“He thought of himself as a God because of how much money he had and how much influence on people.”
Apologists for Andrew have used Virginia’s tragic unravelment to renew their accusations that that long-ago photo is a hoax.
But their theory is ridiculous. She didn’t seek me out. I found her with the help of her high-school sweetheart, Tony Figueroa.
Epstein had approved of him continuing his romance with Virginia while she worked for the sex ring.
When he picked her up from her trip to London on Epstein’s jet, she showed him the photo of herself with Prince Andrew.
I tried to get her to stop the trips with Jeffrey but she didn’t. I think she was scared
“She told me Jeffrey was hanging out with Andrew and she had hung out with him,” he said.
“It was supposedly just massages.”
He was sickened because he had come to understand that in Epstein’s warped circles, massage was a euphemism for sex.
“I tried to get her to stop the trips with Jeffrey but she didn’t. I think she was scared.”
She handed me a copy of 24 pages of notes she made in her childish, looped handwriting.
She had allowed “J E and Ghislaine” to turn herself into a “little disposable play toy,” they say.
