“Even though some wounds never heal”, Virginia Giuffre told me in a previously unpublished interview from 2019, “it’s important that I talk about this matter-of-factly, it’s important I not let emotion get too raw”.
It was a frank admission from Ms Giuffre, the woman who accused Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse, and who has died by suicide aged 41.
But in that interview, she also spoke of her resolve, stating: “We can’t afford to let our emotions get in the way, we’ve just got to do this so that these people are held accountable”.
That mixture of determination and the effects of the damage inflicted on Giuffre had been two forces pulling at her life since 2010, when she decided to come forward publicly and accuse Andrew of having sex with her after she was trafficked by the late paedophile Epstein.
She desperately wanted all of Epstein’s powerful friends brought to justice and at one point flew to France to testify against one of them, model scout Jean-Luc Brunel: he died by suicide before trial.
Giuffre sued Andrew in a civil case and extracted a reported $16m settlement from him and effectively forced him out of the public spotlight. (He has always denied the claims.)
Yet the deck was stacked heavily against Giuffre, a mother-of-three who lived on a horse farm in Western Australia, where she was found dead on Friday.
When she was seven, a close family friend began molesting her. Years later she ran away from home, briefly living on the streets and with an aunt in California.
She was later preyed upon by another abuser; and this was all before she met Epstein and his ‘madam’ Ghislaine Maxwell in 2000, when she was just 16.
Giuffre has described being passed around Epstein’s powerful friends like a “platter of fruit”, including Andrew, who she claimed had sex with her three times when she was 17.
I spoke by phone to Giuffre in October 2019, as the fallout from Epstein’s arrest and suicide in August that year while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges was reverberating around the world.
We had first met in person the previous month, after I had seen her stand up and speak during an extraordinary New York court hearing that formally concluded the Epstein case.
Over dinner at a restaurant in Manhattan, she was warm, had a mischievous sense of humour and was extremely likeable.
But I also remember how trusting she seemed in both those conversations, and thinking how that vulnerability could easily have been exploited, especially when she was younger.
square ANNE MCELVOY
Virginia Giuffre's death leaves a legacy of shame for her abusers
Read MoreThe words she spoke in are haunting now, telling me that “I have my good days and my bad days” and that “I’m by no means a perfect person but I’ve been on a journey to healing when I started talking about this.”
She added: “It’s the journey that we’re on. We can’t afford to let our emotions get in the way, we’ve just got to do this so that these people are held accountable”.
As Giuffre put it, once you were able to escape from Epstein “you’re left trying to figure out the pieces of your life and who you want to be and what you want to be”.
She said: “Because for so long you are told who you have to be and what you’re going to be and what you’re going to do.
“When you start making your life decisions on your own it’s almost like being reborn again. It’s a funny way to put it. It’s also harrowing”
It appears life had recently been harrowing for Giuffre. Last month she posted a photo of her bruised face on Instagram, adding that she had been in a car crash and that she had just four days to live.
Giuffre had been going through a messy split with her husband Robert, the father of her children, and her family have claimed that he has been physically abusive to her.
Robert Giuffre’s lawyer has declined to comment due to ongoing court proceedings in Australia.
In a statement, her family said that Giuffre was a “fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse”, and that the “toll of abuse… became unbearable”.
“She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking,” they said.
Epstein victims who I speak to told me that they were “shocked but not surprised” at the death of Giuffre given the damage inflicted on her so deeply and so young.
Lawyers who worked with Epstein victims echoed those thoughts including Spencer Kuvin, who has represented several Epstein victims.
As Kuvin put it: “Sadly, we often witness that sexual abuse leaves lasting scars that never fully heal. Abuse victims never truly recover from what has transpired”.
David Boies, who represented Giuffre for years including her case against Andrew, praised her “courage, caring, and strength”.
He told me: “She was one of the strongest people I have ever known, but the physical abuse she suffered as a child at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, and the verbal abuse she continued to suffer at the hands of his collaborators trying to salvage their reputations by attacking hers, finally wore her down.
“God bless you, Virginia. And God damn your abusers”.
If you need help, contact the Samaritans on 116 123 or MIND on 0300 123 3393. If you have or are suffering from domestic abuse, call the National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247.
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