When Virginia Giuffre publicly accused well-known millionaire Jeffrey Epstein of sexually assaulting and trafficking her as a teenager, she was thrown into a world of lawsuits, depositions, and public scrutiny.
Her first suit, filed in May 2009 with Giuffre listed under the pseudonym of Jane Doe 102, accused Epstein and his longtime collaborator and friend Ghislaine Maxwell of grooming and trafficking Giuffre when she was 16 years old — “sexually assaulting, battering, exploiting, and abusing” Giuffre for several years. Since Epstein’s public image went from a rich socialite to an alleged sex trafficker, Giuffre’s painful memories and recollections of her time with Epstein have become international news. As is common for victims of sexual abuse and trafficking, Giuffre struggled with mental health issues for most of her adult life — many of which were exacerbated by the intense public scrutiny regarding her time with Epstein. On April 25, 2025, Giuffre’s family announced that the 41-year-old had died in her home in Australia by suicide. In the years leading up to that, Giuffre had been working on a memoir that told the story of her entire life — not just the terrible years she spent with Epstein and Maxwell. Now a posthumous memoir, Nobody’s Girl, charts Giuffre’s path from a growing up on a farm in Florida to an international advocate for victims of sexual abuse and trafficking. And unlike in the past, her story is finally in her own voice.
Through years of federal investigations, civil suits, and public interviews, Giuffre became one of the most vocal Epstein survivors — including providing prosecutors and investigators key testimony and evidence to eventually arrest Epstein and Maxwell. In 2019, Epstein was charged with conspiracy and sex trafficking, but found was found dead in his cell by apparent suicide while being held at a Manhattan prison. In 2021, Maxwell was convicted of sex trafficking, conspiracy, and transportation of a minor with the intent to engage in illegal sexual activity and is in the midst of serving a 20-year prison sentence.
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Courtesy of Penguin Random House
The book, Nobody’s Girl, was finished only months before Giuffre died. In a foreword, Giuffre’s collaborator Amy Wallace revealed that before her death, Giuffre sent Wallace and her publicist, Dini Von Muffling, an email asking that the book be published even if she died. “The content of this book is crucial as it aims to shed light on the systemic failures that allow the trafficking of vulnerable individuals across borders,” the note from Giuffre read. “It is imperative that the truth is understood and that the issues surrounding this topic are addressed, both for the sake of justice and awareness. In the event of my passing, I would like to ensure that Nobody’s Girl is still released.”
Published Oct. 21, Nobody’s Girl takes an uncomfortable and unflinching look at the situations and hopelessness that can make victims of sexual abuse targets — and the bravery that let Giuffre and other Epstein victims finally speak out. From early childhood abuse, a job at Mar-a-Lago, and fear of retribution, here’s what we learned from the memoir.
Giuffre alleges that she spent her early childhood and teenage years a victim of sexual abuse
While Nobody’s Girl charts Giuffre’s time with Epstein and Maxwell, it also follows Giuffre through the experiences she said made her a likely target for trafficking. According to Giuffre, she spent much of her early years being sexually assaulted by her father, Sky Roberts, and a close family friend. (Roberts has publicly denied the allegations several times. In a statement included in Nobody’s Girl, he wrote that he “never” abused Giuffre, “never ever touched her sexually,” and “never even knew what was going on with Epstein” until news broke online.)
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But according to Giuffre, the early abuse led to her acting out at school, starting with truancy and ending with abuse of drugs and alcohol. When she was 15, her parents sent her to a Palm Beach program for troubled teens called Growing Together. (The facility was closed in 2006.) Giuffre describes the school environment as rough, cruel, and controlling, a corporal place that led her to run away several times.
Giuffre’s first job at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago was as a locker-room attendant
After Giuffre ran away from Growing Together several times, her father eventually took her out of the alternative school and allowed her to move back home. In 2000, she began working at now-President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort as a locker room attendant, where she was paid $9 an hour, she writes.
This was where Giuffre says she first encountered Maxwell. According to her memoir, Giuffre writes that while she was working at the resort, she became interested in a future in massage therapy. One day, while working at the front desk of the spa, Giuffre says she was approached by Maxwell, who noted the young girl’s annotated library book about anatomy. After talking for several minutes, Giuffre says that Maxwell told her a wealthy man in the neighborhood was on the search for a massage therapist to travel with him. She writes that Maxwell invited her over to Epstein’s house for an interview. There, Giuffre writes that she was assaulted by Epstein and Maxwell for the first time.
“So begins the period of my life that has been dissected and analyzed more than any other,” Giuffre writes in Nobody’s Girl. “Yes, I was sexually abused. My body was used in ways that did enormous damage to me. But the worst things Epstein and Maxwell did to me weren’t physical, but psychological.”
A photo from the book which Giuffre describes as “Me as a teenager, right around the time I met Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislane Maxwell.”
Courtesy of Penguin Random House
Epstein and Maxwell took Giuffre on multiple international trips to “service” famous men
Much of Giuffre’s highly publicized testimony revolved around the months she spent traveling overseas with Epstein and Maxwell. Giuffre notes that she got her first passport in 2001 under Maxwell’s direction, which included taking photos and filling out an application. Her first trip was in the fall of 2001, and involved stops at Epstein’s mansion in New York and his private island nicknamed “Little Saint Jeff’s.”
Giuffre says that Maxwell and Epstein often treated the trips like vacations for her, but she was loaned out to famous men in Epstein’s company. Maxwell also held onto her passport while they traveled, preventing Giuffre from ever straying too far from the group. On a 2001 trip to London, Giuffre alleges that she was introduced to Prince Andrew, who was told she was 17 years old. (Andrew has frequently denied the allegations and in 2022 settled a suit brought against him by Giuffre. In October 2025, he gave up his royal titles and stepped back from his public duties.)
The infamous photo of the Duke of York meeting with Giuffre was almost never taken. Giuffre carried around a disposable Kodak FunSaver camera, and after meeting the prince, she allegedly had Epstein snap a photo of the two of them so she could send it to her mother. This remains one of the most damning pieces of evidence in the Epstein case. Giuffre says she has never had the original returned to her by the FBI.
“After we returned to Florida, I took my FunSaver cameras to a one-hour photo developer near my house in West Palm Beach. Thanks to the store’s system of marking the back of each print, I can tell you exactly the date I first held the image of me, Prince Andrew, and Maxwell in my hands: March 13, 2001,” Giuffre writes. “I showed the four‐by‐six-inch photo to [my boyfriend]. At the time, we were both just glad I’d made it home in one piece; we had no idea what a commotion this photo would later cause.”
Giuffre claims in the book that she was raped three total imes by Prince Andrew. In another instance, Giuffre recounts that she was brutally attacked and assaulted by an unnamed but well-known prime minister, leaving her beaten and bloody. The experience was so harrowing that Giuffre became convinced that she could never leave Epstein — she would either be killed by one of his friends or take her own life.
Giuffre claims she was asked to have Epstein and Maxwell’s child
In one of the final moments Giuffre calls her breaking point, Giuffre writes that she was with Maxwell and Epstein on a 2002 trip to Epstein’s island when she was cornered by the two. Epstein asked her to have his and Maxwell’s child. The specifics of whether she would be a surrogate with Maxwell’s eggs or have the child be hers biologically were unclear to her. But the two proposed what Giuffre called a “modern-day handmaid” arrangement, as she describes it in the book, one where she was given round-the-clock nannies and a home of her own, but would be required to travel with the child at Epstein’s will and hand over all parental rights to Maxwell and Epstein.
Giuffre writes that she had already had medical complications from her continued sexual abuse, which included an ectopic pregancy months earlier that doctors told her would make fertility in later years difficult. But she notes that the proposal concerned her, mostly because she was afraid of what would happen to a child of Epstein’s if she was a girl. “Epstein and Maxwell had made so many demands that I had met, ignoring my own feelings in the hope of pleasing them. But this proposal would endanger another person: a helpless child,” Giuffre writes. “It was a bridge too far. Today I’m sad that I found it easier to stand up for an as‐yet‐to‐be‐conceived baby than for myself.”
The notorious photo of Prince Andrew, Giuffre, and Maxwell in Maxwell’s London townhouse in March 2001.
Courtesy of Penguin Random House
Epstein accusers feared for their lives for years after they went public
While the Epstein case received intense public scrutiny by the time of Epstein’s third arrest in 2018, it took almost a decade for Giuffre and other accusers’ claims to be taken seriously. In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to state charges, which included counts of soliciting prostitution from someone under the age of 18. But he was allowed to spend time out of prison during the day for work and was released after 18 months. And a federal non-prosecution agreement his lawyers had worked out prevented other victims from coming forward — a legal protection that took years before it was voided.
It wasn’t until the release of a 2018 series of interviews conducted by the Miami Herald that people began to realize Epstein’s release was a potential miscarriage of justice. But before that, Epstein victims — including Giuffre — noted that they were concerned for their safety.
In 2015, Giuffre writes that she saw a strange car drive up to her home in Colorado and aim its high beams at the home for several minutes. In Nobody’s Girl, Giuffre said she had a standoff with the car, aiming a gun at the vehicle for close to five minutes before it finally drove off. This pushed her to move her family back to Australia, but the intimidation and press scrutiny continued there.
Even after leaving Epstein, Giuffre still says she experienced abuse in her life
As a memoir, Nobody’s Girl paints a stark difference between the horror Giuffre experienced when she was trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell and the love and warmth she was able to build in her own home for her three children. Giuffre partly credits her ability to finally leave Epstein to her relationship with her now-estranged husband Robert Giuffre, who she met while she was visiting Thailand. In the book, Giuffre describes Robert as a partner who struggled with her past but was dedicated to working on their relationship.
However in the book’s foreword, Wallace, Giuffre’s collaborator on the book, reveals that Guiffre was allegedly physically abused by her husband during their marriage. The claims echo statements Giuffre made in April 2025 to People magazine. (In statements to the U.K.’s Times and People, Robert’s legal team has declined to comment on the allegations, saying that Australian law prevents him from commenting on ongoing legal proceedings. Representatives did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment.) “I was able to fight back against Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein who abused and trafficked me,” Giuffre said in a statement to People in April. “But I was unable to escape the domestic violence in my marriage until recently. After my husband’s latest physical assault, I can no longer stay silent.”
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One of Giuffre’s final hopes was for more legal protection for sexual abuse victims
Throughout her adult life, which included multiple lawsuits against Epstein and his associates, Giuffre was also focused on advocacy work for other victims of sexual assault and trafficking. In 2015, she founded a nonprofit group for survivors, first known as Victims Refuse Silence, before it was renamed to Speak Out, Act, Reclaim or SOAR.
“I yearn, too, for a world in which perpetrators face more shame than their victims do and where anyone who’s been trafficked can confront their abusers when they are ready, no matter how much time has passed,” she writes in the closing chapter of Nobody’s Girl. “If this book moves us even an inch closer to a reality like that — if it helps just one person — I will have achieved my goal.”
