California-born Virginia Giuffre, a victim of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, said little in the years since she settled a civil lawsuit with Prince Andrew. While Andrew, a friend of Epstein, rejected any wrongdoing and continues to deny claims he sexually assaulted her when she was 17, the settlement he paid her was reportedly around £12m. In a joint statement with Giuffre released at the time, he said he regretted his association with Epstein and commended “the bravery of Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others”.
Yet, three years on from the settlement, Giuffre was back in the headlines last month after the mother of three, aged 41, posted a distressing image to Instagram showing her bruised and battered face, saying she had just four days to live after going into renal failure following a car crash.
Writing about the crash, Guiffre said: “This year has been the worst start to a new year, I won’t bore anyone with the details, but I think it important to note that when a school bus driver comes at you driving 110km as we were slowing for a turn that no matter what your car is made of it might as well be a tin can. I’ve gone into kidney renal failure, they’ve given me four days to live, transferring me to a specialist hospital in urology. I’m ready to go, just not until I see my babies one last time, but you know what they say about wishes.”
Days after the post on 30 March, via a family spokesperson, she said that the picture and caption had been mistakenly posted to her public Instagram and was only meant to be on her private Facebook page. Earlier today, her family revealed that she had died by suicide. “It is with utterly broken hearts that we announce that Virginia passed away last night at her farm in Western Australia,” Giuffre’s family said in a statement. “She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking.
Five years since Andrew’s disastrous – and somewhat bizarre – interview with Emily Maitlis, a worrying picture of his accuser was beginning to emerge. As the crash story made headlines around the world, Ross Munns, the school bus driver involved in the collision, was disputing her account of the incident, saying she had “blown [it] out of proportion” and referring to the incident as “a minor collision”. West Australian police also confirmed that there were “no reported injuries” following the incident, which occurred in Neergabby, 20km north of Perth.
Details also emerged that Giuffre had recently become estranged from Robert, her husband of 22 years. A Western Australia courts spokesperson also confirmed that she had been charged with breaching a family violence restraining order for an alleged incident that took place in Ocean Reef, near Perth, on 2 February.
Giuffre pictured in 2019, arriving for a hearing in the criminal case against Jeffrey Epstein (Reuters)
It was a far cry from the image of a happy couple who were living a blissful life in that quiet corner of Australia. Giuffre met Robert, a martial arts expert, in Thailand in 2002, after Epstein paid for her to fly to Asia to do a massage course. They married 10 days after meeting, and, after a few peripatetic years, chose the sleepy Ocean Reef suburb as their home in December 2020.
In December 2023, under photographs of the pair cuddling, she wrote: “Twenty-one years ago this amazing man rescued me from Epstein [and] Maxwell’s clutches. I thank God every day for putting this beautiful man in my life!”
The image Giuffre projected was of living in this beach enclave, looking after her pets, doing yoga and baking cakes – a lifestyle which once saw her dubbed “the Duchess of Ocean Reef”. Few, then, would recognise the picture of domestic distress that was slowly emerging.
Giuffre claimed the picture showing her bruised face was only meant for her private Facebook (Virginia Giuffre/Instagram)
More than two decades after she was preyed upon by Epstein and Maxwell, who hired her when she was working as a locker-room attendant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, Giuffre had become a polarising figure. For some she was a cause celebre for sexual assault victims, while others claimed she was always a troubled fantasist.
Even before last month’s bizarre events, commenters were writing on her Instagram post, claiming she had lied. This sentiment was echoed by Lady Victoria Hervey, who briefly dated Andrew in 1999, when she waded into the saga on social media .
The photo of a young Giuffre with Maxwell and Prince Andrew, both of whom have claimed the image is fake (PA)
“KARMA,” wrote the 48-year-old over Giuffre’s hospital selfie, adding Europe’s 1986 glam rock smash “The Final Countdown” as background music. She then went on to call Giuffre “the queen of the fake photo” and accused her of inventing her accusations, as well as her injuries. She claimed to have heard from “reliable sources” that the FBI was preparing to arrest Giuffre, and that it was “almost time to celebrate” her downfall.
Giuffre was strolling in a beachside market when she received the call from her lawyer in July 2019 that confirmed Epstein had finally been charged with sex crimes in New York. As Giuffre explained in a rare interview in December 2021, she chose to first tell her story publicly in 2011 after the birth of her daughter a year earlier. Giuffre, who also has two teenage sons, told The Cut: “I don’t want my little girl growing up in a world that is so vicious.”
Concerns were voiced about Giuffre’s mental health after the posts (@virginiarobertsrising11/Instagram)
She went on to set up a charity, Speak Out, Act, Reclaim (Soar), to which Prince Andrew made a donation. Many credited her bravery for helping them to come forward about their own stories of abuse and for creating a supportive network of fellow victims.
However, the speculation around the veracity of her claims never fully went away. Indeed, the unsealing of a cache of documents last year included a 2016 deposition in which she contradicted an earlier report that she had once flown to Epstein’s private island with former US president Bill Clinton.
Although Giuffre was quoted in a Daily Mail article in 2011 saying she had met Clinton twice and had flown to the Caribbean with him in a helicopter when she was 17, in the deposition she says she was never in a helicopter with Clinton and that her conversation with the Mail journalist was “taken out of context”.
Giuffre received a reported £12m from Andrew in an out-of-court settlement (US District Court)
The documents were originally filed as part of a defamation lawsuit brought in 2015 by Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, who was found guilty of helping Epstein sexually abuse young girls and sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2022. While legal experts acknowledge that victims of abuse and trauma can get dates and details wrong in testimony, multiple media investigations have disputed claims Giuffre has made dating back to her childhood. However, the fact remains that Epstein was facing trial at the time of his death and Maxwell has been convicted for her crimes.
However, the headlines about the crash painted a more confusing and worrying picture of how Guiffre’s life was unravelling. In Australia, 9News Perth reported that Giuffre admitted herself to Joondalup Health Campus in Perth with a pre-existing injury immediately after the car collision. She was discharged the following day.
We were then told that she was taken to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital by ambulance and was seeking treatment for pain. It’s understood she was discharged shortly afterwards. Another television outlet, 7News, reported that Giuffre’s heavy bruising was the result of a fall. The 71-year-old who was driving the vehicle in which Giuffre was travelling at the time of the crash is also reported to be a carer, adding to the mystery of Giuffre’s mental and physical condition.
Whether Giuffre was deeply troubled after the breakdown of her marriage or continued to suffer as a result of the abuse she endured in her youth, her death will no doubt raise even more questions about one of the murkiest episodes to envelop the royal family.
