Virginia Giuffre (born Virginia Lee Roberts, 1983–2025) was an American and Australian advocate for survivors of sex trafficking and one of the most prominent accusers of financier Jeffrey Epstein. She provided detailed allegations to media outlets about Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, claiming that Epstein ran a trafficking operation that supplied girls for sexual services. Her public claims drew wide attention, including her allegations against Prince Andrew, which he denied. She founded advocacy organisations for abuse survivors and died by suicide in April 2025.
Early life
Giuffre was born in Sacramento, California, and later grew up in Florida, where she described a difficult home life. In her posthumous memoir, Nobody's Girl, she wrote that she was abused as a child and later lived on the streets and in foster homes. As a teenager she was involved with a man later convicted on sex trafficking related charges, and she was placed in a troubled teen facility that was later closed after an investigation. In 2000, at sixteen, she obtained a job at Mar-a-Lago, the Palm Beach property owned by Donald Trump, through her father's employment there.
Allegations and legal action
In 2000 Giuffre met Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago, and she later said she was groomed and trafficked by Epstein and Maxwell, travelling between their residences and being passed to associates. Her 2011 interview with the FBI and her 2019 BBC interview drew public attention to her claims about Prince Andrew. She filed a civil suit against him in 2021, which was settled in 2022 without any admission of liability. She also sued Maxwell for defamation, settling in 2017, and made claims against Alan Dershowitz, which were later dropped by both parties.
Later work and legacy
In 2015 Giuffre founded Victims Refuse Silence, a United States based non-profit supporting survivors of abuse, which relaunched as Speak Out, Act, Reclaim (SOAR) in 2021. Documents released in 2026 as part of the Epstein files stated that FBI investigators could not substantiate some of her allegations and described aspects of her accounts as shifting or inaccurate. Her memoir was published posthumously in October 2025.