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Updated January 13th, 2022 at 15:08 IST

Virginia Giuffre: What is known about woman who has accused Prince Andrew of sexual abuse?

Virginia Giuffre has alleged that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked her and forced her to have sexual intercourse with his friends including UK’s Prince Andrew.

Reported by: Aanchal Nigam
Virginia Giuffre
Image: AP/Twitter | Image:self
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US citizen Virginia Giuffre has alleged that disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein trafficked her and forced her to have sexual intercourse with his friends including UK Queen Elizabeth II’s second son, Prince Andrew. Apart from Epstein’s sex trafficking victim, Giuffre has emerged as the centre of one of the world’s most high-profile legal battles in the world as she launched a civil case against Duke of York. Even though the royal has repeatedly denied Giuffre’s allegations, Prince Andrew’s lawyer’s efforts to have the case thrown out at the preliminary stage have failed. Now the civil trial in New York is set to take place this autumn.

What is known about Virginia Giuffre?

Giuffre was born in California, United States in 1983 as Virginia Roberts. According to BBC, her family later relocated to Florida. She has told BBC Panorama in 2019 that at the age of seven, she was sexually abused by a family friend and her “childhood was taken away”. She also said, “I was just so mentally scarred already at such a young age, and I ran away from that."

Later in childhood, she is also known to have been in and out of foster care. According to the report, by the age of 14, she was living on the streets where she found “hunger and pain and [more] abuse”. Virginia finally met British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell in 2000 when she was attempting to rebuild her life. It is known that Giuffre was working as a locker room attendant at former US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach.

Giuffre has reportedly said that Maxwell, who is now convicted of grooming young girls to be sexually abused and trafficked by Epstein, offered her an interview for the chance to train as a massage therapist. While recalling the incident, she was quoted by BBC as saying, “I ran over to my dad who works on the tennis courts at Mar-a-Lago, and he knows I'm trying to fix my life up at that point, which is why he got me the job there. I said: 'You're not going to believe it dad'."

Giuffre’s meeting with Epstein and Maxwell

Giuffre has claimed that when she arrived at Epstein’s Palm Beach home in Florida, the disgraced financier was lying down naked and young Giuffre was instructed by Maxwell on how to massage him. Giuffre told BBC, “Through that time they were asking me questions about who I was. They seemed like nice people so I trusted them, and I told them I'd had a really hard time in my life up until then - I'd been a runaway, I'd been sexually abused, physically abused… That was the worst thing I could have told them because now they knew how vulnerable I was.”

However, what Giuffre expected to be a job interview soon turned into the start of abuse which was going to last for several years. In 2015, Giuffre had filed a defamation case against Maxwell after she was accused the American of being a liar. The case has since been settled. 

It is pertinent to note here that while Epstein was found dead in his jail cell while awaiting trial for sexually abusing underage girls and also trafficking them, Maxwell was found guilty last month of recruiting and trafficking young girls for Epstein abuse. While Giuffre was referenced several times during Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial, she was not one of the four women who testified in New York court.

Allegations against Prince Andrew 

In the years that Giuffre was associated with Epstein and Maxwell, she said that she went from being abused by the disgraced financier to being “passed around like a platter of fruit" among his other influential associates. While Giuffre was being taken around on private jets, at the age of 17 in 2001, she has said that Epstein brought her to London to meet Prince Andrew. A photograph showing her younger self with Prince Andrew’s arm around her waist and Maxwell also in the frame was clicked by Epstein as per Giuffre’s request, she said. However, after going to a nightclub, Giuffre said that she was told by Maxwell that she “had to do for Andrew what I do for Jeffrey”.

Giuffre told BBC, “It was a really scary time in my life… I wasn't chained to a sink, but these powerful people were my chains”. Giuffre filed a civil case against the Duke of York alleging that Queen’s second son sexually abused her three times at Maxwell’s London home that night following by at Epstein’s homes in Manhattan and Little St James in the Virgin Islands. 

However, Prince Andrew told BBC Newsnight in 2019 that he had no recollection of ever meeting Giuffre and said that her alleged sexual abuse in the US and UK by him “didn’t happen”. Eventually, Giuffre told Miami Herald that by 2003. Epstein had lost interest in her because she was too old for him.

How has the case impacted Prince Andrew?

Recently, in the latest blow for the royal family, a US judge ruled that Giuffre;’s civil lawsuit against Prince Andrew would go for trial. It is expected to have major ramifications for Buckingham Palace as the long-time running allegations against the 61-year-old Prince would be tested in court after significantly tarnishing his public image. He even had to step back from royal duties in late 2019. 

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Published January 13th, 2022 at 15:08 IST

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