The Epstein sex scandal, which culminated in his jailhouse suicide, leaves a lot behind. And I’m speaking of dozens if not hundreds of women who, as much younger teens, made a deal with the devil. For good pay, all they had to do was endure sexual humiliation. And Epstein, a former teacher who somehow became a very wealthy man with his own private island, was dead-on when spotting a new girl already broken by daddies and moms’ boyfriends who couldn’t keep their hands off innocent virgins growing up in the same household.
It’s a disgusting story and yet so very, very old—and the story continues in homes across the U.S. despite laws with prison sentences and public awareness that means all of us are now involved if we have even the slightest clue that sex trafficking may be ongoing even in the swankiest residences of Florida.
Nobody’s Girl is the number one book in Great Britain. Undoubtedly would make a great movie—as everyone knows, sex sells. It is most unfortunate that the memoir’s author, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, is no longer alive to talk firsthand about her experience with Epstein and his now imprisoned accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. The couple took in Virginia, a teen waif who months earlier had been brutally raped and choked repeatedly by a stranger and afterwards was sitting alone, beaten and bleeding, on the streets of Florida close to Epstein’s walled off mansion residence. It was at this lowest moment a man of similar interests, wealth and power as Epstein, plucked her from the sewer and groomed her. She was a diamond in the rough: pretty little thing, sparkling eyes, slender, long blonde hair, the makings of a model and actress—and one other quality pedophiles crave: the look of innocence despite being sexually molested over and over by men who are their father figures if not straight-up natural daddies.
When Virginia was around 8, her father took to bathing her every night. She was, of course, uncomfortable with the new arrangement at his insistence. But both of her parents drank and became different or indifferent people when drunk. She was just a kid. What could she do? She never yelled or told anybody about what was going on. Soon he was in her bed, having sex with her, comparing her to her mother. And the story gets even uglier …
A couple years later, her father traded her to a male friend. Virginia took routine sexual abuse not in stride but in acceptance. See, she learned that every male’s interest in her would be for sex—always and forever. She acted out with boys in her school as she entered puberty. She started drinking and using drugs. A couple of older boys raped her in their car. Schools didn’t know what to do with this wild child.
And finally she started speaking out, telling everyone in the family what her dad did to her. But no one believed her. Her father beat her up for being mouthy. He didn’t want her anymore anyway. Her parents divorced. Her mother must have known what was going on in their cracker box house. But she never saved her daughter.
Virginia learned she was all alone in the world. No one loved her. On the streets as a teen, she didn’t have time to wonder why. She was in survival mode. No time for pity. As an older teen, she got a job at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and soon got trapped in the Epstein lifestyle of nude and semi-nude girls romping around a mansion featuring nude photographs and paintings on every wall every room and hall. Epstein knew what he was doing.
Virginia, however, knew she was special to Epstein and Maxwell. They wanted her to have their baby. She traveled with the wealthy jet-setting couple all over the world. All that luxury and exotic locales was mind spinning to a basic country girl from smalltown Florida. And all she had to do was ‘massage’ Epstein on occasion. (But it wasn’t just massage.)
As she matured, she thought of ways to escape. But she was deathly afraid of the couple. She knew their connections, had to sexually satisfy dozens of their rich male friends and associates. There were sex parties all the time, attended by the world’s richest and most powerful men. She named specifically former Prince Andrew. As for the many others, she details their positions in finance, politics, movies and media but without their names.
Finally, one day when she had a moment alone overseas, as Epstein and Maxwell totally trusted her, she left them for good. She married abruptly. It was love at first sight for the couple. She lived with his family in Australia. There she recuperated physically and emotionally.
Virginia’s story turns from a filthy nightmare to a fairy princess tale complete with three beautiful children and a nice home. As her children grew, she sincerely wanted her parents back in her life. Her husband did not and at one point lowered the boom when their beautiful little girl was alone with her father for a few hours. She confided in her husband every detail of her life when they met, in case he had regrets about falling in love with her, about loving her the way a husband should love his wife.
Luck and life changed instantly
Naturally, Virginia needed a lot of psychotherapy. She was innately depressed, taking assorted meds to deal with having been sexually abused by her father and then trafficked for years. And her depression—perhaps always part of her genetics and then amplified by childhood sexual abuse which directly led to her rueful choices in getting involved with Epstein and Maxwell—would break her in the end. The story is she and her husband fought a lot, verbally and physically. She had medical issues and addictions to pain killers. Her personality changed from outspoken Epstein victim (she founded the nonprofit SOAR to help girls who’ve been sexually trafficked) to someone her husband and kids didn’t recognize. Then one day, she ended her life.
The story of Virginia Roberts Giuffre is sadly American: where poverty, alcoholism and a dislove by parents who are supposed to protect their children especially from sex meets wealth and opulence where ironically sex is the price.
This is a common story because parents don’t always love their children first and foremost. And if you still think that childhood sexual abuse in the home is rare, remember that the statistic is not one in four girls but one in three who have experienced sexual molestation almost always by someone they presume is a father figure—an adult man they trust with their lives.
She titled her book Nobody’s Girl because nobody loved her. She was expected to love herself, have self respect; any smart girl knows to never have sex for money. To a child victim of sexual abuse, that is all she knows: She has a home and food, basic needs met, as long as she endures sex from her father. Considering how very sophisticated we, and unfortunately now even kids, are regarding childhood sexual abuse, we have not accepted how these young girls who grow into women feel by our society: They feel unseen, unheard, unloved—as if they don’t exist, as if they are pieces of trash.
They’re not. Never were. It’s an adult problem.