When she heard the news of Virginia Giuffre’s death by suicide at the age of 41, author and campaigner Joeli Brearley felt devastated.
In 2021 Giuffre had sued Prince Andrew, accusing him of sexually abusing her at Jeffrey Epstein’s New York home, as well as other locations, in 2001, when she was under the age of 18. The prince, who denied all claims against him, reached an out of court settlement with Virginia in 2022.
‘A week or two after the case had finished, I contacted her on social media,’ says Joeli. “It was for a few reasons. Firstly, I really wanted her to know what the impact of her case had on British women. Maybe she does know, I thought, but I wanted to make sure of it. During the trial you could see how brutal it was for her; the public shaming, the scrutiny, the going over of the most painful parts of her life. And all the while she was a mother with a family.”
Virginia left behind three children, two boys and a girl aged 19, 16, and 15, who she had with her husband Robert Guiffre (the couple had separated in 2023).
‘The other reason why I wanted to contact her and show my support was because at the time I was CEO of the charity Pregnant Then Screwed (PTS), which fights maternity discrimination,’ says Joeli. ‘At the time we were right in the middle of a campaign about Non-Disclosure Agreements and speaking to hundreds of women who had been silenced by them. They had endured unfair treatment, in some cases harassment and bullying, and were gagged from speaking about it publicly. And then you had Virginia Guiffre who had endured all that she had, and was standing up to some of the most powerful people in the world, who just wanted to silence her. Despite this, she was so defiant.
‘I never expected her to reply, but she did, saying how thankful she was that I had taken the time to email her. She was kind, and supportive of our work at PTS, and unbelievably she said she wished she had somebody like me in her corner. I remember thinking, it’s the other way round, I wish you were in my corner. She had just been through this brutal case, yet she was interested in the work we were doing and was so gracious and kind. I remember thinking, how can you be such a badass and such a lovely, thoughtful person all at once.’
It has been reported that Virginia, who was born in the US, was abused by a family friend at the age of seven. By her teens she had run away from home, and at 16 found herself working at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s Florida resort. It was there she met Ghislaine Maxwell who was working for the late billionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who died in jail in 2019 where he was awaiting trial for sex trafficking charges. In 2021, Giuffre told New York magazine that she still had nightmares about Epstein abusing her, saying, ‘I always wake up wishing I didn’t have to live so much in the past.’
Days after her death, Virginia’s sister-in-law Amanda Roberts told journalists, “We lost our sister. Her children lost their mother, and her mother lost her daughter. That's where we are now. She was one of the most beautiful souls you would ever have the chance to meet. But I think sometimes, that load and that weight becomes too much to carry.’
In March this year, Virginia posted a photograph of herself bruised and in hospital, writing that her doctors had ‘given me four days to live’ and ‘I’m ready to go, just not until I see my babies one last time.’ Lady Victoria Hervey, a former girlfriend of Prince Andrew, reposted the photo with the word ‘karma’. [Virginia’s family later claimed she had intended to only post it on her private Facebook account, after it was claimed the crash was minor, and she was in the middle of a bitter custody battle with her ex-husband].
‘We see it time and again when women speak out,’ says Joeli. ‘Society waits for them to slip up in some way so they can say, “we knew you were flawed, we knew you were lying.” We have to find the faults and the cracks in victims, as proof that they were lying. We can’t allow women to be victims and heroes, while also being imperfect. We have to portray them as a wreck. But to endure what she endured, and to fight as hard as she did for herself and for other women, Virginia was anything but.’
Or as her sister-in-law put it, ‘The world [has] lost a fierce warrior. She wished for all survivors to get justice. That is who she was.’