Virginia Giuffre’s book, Nobody’s Girl, is now being widely excerpted in British and American media outlets. I was worried that powerful people would be able to bury Virginia’s posthumously-published memoir, but it’s really going out into the world. The Times of London ran an excerpt of what Virginia wrote specifically about Prince Andrew. Virginia met him and was trafficked to him when she was 17 years old. Something I forgot or didn’t know? The infamous photo of Virginia, Andrew and Ghislaine (seen above) was taken BY Jeffrey Epstein. And the photo was requested by Virginia, and it was taken on her camera. Here’s more of what Virginia wrote about Andrew:
Giuffre recalls how excited she had been when Ghislaine Maxwell, who was jailed for trafficking young girls to Jeffrey Epstein, told her she would be dining that evening with Andrew. She describes feeling “like Cinderella” about to meet a “handsome prince”.
When Andrew arrived at Maxwell’s London townhouse they played “a game” that Maxwell enjoyed, Giuffre claimed; asking guests to guess Giuffre’s age. Giuffre alleged that Andrew “guessed correctly” and remarked: “My daughters [Eugenie and Beatrice] are just a little younger than you.” She claimed she slept with the duke that night, which he has denied.
Reflecting on the encounter, Giuffre wrote: “In the years since, I’ve thought a lot about how he behaved. He was friendly enough, but still entitled — as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright.” She said she was paid $15,000 by Epstein for “servicing the man the tabloids called ‘Randy Andy’”.
In the book, Giuffre described the first time she said she was introduced to Andrew. On March 10, 2001, she had been staying at Maxwell’s pied-à-terre — a white mews house a short walk from Hyde Park. “Maxwell woke me up that morning by announcing in a singsongy voice: ‘Get out of bed, sleepyhead!’” Giuffre wrote. “It was going to be ‘a special day’.”
Giuffre was told she needed to dress smartly. She wrote that Maxwell had picked out an outfit for the evening, a “sophisticated dress” and a Burberry bag. But Giuffre decided to wear “a pink V-necked, sleeveless mini-T-shirt and a sparkly, multicoloured pair of jeans embroidered with a pattern of interlocking horses”, she wrote. “Maxwell wasn’t thrilled, but like most teenage girls then, I idolised Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, and the third outfit was something I imagined the two of them might wear.”
Andrew was 41 at the time and separated for some years from his wife, Sarah Ferguson, who was last month stripped of her charity positions after damaging emails to Epstein came to light. “In contrast to his appearance today — stout, white-haired, and jowly — Prince Andrew then was still relatively fit, with short-cropped brown hair and youthful eyes,” Giuffre wrote.
“My mom would never forgive me if I met someone as famous as Prince Andrew and didn’t pose for a picture. I ran to get a Kodak FunSaver from my room, then returned and handed it to Epstein. I remember the prince putting his arm around my waist as Maxwell grinned beside me. Epstein snapped the photo.” The resulting photograph of Giuffre standing in between Maxwell and the duke — his hand clutching Virginia’s bare midriff — is now infamous.
After dinner, she, Maxwell, Epstein, and Andrew went on to the nightclub Tramp. Giuffre described Andrew as “a bumbling dancer” — “I remember he sweated profusely,” she wrote. “On the way back, Maxwell told me, ‘When we get home, you are to do for him what you do for Jeffrey’,” Giuffre wrote.
She took the duke upstairs and ran a bath. “We disrobed and got in the tub, but didn’t stay there long because the prince was eager to get to the bed. He was particularly attentive to my feet, caressing my toes and licking my arches, ” she alleged in the book.
Giuffre’s second meeting with Andrew was at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion. She wrote in her memoir that Epstein and Maxwell presented Andrew with a caricature puppet of himself from the satirical Eighties’ television show Spitting Image and that he used the puppet to touch her and another woman — Johanna Sjoberg — inappropriately.
The third incident took place on Epstein’s private island Little Saint James. She does not go into much detail beyond what she testified to in a sworn deposition as part of a civil suit in 2015.
“Epstein, Andy, and approximately eight other young girls, and I had sex together,” she wrote. “The other girls all appeared to be under the age of 18 and didn’t really speak English. Epstein laughed about how they couldn’t really communicate, saying they are the easiest girls to get along with.”
She alleged she was trafficked to “more men than I can put into words”, yet very few have faced any consequences. “The way [Epstein] viewed women and girls — as playthings to be used and discarded — is not uncommon among certain powerful men who believe they are above the law. And many of those men are still going about their daily lives, enjoying the benefits of their power.”
My stomach turned at “My daughters [Eugenie and Beatrice] are just a little younger than you.” He knew how young Virginia was and he still wanted this trafficked 17-year-old. What’s also striking to me is that Maxwell and Epstein had such a well-oiled trafficking machine. We knew that, of course, but Virginia’s personal story shows how often Maxwell and Epstein did this, often enough to set a pattern, often enough to know what “worked” to convince teenage girls to let down their guard.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.
