print-icon
print-icon

A Requiem For Virginia Giuffre

Nick Bryant's Photo
by Nick Bryant
Monday, May 12, 2025 - 11:00

Authored by Nick Bryant

Like many people, I have grieved the loss of Virginia Giuffre. Though Virginia and I never met face-to-face, we talked several times on the phone, and we also had an email correspondence. She and I shared a common belief that childhood is sacrosanct, and it absolutely shouldn’t be disfigured or defiled by predators, especially predators who are being protected by the government—like Jeffrey Epstein et al. 

When I decided to write “A Requiem for Virginia Giuffre,” I felt it was important to use excerpts from our email correspondences, because after reading some the profuse apocrypha that’s currently being mass produced about her on the internet, by people who have never interacted with her, I felt it was important to incorporate her voice. Unfortunately, Virginia’s death has become a clickbait feeding frenzy for people who only seem to worship the Almighty Algorithm.

Virginia’s early years were fraught with abuse, despair, and dysfunction. She was molested by a family “friend” when she was seven years old. And then she had to endure a succession of foster homes. She ultimately landed on the streets when she was 14 years old, where all forms of dehumanizing abuse are inescapable. As she fought for survival on the streets, she was ensnared in the web of child sex trafficker Ron Eppinger.

“Being subjected to sexual abuse from a young age, I found myself living on the streets as a runaway,” she wrote in an email. “My parents put me into a foster care, but I ran away from the foster care homes and again ended up on the streets. I was then procured by my fist sex trafficker—Ronald Eppinger. He didn’t have the money or the sway of Epstein, which enabled Epstein to repeatedly get off the hook. Eppinger ultimately ended up in prison for sex trafficking where he died. By the age of fourteen, I had become a victim of systematic abuse.” 

Eppinger sequestered Virginia in a Miami apartment, where he pimped her out to pedophiles throughout the course of the day and night. He then came to the attention of the feds, because he was also running an adult escort service. When Eppinger realized that the FBI was closing in on him, he drove Virginia to rural Florida, where he violently abused her and imprisoned her in a barn. He then hawked Virginia to David Kelmanson, a pedophile who owned a Fort Lauderdale night club. Virginia desperately wanted to escape the vicious life that had ensnared her, but she was too frightened to seek help from law enforcement.

The FBI also started looking into Eppinger’s associates, and the feds executed a pre-dawn raid on Kelmanson in June of 1999. After agents surged into Kelsmanson’s Wilton Manor’s residence, they found Kelsmanson and Virginia together in bed. Virginia was taken to the Wilton Manor police station, and her father, Sky Roberts, was phoned. Her father picked her up at the police station, and he decided not to banish Virginia to another round of foster care. Sky worked as a maintenance man at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, and he enabled Virginia to land a job as a locker room attendant at the Club’s spa. Virginia aspired to become a masseuse, and she was reading a book on massage when Ghislaine Maxwell approached her at the Club. 

“I met Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s prestigious resort,” Virginia wrote. “She convinced that me she was a very nice person, and she had a friend [Epstein], who was a philanthropist. She promised me that if Epstein liked me, he would spring for me to become a massage therapist. I was with Epstein from 2000 to 2002. I had already been conditioned to a life of sexual abuse, so I didn’t require training.”

Virginia was trafficked and sexually abused at the hands of the rich and powerful from 1999 to 2002. After she lost her youthful marketability in her later teens, Epstein and Maxwell arranged for her to take a massage class in Thailand. However, the massage class wasn’t a byproduct of their altruism. Epstein and Maxwell had apparently bought a child in Thailand, and they wanted Virginia to deliver the child to them. 

“They wanted me to have a baby for them—a baby that I would have to sign over to their custody,” wrote Virginia. “That scared me to death, so I asked them to finally pay for the massage course they had promised me. But, of course, they never did anything out of kindness. Ghislaine gave me an envelope that had instructions on how I was to bring back a minor from Thailand for their trafficking ring. This info is verified by receipts and the envelope itself Maxwell gave to me, which I gave to my lawyers.”

Virginia told me that she absolutely didn’t want to facilitate banishing a child to the Epstein and Maxwell inferno, and she was racked by ambivalence when she was in Thailand. As Virginia was in the throes of indecision, she met Robert Giuffre, an Australian martial arts trainer. Virginia explained to Robert her charge in Thailand. She and Robert had an instantaneous love affair, and they married a few days later. She accompanied him back to Australia. 

Virginia had been ensconced with Robert in Australia for approximately five years, and she was pregnant with her second child when she received unforeseen and extremely disconcerting phone calls from both Epstein and Maxwell in 2007. They inquired if Virginia had coughed up any information to law enforcement about their child trafficking network. And she responded that she had been mum’s-the-word about their illicit enterprise.

After Epstein and Maxwell phoned Virginia, she was phoned by a pair of FBI agents. Virginia initially thought they were confederates of Epstein’s trying to pump her for information. The Miami Herald reported that the FBI agents wrote Virginia, and she told the agents “not bother her again.” But Virginia maintained that the agents made a half-baked attempt to elicit information from her, and asked her a “few graphic questions about her sex life.” Virginia told The Miami Herald that she would have cooperated with the agents if they had talked to her face-to-face and offered specifics about their investigation. “I was still scared to death,’’ she told a reporter. “Jeffrey used to tell me that he owned the entire Palm Beach Police Department. I just didn’t want my family harmed.’’ 

Two FBI agents eventually interviewed Virginia at the U.S. Consulate in Sidney. “They seemed to be very professional and hard working,” Virgina wrote. “I thought to myself, ‘Wow, these people will do the right thing against the bad guys and protect me.’ The agents were mainly focused on Epstein but while there I provided them some information about others who were involved in illegal acts as well.”

The FBI had prepared a 53-page federal indictment, charging Epstein with numerous counts of child sexual abuse that had the potential to land him in a federal prison for life.

As Virginia felt somewhat safe being tucked away in Australia, events were unfolding 11,000 miles away from her that would have major ramifications for her life. 

The Palm Beach Police Department started investigating Epstein in 2005 after a 14-old-year-old girl told her parents that she had been molested by Epstein. Her parents took her to the Palm Beach Police Department, and she was able to describe Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion and also his anatomy. The Palm Beach Police Department ultimately collected the statements of five underage victims of Epstein, and also the statements of 12 people who corroborated the five victims. However, Palm Beach police knew of 17 additional underage Epstein victims.  

The Palm Beach Police Department was in the process of charging Epstein with four count of unlawful sexual activity with a minor, and one count of lewd and lascivious molestation. But Palm Beach state attorney Barry Krischer swooped in and snatched the Epstein case from the PBPD. He opted to impanel a grand jury in 2006 to investigate the Epstein child abuse allegations. (Grand juries in Florida are extremely rare unless the crime involves a capital offense.) 

A grand jury makes the initial decision to indict (formally accuse) a criminal defendant to stand trial. Grand juries aren’t open to the public, and the identity of the witnesses who testify and the content of their testimony are never disclosed. The special prosecutor of a grand jury calls the witnesses, questions the witnesses, and selects the evidence that is shown to the grand jurors, and grand jurors are normal, everyday citizens who have shown up for jury duty and been funneled to a grand jury. Special prosecutors are in a unique position to manipulate grand jurors’ judgments. Sol Wachtler, a former Chief Judge of the New York Court of Appeals, famously quipped that a special prosecutor could persuade grand jurors to “indict a ham sandwich.”

And the grand jury investigating Epstein was a ham and Swiss on rye. The special prosecutor of the grand jury, Lanna Belohlavek, ensured that Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t indicted on a single count of child abuse.

Palm Beach Police Chief Michael Reiter called the grand jury “the worst failure of the criminal justice system” in modern times, and he took the case to the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Alexander Acosta, who assured him that the feds would pursue justice. But the Justice Department made a very dirty deal in 2007 with Epstein and his phalanx of high-priced lawyers that culminated in Epstein spending 13 months in a county jail. 

When Acosta was transitioning to Donald Trump’s labor secretary, he was asked about Epstein, and he reportedly responded: He had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his “pay grade.” “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”

Many people think that Epstein was an Israeli intelligence operative, and he may very well have worked for Israeli intelligence. But only two people in the United States can order a US attorney to stand down: the attorney general and the president. It’s difficult for me to believe that an attorney general would cover-up a nationwide child trafficking network without first running it by his superior, the president. At the time, in 2007, George W. Bush was the president, and Alberto Gonzalez was the attorney general. 

After Acosta’s directive to stand down, the Justice Department forged a non-prosecution agreement with Epstein’s dream team of attorneys. The pact gave blanket immunity to all of Epstein’s co-conspirators, even though the Justice Department was now aware of at least 34 underage victims. 

In the Justice Department’s zeal to cover up its down and dirty deal with Epstein and his numerous co-conspirators, it ordered the non-prosecution agreement and other documents that demonstrated the feds’ malfeasance to be sealed. However, the Justice Department’s Byzantine machinations broke the law, because the Department violated the 2004 Crime Victims' Rights Act (CVRA), which mandates that victims of crimes have to be informed about the adjudication of their perpetrators’ cases, and they have the option of confronting them in court.

In 2008, Florida lawyer Brad Edwards and former federal judge Paul Cassell represented Epstein victim Courtney Wild. Edwards would ultimately represent several Epstein victims. He had come to the conclusion that Epstein was “…the most dangerous child molester in modern history.” 

Edwards and Cassell felt it was imperative to revisit whatever pact the Justice Department had made with Epstein on the grounds that the Epstein’s victims had not been informed when his case was being adjudicated, contravening the CVRA. They felt the CVRA case would overturn the criminal accord the government made with Epstein. The judge in the case, Kenneth Marra, ultimately ruled that Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement should be unsealed. The Justice Department appealed Marra’s decision, because it certainly didn’t want its dirty deal with Epstein to be made public. Marra’s decision ultimately wended to the US 11th Circuit Court, which sided with Marra. The documentation was unsealed. In addition to the utterly corrupt non-prosecution agreement, a myriad of documents were released that demonstrated the feds’ gross misconduct. When the Justice Department made its unholy pact with Epstein, it was actually aware of 40 underage Epstein victims.

As Edwards was working on the CVRA case, he was contacted by a reporter from the Daily Mail, Sharon Churcher, who inquired about Virginia. Edwards was aware that Virginia had been in Epstein’s inner circle, and he had a few leads on her whereabouts. He decided to give his leads to Churcher, because she was willing to “travel across the world to knock of her [Virginia’s] door.” Churcher found Virginia Down Under. 

After Virginia talked to Churcher, she phoned Edwards and told him that she wanted to be involved in the CVRA case. She also wanted to help put Epstein in prison. After Virginia told Ewards a mindboggling tale of international flights and named numerous powerful men who molested her as a minor, he asked if she had corroboration. Virginia then emailed him a copy of the instructions Maxwell had given her before she embarked to Thailand. She also emailed him the now infamous picture of her standing next to a smiling Prince Andrew with his arm around her waist. Edwards felt that her disclosure about Prince Andrew was her most “preposterous” but the picture quelled many of his doubts.

In the summer of 2014, Virginia moved back to America, because she felt duty-bound to fight for the CVRA case. 

She was the affiant of a January 2015 affidavit that Edwards and Cassell submitted for the CVRA case. The affidavit was pyrotechnic, naming Ghislaine Maxwell, Alan Dershowitz, Prince Andrew, and Jean Luc Brunel as among her sexual perpetrators when she was a minor. Brunel and Epstein were the proprietors of a “modeling agency,” MC2, which was essentially a front for Epstein and Brunel to acquire underage girls, many of whom were from Eastern Europe. Like Epstein, Brunel had an infamous reputation of being an unrepentant predator on young girls. An excerpt from Virginia’s affidavit describes Epstein’s malignant lifestyle with underage girls.

“Epstein, Brunel, and Maxwell loved orgies with kids — that is, having sexual interactions with many young teenagers at the same time. … Sometimes as many as ten underage girls would participate in a single orgy with them. I personally observed dozens of these orgies. The orgies happened on Epstein’s island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, in New Mexico, Palm Beach, and many other places. Most of the girls did not speak English. … Brunel ran some kind of modelling agency and appeared to have an arrangement with the U.S. Government where he could get passports or other travel documents for young girls. He would then bring these young girls (girls ranging in age from 12 to 24) to the United States for sexual purposes and farm them out to his friends, including Epstein.”

Maxwell accused Virginia of lying in her 2015 affidavit, and Virginia sued her for defamation of character. In a deposition, Virginia named some of the men who had abused her. Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, wealthy financier Glenn Dubin, former senator George Mitchell, now-deceased MIT scientist Marvin Minsky. The men issued public denials, and that appeared to be the extent their fates vis-à-vis federal law enforcement. All the men named by Virgina should’ve been a grail for the media, but, yet again, the media abrogated its concern and responsibilities for the Epstein’s victims. 

Virginia told me that she had been molested by L Brands potentate and billionaire Les Wexner and also by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Virginia disclosed that she was particularly frightened of Ehud Barak and Les Wexner. Barak frightened her because of his connections to the Mossad and his sadistic bent, and Wexner frightened her because of his connections to the Mafia. Wexner is a denizen of Ohio, and his L Brands is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio. A 1991 report from the Columbus Division of Police (CDV) implicates Wexner in a 1985 murder and also discusses his possible affiliation with organized crime. 

Though Maxwell unleashed her stone-cold lawyers on Virginia, she stood strong and unflustered. The evidence connecting Maxwell to Virginia was insurmountable, and Maxwell decided to settle. She compensated Virginia an undisclosed amount, but the Miami Herald reported it was in the millions. 

In August of 2021, Virginia filed a lawsuit against Prince Andrew in U.S. federal court for sexually assaulting her as a minor. Prince Andrew’s battalion of attorneys attempted to have the lawsuit dismissed on myriad technicalities, but the judge in the case, Lewis Kaplan, ultimately ruled that Virginia’s lawsuit could proceed. Prince Andrew settled the lawsuit with Virginia in February of 2022. Though terms of the settlement are confidential, it’s been repeatedly reported that Prince Andrew settled the lawsuit for $12 million. 

As a result of the 2015 affidavit in which Virginia named former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz as a pedophilic perpetrator, Dershowitz initiated a scorched earth campaign against Virginia, Edwards, and Cassell. Epstein had 11 phone numbers for Dershowitz. In the affidavit, Virginia stated that she had sex with Dershowitz “at least six times.” Dershowitz proclaimed Giuffre was a liar of the first magnitude. He also declared that Giuffre’s attorneys were deliberately lying and vowed that he wouldn’t “stop until they’re disbarred.” Edwards and Cassell sued Dershowitz for defamation.  

As Dershowitz was trading salvoes with Edwards and Cassell, he gave an interview to The American Lawyer in January of 2015, vindicating himself as a perpetrator: “I’ve been married to the same woman for 28 years,” he said. “She goes with me everywhere. People know that I won’t argue a case or give a speech unless my wife travels with me.” 

I acquired Epstein’s Black Book in 2012, and I was able to usher it and his flight logs to the internet in 2015 because, finally, a publication or platform had the pluck to publish them—Gawker.

Epstein’s flight logs show that Dershowitz accompanied Epstein on a December 1997 flight from Palm Beach to New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport, and they were accompanied by one unidentified “female,” as well as a “Hazel,” a “Claire,” and Maxwell. A 2005 flight log shows Epstein and Dershowitz traveling from Massachusetts to Montreal with a “Tatianna,” et al. Dershowitz’s wife is noticeably absent on those flights and others. 

In the Gawker article I wrote about the flight logs, Dershowitz’s steal-trap mind became rather rusty:

As for who else was on those flights, Dershowitz couldn’t recall. Hazel? “I don’t know.” Claire? “I have no idea.” Tatianna? “I think that was a woman in her 20s who was Epstein’s girlfriend, but I never flew with her.” The unidentified female? “That could have been my mother.”

Dershowitz was the architect of Epstein’s 2008 plea bargain, and his strategy was to firebomb the credibility of the Epstein victims. The New Yorker notes his vicious comments about Giuffre: “…he called her a ‘serial liar,’ a ‘prostitute,’ and a ‘bad mother,’ who could not be believed ‘against somebody with an unscathed reputation like me.’ He insisted that Giuffre had ‘made the whole thing up out of whole cloth,’ in search of ‘a big payday.” When a TV reporter in Miami questioned his characterization of Giuffre, a sex-abuse victim, as a ‘prostitute,’ Dershowitz replied, ‘She made her own decisions in life.’” 

The lawsuit in which Dershowitz vowed to have Edwards and Cassell disbarred ended in a stalemate. Edwards and Cassell issued a statement declaring that they continued to believe Giuffre but that naming Dershowitz “became a major distraction from the merits of the well-founded Crime Victims’ Rights Act case.” While Dershowitz’s vow of banishing Edwards and Cassell from the legal profession came to naught, he did express his views on adults having sex with adolescents in a Los Angeles Times op-ed: He proposed that the age of consent should be 15 years old, regardless of the partner’s age. Dershowitz also wrote a 2002 article that lobbied for child sexual abuse material to be legal.

In 2019, Derwshowitz and Virginia sued each other for defamation character. In November of 2022, Virginia issued a statement that rescinded her accusations against him: “I now recognize I may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz,” 

I was shocked by Virgina’s recantation, because she had been such a stalwart block of granite. I texted one of her lawyers about her retraction and, naturally, he said that he couldn’t comment. Derwshowitz had found a means to leverage her, and I hope that one day we discover how he wielded a Damoclean sword over her head.

Virginia and I chanced upon each other on Twitter in 2020, and we started exchanging emails. When we met, she he had settled the lawsuit with Maxwell, she was in the midst of litigation with Dershowitz, and it was before she filed a lawsuit against Prince Andrew.

In July of 2020, I was presenting at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s Global Summitt, and my presentation was about the law enforcement coverup of Epstein’s child trafficking network. I talked to the Summit’s organizers, and they wholeheartedly welcomed a presentation by Virginia and a second Epstein victim.

I found Virginia to be very bright and effervescent, and she was extremely committed to waging a campaign against child sexual trafficking.

At the time, Virginia was launching Victims Refuse Silence, a nonprofit organization whose mandate was educating the public about sex trafficking, assisting in the rescue of victims off the streets or from their abusers, and giving victims a platform to share their stories. Victims Refuse Silence included the building of a state-of-the-art rehab for victims of sexual abuse victims in Florida.

“Today I am an advocate for victims of sexual abuse via Victims Refuse Silence and speaking out through media to help educate the public on how severe the pandemic of sex trafficking is in every country, state and country,” she said in an email to me. “It’s victims come from every socioeconomic part of society, and it knows no boundaries. I do this not just for my beautiful children but all children’s lives.” 

Virginia, however, seemed to run out of momentum, and she inexplicably disengaged from people who shared her vision of putting a spotlight on child sexual trafficking.

I wondered what had put a damper on her enthusiasm, and I eventually discovered that she was enduring severe domestic abuse, which could have put her in a survival mode and rendered her unable to actualize her vision for Victims Refuse Silence. It’s also difficult to know how Alan Derwshowitz and his minions were negatively impacting her life.

In August of 2023, Virginia and Robert separated. During a trip to celebrate one of the children's birthdays on January 9th of this year, Robert reportedly gave her a severe beating that “cracked her sternum and perforated her eye” among other injuries.

"I think the last incident that they had, she almost died," said Amanda Roberts, Virginia’s sister-in-law. "And we had to speak that truth with her on the phone. And I think she had acknowledged that if she had one more instance with him, she wasn't making it out of there."

Virginia’s family was dumbfounded when Robert hastily filed a family restraining order against Virginia alleging that she incited the violence. The court temporarily granted him custody of their children. 

"He just put his in place first," said Sky Roberts, Viginia’s brother. "Now she's on the defense." The New York Post reported that Virginia and her husband then became embroiled in a contentious custody battle over their three children who are ages 19, 16 and 15.

According to 7News in Perth, Australia, Virginia breached the restraining order by texting her husband on February 2, which he obviously reported to law enforcement. 

On March 24, in rural Western Australia, a school bus hit the Toyota Highlander in which Virginia was riding—she was in the passenger seat. Law enforcement reported that the car sustained about $2,000 worth of damage. West Australian police stated that they had a recent record of a “minor” bus and car collision. Virginia claimed that the bus was traveling at nearly 70 miles-per-hour at the time of the crash. But the school bus driver, Ross Munns, disagreed with Virginia’s version of the accident. He said that she had “blown [it] out of proportion.” West Australian police also confirmed that there were “no reported injuries” following the accident.

According to 9News Perth, however, Virginia admitted herself to Joondalup Hospital in the northern suburbs of Perth immediately after the accident, and she underwent tests that revealed she had a kidney-related issue. She was discharged from the hospital the following day.

On April 1, Virginia was rushed to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital by ambulance. The New York Post reported that she was at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital for six days.

On her first day at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, Virginia released a bruised and battered picture of herself on Instagram. The Independent reported that the picture wasn’t a result of the accident, but rather, it was the result of a fall.

Her brother and sister-in-law said that Virginia was on pain medication in the hospital, and her intention was to release the grisly picture on her private Facebook page and not on Instagram. The picture was also accompanied by a message: “This year has been the worst start to a new year, I won’t bore anyone with the details, but I think it important to note that when a school bus driver comes at you driving 110km as we were slowing for a turn that no matter what your car is made of it might as well be a tin can. I’ve gone into kidney renal failure, they’ve given me four days to live…”

Her brother clarified Virginia’s statement about her impending death. He said that one of her physicians told her she had four days to live if she didn’t receive the medical care she required.

On April 5, during Virginia’s hospitalization at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, she broke her silence about her domestic abuse, and said in a statement to People that her husband had administered the beating that resulted in her recent hospitalization. "I was able to fight back against Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein who, abused and trafficked me,” Virginia said in a statement. “But I was unable to escape the domestic violence in my marriage until recently. After my husband's latest physical assault, I can no longer stay silent."

Virginia was discharged from Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital on Monday April 7, and on Wednesday April 9 she had a hearing before a magistrate, because of her breaching the domestic violence restraining order initiated by her husband. Virginia was not required to attend the hearing, and her attorney requested that the hearing be postponed. 

Magistrate Andrew Maughan rescheduled the hearing for June 11, when Virginia would be required to appear in person and enter a plea of guilty or not guilty for breach of the domestic violence restraining order.

Thus far, the details of Virginia’s life are extremely sparse from the time she was discharged from Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital until her death on April 25.

Virginia's brother, Sky Roberts, was staying with her at the time of her death.

The internet has been abuzz with bizarre speculation about Virginia’s death. I’ve seen accounts of her being assassinated by the Mossad and also of her faking her death.

A December 10, 2019 tweet of Virginia’s has surfaced and bounced around the internet: “I am making it publicy known that in no way, shape or form am I sucidal. I have made this known to my therapist and GP- If something happens to me- in the sake of my family do not let this go away and help me to protect them. Too many evil people want to see me quiteted.”

Her 2019 tweet has been an accelerant to the frenzied speculation about her death. At that time, the genesis of Virginia’s fear was most likely the release of her 2016 deposition three months earlier in which she named a number of her rich and powerful perpetrators.

Because Virginia had named her perpetrators publicly and privately, and those men have been untouched by law enforcement, I believe she wouldn’t have been “suicided” to ensure her silence. The only reason I can think of for any of Virginia’s perpetrators to murder her would be out of sheer vindictiveness. And though it is perhaps within the realm of reason that Virginia was murdered out of spite, I’m inclined to believe that the trauma engendered by years of child sexual abuse from countless perpetrators and the horrific circumstances of her domestic abuse were ultimately the critical mass for her taking her own life.

I wrote The Franklin Scandal: A Story of Powerbrokers Child Abuse and Betrayal, a book about an elite child trafficking network that was covered up by both Nebraska and federal authorities, and that was in many ways a carbon copy of the Epstein child trafficking network. In The Franklin Scandal, two people in Nebraska ostensibly died from suicide, and one ostensibly died from playing Russian roulette. In those cases, their families were incredulous of the official pronouncements. In the cases of the two supposed suicides, I believe they were murdered. In Virginia’s case, her bother was staying with her when she committed suicide, and her brother and sister-in-law aren’t incredulous of the official pronouncement. But her father has voiced his disbelief about her committing suicide.

Unfortunately but understandably, several studies over the years have demonstrated that survivors of child sexual abuse have very high suicide rates. A 2019 meta-analysis conducted by researchers at Manchester University concluded that survivors of child sexual abuse are three times more likely to kill themselves than the general population. Victims of child sexual abuse are also prone to having partners who perpetrate domestic violence. When Virginia initially met her husband, he appeared to be Lancelot saving Guinevere, but, over time, he mutated into Ivan the Terrible. Moreover, Virginia’s early abuse enabled her to emanate a bright exterior, and unified front with her husband, even though she was in the midst of her own private hell.  

Sadly, there isn’t a shortage of victims like Virginia in the US who’ve endured repeated molestations and have been sex trafficked with impunity. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 25% of underage girls and 5% of underage boys in the US experience child sexual abuse, which translates into more than 50 million Americans. 

In addition to the CDC’s staggering statistics about the number of Americans who have been molested as minors, a study by the Department of Health and Human Services estimates that the number of sex trafficked children and women in the US is between 240,000 and 325,000 every year. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, only 523 individuals nationwide were convicted of child sex trafficking in 2023. And although millions of images of child sexual abuse material infest the internet, according to the US Sentencing Commission only 1,408 individuals in the US were convicted of crimes entailing child sexual abuse material in 2023. 

Despite numerous government agencies, and hundreds of anti-trafficking and anti-exploitation NGOs, only an infinitesimal fraction of 1% of sexual abuse and trafficking victims actually see justice. So, if we allow the Justice Department to be unresponsive to victims in the Epstein case, a proven child sex trafficking case, that sends a message to millions of victims that they have no voice and no hope for justice. 

I realize the Epstein case has comingled with fanciful or deluded speculation on the internet, but it nonetheless epitomizes the absence of convictions for child trafficking and for the production and dissemination of child sexual abuse material. Ghislaine Maxwell is the only perpetrator in the Epstein trafficking network who has been convicted, and she is certainly a fraction of 1% of those pimps and perpetrators.

The Justice Department under four presidential administrations – George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joseph Biden – has failed to indict the perpetrators and procurers in Epstein's pedophile network. As Americans, we need to know why four presidential administrations have covered up the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and his cadre of co-conspirators. And, unbelievably, the dirty deal the feds made with Epstein that contravened the Crime Victims' Rights Act, giving blanket immunity to all of his co-conspirators, was never overturned in a federal court. It was ultimately appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court, which opted not to hear it. 

The second incarnation of the Donald Trump administration vowed to give us greater government transparency in multiple areas, including the Jeffrey Epstein case. On February 21, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the Epstein client list was “sitting on my desk” for review. On February 26, she proclaimed on national television that the “Epstein files” would be released the following day: “What you’re gonna see tomorrow is a lot of flight logs, a lot of names, a lot of information.” But when the highly anticipated tranche of documents was released, her words had been much ado about nothing. 

When the documents provided no new allegations and revelations, Bondi then declared that she had been bamboozled by the FBI’s New York field office. Regardless of how we slice Bondi’s actions, she has to shoulder the blame for the fiasco, because either she lied on national television, or she didn’t diligently review the documents on her “desk.” Because I’m a charitable person, I’ll ascribe her actions to incompetence instead of mendacity and surmise that she didn’t peruse the documents before their release. 

Bondi continued to hemorrhage credibility in the wake of her Epstein document debacle, because she told America that the Epstein documents that are to be released in the future will only have redactions if they infringe upon "national security." So, now it’s incumbent on her to tell us why a bunch of child molesters would infringe upon national security.

Bondi proclaimed yesterday, May 6, that the FBI has been sifting through Jeffrey Epstein's "tens of thousands of videos" of child abuse material that contains "hundreds of victims," which is the rationale she is offering for the delayed release of the "Epstein files."

According to July 8, 2019, New York Times article, federal authorities seized “hundreds—possibly thousands—of sexually suggestive photographs of girls who appear underage, as well as hand-labeled compact discs with titles like ‘Girl pics nude,’ and, with the names redacted, ‘Young [Name] + [Name].’”Judging by the titles on the discs, Epstein was a purveyor of child sexual abuse material. The latter disc named by the New York Times is perhaps an indication of blackmail? Moreover, Business Insider reported that an FBI agent later confessed that “hard drives” were taken from the safe.

So, the FBI has been in possession of Epstein's huge cache of child abuse material since 2019 when it opened his New York mansion’s safe, which had the dimensions of a closet. I've always contended that the FBI and Justice Department didn't contact the "hundreds of victims" displayed in Epstein's child abuse material, because that would've impaired their coverup of the Epstein network. And if the FBI is only now looking at Epstein's child abuse material I, was absolutely right.

But for Bondi to say that the FBI is only now looking at Epstein's child abuse material is grossly disingenuous. The feds have had nearly six years to look at the child abuse material in Epstein's safe, and I guarantee that they've looked at it—like I previously guaranteed that the victims of Epstein's child abuse material have not been contacted.

The victims of Epstein’s massive cache of child sexual abuse material need to be identified and helped with the psychological devastation that invariably accompanies being used for child sexual abuse material. It is a rather peculiar facet of our society that people’s attention is fixated on the names of perpetrators, and the destruction of children over the course of 25 years is never mentioned when Epstein is discussed in the media. 

As Americans, we need to address the Justice Department coverup of the pimps and the perpetrators in the Epstein network. The coverup of crime is aiding and abetting that crime. We can no longer coexist with a government that aids and abets child trafficking. Epstein shouldn’t have been able to molest a single minor after the Palm Beach Police Department’s investigation in 2005, but he and his cronies undoubtedly molested hundreds of underage girls in the 14 years between the PBPD investigation and his arrest in 2019.   

We need to save little girls like Virginia from the horrors of being sex trafficked with impunity. The Justice Department has quickly moved on from the Epstein case, even though the government institutions that allowed the victims in Epstein’s trafficking network to be molested and trafficked with impunity have been unscathed. Tragically, the hundreds of anti-exploitation organizations in the US have quickly moved on from the Epstein case, too. The Epstein case screams for America’s anti-exploitation organizations and MeToo to unite and redress the government malfeasance, but, appallingly, like the media, all of them have abrogated their responsibilities to the Epstein victims and thus to all victims.

After the incomprehensible trauma that Virginia experienced, she somehow summoned the courage to confront some of her perpetrators. As Americans, we must summon the courage to confront our institutions of government that woefully failed the Epstein victims. If our cowardice to confront the government triumphs, then the blood will also be on our hands.   

“We need every person who has a heart/conscience to stand up and say, “Enough is enough,” Virginia said in an email to me. “Our children should be our first and foremost concern.”

Please summon the courage to join us at Epstein Justice.

Contributor posts published on Zero Hedge do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Zero Hedge, and are not selected, edited or screened by Zero Hedge editors.
Loading...