The Epstein Papers are causing explosions of scandal every time the name of a famous person is revealed. The notoriously corrupt and corrupting sex offender hanged himself in prison, and his cohort, Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving out a 20-year sentence. One of the courageous women, whose testimony helped convict the two, died by suicide in April last year. In October, Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s memoir, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, was published and has been on the bestseller lists since then.
Many survivors of the Epstein-Maxwell sex trafficking operation agreed to appear on camera (including Giuffre) in the two Filthy Rich documentaries on Netflix, but reading about one woman’s honest account of what those two monsters did—and for years escaped the law on the basis of their wealth and power—can be shocking and enraging.
It must have been a difficult book to write, because she opened herself to judgement—many reading her account of the lavish lifestyle she led as part of Epstein’s entourage must have felt that she had it easy. But behind the glamour, there was abuse, helplessness, fear, the indignity of being ‘supplied’ to powerful men and being unable to walk out because of the reach Epstein had in the upper echelons of power. He bought off cops, judges, politicians, bureaucrats, diplomats and media persons for years and carried on with impunity.
Grooming, power and complicity
Maxwell, who sourced underage girls to feed the lust of this man and countless others, was attached to him with a twisted rope, so that to keep him, she had to find ways to fulfil his needs. They had the ability to pick girls who were vulnerable so that it was not just easier to groom and use them, but they also made sure they never found the courage to escape or expose them. It’s not as if there was no investigation, but most of the time, Epstein managed to get away or had his lawyers broker deals that allowed him to remain free. The media, which wondered occasionally about the source of his immense wealth, also wrote puff pieces about him—his looks, his magnificent homes, his art collection and the beautiful people who swarmed around them.
Giuffre had been abused by her own father when she was six, and he also allowed a friend to rape the child. Her mother stayed silent while the daughter suffered and kept sending her to a juvenile home. Life in the institution was so terrible that she kept running away, and every time she trusted someone to help her, she was sexually abused. The constant trauma led her to believe that she somehow deserved what happened to her.
When Maxwell encountered the pretty teenager, she was working as a locker room attendant at a luxury club. She was taken to Epstein’s mansion ostensibly to give him a massage, but a few visits to 'learn' massage led to rape and gradually, she was entrapped, too confused or frightened to break away. She was taken around the world and trafficked to men—Prince Andrew’s name has already been exposed, but there were many others. One of them, Giuffre does not name in the book but says he was a prime minister, brutalised her so badly that she emerged bleeding profusely. Epstein coldly said, “You’ll get that sometimes.”
She writes in the book, “But the worst things Epstein and Maxwell did to me weren’t physical but psychological. From the start, they manipulated me into participating in behaviours that ate away at me, eroding my ability to comprehend reality and preventing me from defending myself. From the start, I was groomed to be complicit in my own devastation. Of all the terrible wounds they inflicted, that forced complicity was the most destructive.”
The tragedy of ‘Nobody’s Girl’
Other survivors of sexual violence have written books, and there have been studies on how patriarchal power structures facilitate abuse. The title of the book—Nobody’s Girl—is particularly tragic, since Giuffre was isolated by her own family. Her predators created a situation where her only value was defined by her utility to men. The "Nobody" in the title is not just a reflection of her status as an orphan or a runaway; it is a reflection of how the patriarchy views young, vulnerable women as disposable commodities without agency.
A section of the book deals with the physical toll of this exploitation. Giuffre writes about the ectopic pregnancy she suffered and the chronic physical pain that plagued her for the rest of her life. She found the courage to escape when Epstein sent her to Thailand to do a course in massage therapy; there she met Robert Giuffre, whom she married and moved to Australia with. Away from the clutches of the two, she regained a semblance of normalcy in her life. She had three children and tried to give them the best she could afford.
At some point, she felt that she must seek justice and, with the support of her family, participated in the legal proceedings against Epstein and Maxwell. It meant having her life and her pain turned into tabloid fodder, living in fear for the safety of her family and enduring hate pieces in the media.
She goes against the “Good Victim" trope that says that a woman must be blameless to be believed and to deserve justice. Giuffre does not conceal her own mistakes and missteps. She discusses being "sexualised against her will" and how she survived by "acquiescing"—something that is used to tarnish a woman’s testimony in court.
Emma Brockes wrote in The Guardian, “It is also a book about how a young woman becomes a hero. And yet here she is, having to charm us out of shrinking from her in horror. Of course, these assumptions of hers aren’t wrong. Giuffre, who was 41 when she died and whose deft, smart book is co-written with the journalist Amy Wallace, knows that to be a victim of sexual violence is to be at best pitied and at worst reviled. Sample the headline from the Daily News: “Jeffrey Epstein Accuser Was Not a Sex Slave, but a Money-Hungry Sex Kitten, Her Former Friends Say.””
The book is a harrowing read, not just because such a thing happened for so long on such a large scale, but also because exploitation of girls and young women continues, in some form or the other, and, in most cases, goes unpunished.
Deepa Gahlot is a Mumbai-based columnist, critic and author.
