Epstein liked to share with me what he insisted were “scientific” justifications for his yearnings for young girls– Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody’s Girl
Nobody’s Girl is a memoir of Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who hit the headlines as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s most outspoken victim. She was the woman whose decision to reel out her story helped send both serial abusers to prison. Had she not spoken about her sufferings, the infamous Epstein file would have never seen the sunlight.
The names of many heads of state, intellectuals, statesmen, and business tycoons, who had abused minor girls, emerged from the pages of the book. Nobody’s Girl may be Giuffre’s own story, in her own words.
It is more insidious than just abuse. It is, however, yet to be known whether she had committed suicide or she was forced to do so at the age of 41. Some of those who predated the little girls threatened Virginia to shut her mouth, or else she would be liquidated. So, all precautions were taken to script the book meticulously, writes her collaborator in the introduction to the memoir.
The purpose of her memoir, as is told in the introduction, was to help “other people – not just the survivors of Epstein’s cruelty, but any person, male or female, who’d ever been coerced into sex against his or her will.”
She further writes, “When I was a sex slave, I had no say. I have promised myself that I will never have “no say” again.” What saddens the reader more is the fact that a British woman, Ghislaine Maxwell, colluded with predator Epstein to bring minor girls into his bawdy house.
The woman, who used to call herself “G-Max,” played the den mother to Epstein’s hall of shame. Now, she is in prison. But through the book, Giuffre beguiles and apologises for how she, too, used to drag the girls into Epstein’s cathouse. At times her narration is crude but makes the reader feel pity for the poor girls whom Maxwell used to entice with money and a bright future.
It is not only the story about Giuffre but also about power, corruption,
industrial-scale sex abuse, and the way the institutions backed the predators in human form. It is also a story about how a woman becomes a hero.
Giuffre also mentions the location of Epstein’s dens, which were in Little St. James, US, Virgin Islands, Manhattan Townhouse, New York, Palm Beach Mansion, Florida; Zorro Ranch, New Mexico; and Paris Apartment, France.
The co-author of Nobody’s Girl and journalist Amy Wallace also died. The book was published last year after her death in 2013. Wallace knew that a victim of sexual offence ‘is to be pitied at best or despised at worst.’
It was Maxwell who found 16-year-old Giuffre working as a 16-year-old locker room assistant at Mar-a-Lago in 2000 and took her to the house of Epstein for an interview for a possible masseuse.
She describes how scores of men Epstein forced her to have sex with as a ‘politician’, ‘a well-known prime minister’, and ‘minister’. They choked her, brutally bruised her, and often beat her up to draw predatory satisfaction from her tears and fearful face.
When she spoke to Epstein about the brutality, he stonily said, “You’ll sometimes get that.”
About Maxwell Giuffre, she writes, “If I complained, she hurt me more.” The most important part of the book is that a reader must have the stomach to leaf through its pages because he may leave it half-read, failing to withstand what is written in it.
Shockingly hard, as it is, the book is also a clear-eyed account of how sexual offenders operate. She writes: “I have been sexualised against my will and have survived by acquiescing. I was a pleaser, even when pleasing others cost me dearly. For 10 years, men had cloaked their abuse of me in a fake mantle of ‘love.’ Epstein and Maxwell knew just how to tap into that same crooked vein.”
There are many insidious stories within the story of Giuffre, which is heart-rending but courageous.
Arup Chakraborty
