In her newly published memoir Nobody’s Girl, Virginia Giuffre speaks from beyond the grave. The 41-year-old activist, who became perhaps the most well-known survivor of abuse by the American financier and child sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, never lived to see its reception. Released six months after Giuffre’s death by suicide, the artefact of the book itself now feels like its own kind of tragedy, its title speaking to the wrenching loneliness of abuse and its aftermath. Its words feel heavier, imbued with hope, grief and foreboding.
Many of us may feel like we know all we need to know about Epstein. The shocking facts of his crimes have been probed in great detail over the past six years – including, but far from limited to, those surrounding the trafficking of then-16-year-old Giuffre into a ring of wealthy global figures who would go on to silence her. But it still feels like it would be a disservice to look away from Nobody’s Girl. Lines such as “please don’t stop reading” punctuate the book’s contents – descriptions of her trafficking and assault, detailed allegations against Prince Andrew, and accounts of the abuse she experienced as a child before these events unfurled in the early 2000s – read as an imperative.
