I've read the book by Jeffrey Epstein's most prominent victim and it's 400 pages of horror.

LondonAny exercise in memory is always the reconstruction of a character and the account of events on which one wishes to focus and leave a record. In the case of Nobody's Girl: memoir of surviving abuse and fighting for justice (A Girl Without an Owner. Memoir of a Survivor and Her Fight for Justice Penguin Random House UK, the statement is doubly true.

Over nearly 400 pages, the book narrates, in the first half (Daughter and Prisoner), the destruction of a human being—a victim of rape and abuse of all kinds from a very early age—to the complete annulment of his identity. In the second (Survivor and Warrior), after fleeing from her captors under whose control she has been for more than two years, explains her struggle to survive: how she tries to recover from the trauma, learn to live with her pain and, as the title indicates, how she seeks justice and reparation.

Published this week in English and written with the collaboration of the American journalist Amy Wallace, the volume collects the Virginia Roberts Giuffre's harsh and traumatic experience, the most prominent victim of the pedophile and child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and of his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as all her rapists: some anonymous, others with names and surnames, among them Prince Andrew, third son of Elizabeth II and brother of Charles III. Andreu has always denied the accusation, despite the numerous pieces of evidence that cast doubt on his credibility and the incontestable fact that he accepted an out-of-court settlement and paid many millions of pounds – between 9 and 12 – to avoid a civil trial in New York to answer for his actions.

For obvious reasons, the British media have read the book with a magnifying glass on the pages that describe Giuffre's three sexual encounters with the prince, all when she was still a minor. The last was an "orgy," she recalls: "Epstein, Andy, and approximately eight other young girls, and I, had sex together. They all looked under 18 and didn't speak English. Epstein laughed at how they couldn't communicate, saying that they are the girls who are easiest to understand."

There was also the trafficker of the eight foreign girls, the Frenchman Jean-Luc Brunel, founder of a modeling agency who committed suicide in February 2022 in La Santé prison in Paris, almost three years later. that Epstein himself did it. Both hanged themselves with the sheets from their cell bed.

"Epstein was a selfish monster" who didn't believe it was "immoral" or, by any means, "criminal" to force himself on minors, the victim says. On one occasion, "Brunel sent him three twelve-year-old French girls, triplets I think, as a birthday present. Epstein had relations with them [Giuffre writes]"he had sex with them", but it would be more accurate to say that they were raped] and then put them on a plane and returned them to France."

The book, very uncomfortable to read due to the catalogue of horrors it describes, and the world it presupposes, is much more than the scandalous account of three rapes by Prince Andrew, after Epstein told the woman, in the first of their meetings in London, to call him "friend." A warning that was also a threat when he ordered Giuffre to enlist with one of his accomplices.

A stormy life

While still a child, with a virtually absent mother, Virginia Roberts Giuffre's father continually abused her and even, according to her account, collected money from Epstein for looking the other way when the girl had already fallen into the pedophile's trap. The father denies the abuse. In any case, when it wasn't the father, it was his friends who raped her, or teenagers the same age as Virginia. Prince Andrew and his advisors used the police file of a double rape complaint, filed in Florida, to promote a smear campaign against their victim through the British press when she reported him.

When she was less than fifteen years old, Virginia Roberts Giuffre was raped by a driver who picked her up while hitchhiking during one of her many escapes from home or from the reform school where she was sent to straighten her out, which was just another kind of hell. "Then he pulled out a gun and put the barrel to my mouth. He raped me first from the front and then from behind. The only lubrication was the saliva he spat into the palm of his hand."

The story is honest. Giuffre spares no intimate details, not even from her marriage, and shows how the past shaped her life as a couple. It also reveals a naiveté, at times disarming: when at 19 she finally escaped from Epstein (2002), who had paid for her trip to Thailand to take a massage course, she met an Australian, Robbie, whom she married ten days later. She believes him to be her savior, her guardian angel. But the man, with whom she had three children, also ended up attacking her. The book says that on at least two occasions, which earned her a restraining order while they lived in Colorado.

Trump's Exoneration

Except for the abuse by her father, the story does not contain any allegations not previously reported in many of the court testimony the victim offered from the moment Epstein began to be pursued by the justice system. It is surprising, indeed, that she refers to some of her attackers as a "former minister" or a "head of state" without naming names, and that she identifies other of her rapists as "Super Billionaire 1, 2 and 3And even more surprising is that a footnote on page 222 clarifies that Donald Trump publicly broke with Epstein in October 2007, after he assaulted the teenage daughter of a member of the current US president's Mar-a-Lago club and eight months before he pleaded guilty to prostitution. The names she mentions in Epstein's orbit, for her part, have been repeated many times: from Bill Clinton to Ehud Barak. She doesn't make any accusations, but she does allege, for example, that Ghislaine Maxwell, with Epstein's guilt already known and judicially proven, was one of the guests at Chelsea Clinton's wedding (2010).

Giuffre's sense of guilt for having been both a victim and a procurer of girls for Epstein, for being a "sex slave," for not having had another life, is striking, but never tear-jerking. The drama is sordid because they are.

Amy Wallace's research work, and the inevitable legal review of the text, is also obvious. The denunciation of the circles of power—the British monarchy, media outlets that bow to the monarchy's pressure, the American network ABC, for example, politicians, financiers, and scientists bought by Epstein—support the validity of this woman's testimony, memory, and courage. who committed suicide last April, half a year before the book went on sale. Giuffre, making no bones about it, also explains why she reached several out-of-court settlements, abandoning the civil lawsuits she had initiated against her abusers. The basic reason is that criminal avenues were closed, and the only option was civil lawsuits. Getting money for herself and the rest of the victims—around 200 known victims—could alleviate some of the damage inflicted on them.

But many threads still hang from the Epstein case. Not in vain does the book close by recalling the "videotapes the FBI seized from their homes." From this perspective, Virginia Roberts Giuffre was just another object with which the tycoon satisfied his perversions and, like all other women, a piece and a weapon of power for possible blackmail against the powerful men with whom he surrounded himself. The final question is inevitable: will these tapes ever appear?