Virginia Giuffre’s Memoir Puts a Needful Spotlight Back on Ghislaine Maxwell’s Crimes

"Over time, I would come to see Epstein and Maxwell less as boyfriend and girlfriend, and more as two halves of a wicked whole," Giuffre wrote.

By Audra Heinrichs | October 17, 2025 | 5:03pm

Photo Credit: TK Books In Depth

Virginia Giuffre’s Memoir Puts a Needful Spotlight Back on Ghislaine Maxwell’s Crimes

This week, reports that Ghislaine Maxwell is being treated “like a guest in a hotel” at a low-security prison in Texas garnered significant scrutiny—so much so that Attorney General Pam Bondi faced questions as to whether the deceased pedophile financier’s accomplice is receiving preferential treatment. As she frustratingly evaded those inquiries, heartbreaking excerpts from the posthumous memoir of one of Epstein and Maxwell’s most visible and vocal victims have been published in a number of outlets, from Vanity Fair to Time.

Earlier this year, Virginia Giuffre, who was recruited by Maxwell when she was working at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago spa at 17 years old, died by suicide. Before her death, however, Giuffre finished a memoir, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice. Due October 25, the book painstakingly details the predation and exploitation she suffered at Epstein and Maxwell’s hands.

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In a lengthy passage published by the Guardian, Giuffre writes about the day she first encountered Maxwell after she was unknowingly followed by the convicted sex-trafficker on her way into the spa where she worked as a receptionist.

“I was walking toward the Mar-a-Lago spa, on my way to work, when a car slowed behind me,” Giuffre writes. “Inside was a British socialite named Ghislaine Maxwell and her driver, Juan Alessi, whom she insisted on calling ‘John.’ Alessi would later testify under oath that on this day, when Maxwell spotted me–my long blond hair, my slim build, and what he called my notably ‘young’ appearance–she commanded him from the back seat, ‘Stop, John, stop!’”

Maxwell then approached Giuffre as she worked the front desk and offered her the opportunity that would ultimately mar her life: to become the massage therapist to a wealthy man and longtime Mar-a-Lago member: Epstein. Lured by the promise of financial freedom, Giuffre agreed and was instructed to come to Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion for an introduction. After her father drove her to the home, Giuffre was led to a naked Epstein, who was lying facedown on a massage bed. Maxwell instructed her on how to massage him as he asked inappropriate and invasive questions.

“Tell me about your first time,” Giuffre claimed Epstein asked. “I hesitated. Who’d ever heard of an employer asking an applicant about losing her virginity? But I wanted this job, so I took a deep breath and described my rough childhood. I’d been abused by a family friend, I said vaguely, and spent time on the street as a runaway. Epstein didn’t recoil. Instead, he made light of it, teasing me for being ‘a naughty girl.'” Giuffre wrote that she denied that, to which he replied: “It’s OK. I like naughty girls.”

The massage swiftly escalated to sexual assault, and Giuffre describes dissociating: “A familiar emptiness flooded me. How many times had I put my faith in someone, only to be hurt and humiliated? I could feel my brain begin to shut down. My body couldn’t escape from this room, but my mind couldn’t bear to stay, so it put me on a kind of autopilot: submissive and determined to survive.”

Desperate for the kind of money Epstein and Maxwell offered, Giuffre accepted the job. To this, she also credits Epstein’s excellence in manipulation: “Several of us had been molested or raped as children; many of us were poor or even homeless. We were girls who no one cared about, and Epstein pretended to care.” He also purported to “own the Palm Beach police department,” and threatened Giuffre by claiming to have personal knowledge of her family’s whereabouts. The subtext was clear.

As Giuffre continued working for Epstein, travel became more and more frequent, as did servicing many “clients” that included anyone from psychologists, academics, and billionaires that Epstein and Maxwell knew. Prince Andrew, as the world well knows by now, was one of them. Maxwell, Giuffre remembered, prepared her like a lamb for slaughter—taking her shopping all day and making clear the expectations for her.

“When Prince Andrew arrived at the house that evening, Maxwell was more coquettish than usual,” Giuffre wrote. “‘Guess Jenna’s age,’ she urged the prince, after she introduced me. The Duke of York, who was then 41, guessed correctly: 17. ‘My daughters are just a little younger than you,’ he told me, explaining his accuracy. As usual, Maxwell was quick with a joke: ‘I guess we will have to trade her in soon.'” As detailed in various legal documents and proceedings, Giuffre was instructed to sleep with Prince Andrew after a night out. In return, she received $15,000 from Epstein, and Maxwell continued to coordinate her abuse, and that of many others.

“In social settings, Maxwell often appeared vivacious, the life of the party. But in Epstein’s household, she functioned more as a party planner: scheduling and organising the endless parade of girls who she recruited to have sex with him,” Giuffre wrote. “Over time, I would come to see Epstein and Maxwell less as boyfriend and girlfriend, and more as two halves of a wicked whole.”

In July, as the Department of Justice supposedly investigated President Trump’s connection to Epstein, Maxwell denied that Trump was anything but “a gentleman in all respects” throughout their well-documented friendship. Weeks later, she was transferred to a low-security prison in Texas. More recently, Maxwell is reportedly getting “unusually favorable treatment.” To write that this is an insult to Giuffre’s memory, and the lives of all of Epstein and Maxwell’s victims, is an understatement.

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