Sky Roberts, brother of Virginia Giuffre, and his wife Amanda Roberts during a news conference with survivors of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein outside the U.S. Capitol on November 18, 2025. (Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

I thought I was mentally prepared to read Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s posthumous book, Nobody’s Girl. I was wrong. Although I have been researching and writing about the sexual exploitation industries for over 30 years, worked with survivors and seen more violent pornography than any woman should have to endure, the account of her abuse, told in painful detail, was unbearable. If reading the book was gut-wrenching, I can’t imagine what it was like for her and other girls and women who experience the horrors of being trafficked.

Giuffre, in the end, couldn’t survive living with this trauma. She died by suicide at the age of 41. That fact hangs over the book—and the reader. But in truth, her cruel abusers killed her. She was sexually tortured to death.

Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice was published on Oct. 21, 2025.

Giuffre was repeatedly raped by many, if not hundreds of men, beginning with her father and one of his friends. By the time Giuffre met Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, who first encountered Giuffre as she walked to work at the spa at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, multiple rapes had transformed her into the “perfect” victim for them.

For more than two years, Giuffre was held captive by these seasoned predators who, together with hundreds of men, committed unspeakable acts of sexual, physical and psychological violence. She was beaten, strangled, bloodied and so infected with gynecological ailments that at times she could not even hold her urine. So brutal were some of her tormentors that Giuffre hoped to pass out from the pain for relief. Like many other victims of abuse, Giuffre turned to pills and self-harm to try and soothe her torments.

Virginia Giuffre (then Roberts) with Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell at Prince Andrew’s London home. (Photo released with court documents)

As we know from the numerous books on sexual violence and grooming, one of the first acts of an abuser is to isolate the victim from family, friends and anyone who can provide help. The famous sociologist Irving Goffman called this kind of isolation a “total institution.” It helps explain why Giuffre violated her own moral code by recruiting other girls. As Judith Herman argues in Trauma and Recovery, this is the way you finally break down any lingering resistance by the victim.

As much as the book is horrifying, it is also enraging on many levels. This is not a book about one woman, but an indictment of patriarchy as a system developed to protect men. It highlights the lies that patriarchy spreads about the reality of prostitution and trafficking.

Survivor Teresa Helm and lawyer Sigrid McCawley, who represented many of the survivors including Virginia Giuffre, at a survivor-led rally on Sept. 3, 2025, calling for passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. (Jenny Warburg)

As part of the research for my book Pornland, I interviewed men imprisoned for child abuse. I asked one how he groomed his child victims. “I didn’t,” he said. “The culture groomed them for me.” Pretty Woman, a movie made 30 years ago, glorifies and glamorizes prostitution and so renders invisible the reality suffered by Giuffre and other victims and survivors. Yet the movie was celebrated in popular culture and has spurned many similar movies, such as Best Picture winner Anora, which won five Oscars this year.

Another element of patriarchy that came into play was when one of Giuffre’s early abusers forced her to watch porn to learn “what sex is about.” But porn is no more about sex than is the sadism of Epstein, Maxwell and their friends. It is sexual abuse. Porn today is overwhelmingly brutal: What you can readily see on Pornhub and other major platforms are the very forms of violence that Giuffre suffered. And we know that young men who watch porn are more apt to engage in sexual coercion, dating violence and to subscribe to rape myths. Those who watch porn, too, are more likely to pay for sex with prostituted women like Giuffre.

Nearly all of Giuffre’s abusers escaped serious accountability. So did Epstein’s many chums, who implausibly continue to profess their ignorance despite luxuriating in his private plane, dubbed the ‘Lolita Express,’ and in his many opulent residences that were decorated with images of naked girls. These men may suffer public shame, but they still walk the corridors of power; some of their names continue to adorn Harvard, Wall Street, fashion and the White House.

More than 1.2 million other children could have told a similar story. The key difference was that Giuffre was violated by extraordinarily wealthy and powerful men.

 
Amanda Roberts holds up a photo of Giuffre during a news conference with lawmakers on the Epstein Files Transparency Act outside the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 18, 2025. (Heather Diehl / Getty Images)

Epstein and Maxwell presided over a massive international organization, facilitated by banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC and Bank of America. Also on the payroll were pilots, chefs, accountants, drivers, security guards, gardeners, boat crews, physicians, house managers, and surely more than a few customs officials, police and politicians.

The circle of complicity in their crimes was vast. Epstein and Maxwell cozied up to Bill Clinton, former Harvard president Lawrence Summers, famed attorney Alan Dershowitz, the CEO of Barclays, the founder of Victoria’s Secret, Bill Gates, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and loathsome “Prince” Andrew. Giuffre also mentions that she was raped by an unnamed prime minister, among other high-level politicians. Donald Trump called Epstein a “great guy” who “likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Giuffre’s abusers were a who’s who of the global male elite, while Giuffre herself was uneducated and poor. All the high-profile men and institutions showered by Epstein’s largesse helped gild his abuses with a veneer of refinement and approval.

As horrible as they are, Giuffre’s ordeals are not unique. According to the United Nations, the majority of trafficked victims worldwide are female—and most of the girls are traded for sexual exploitation. More than 1.2 million other children could have told a similar story. The key difference was that Giuffre was violated by extraordinarily wealthy and powerful men.

Danny Wilson and Sky Roberts, brothers of Giuffre, at a dinner and reception hosted by World Without Exploitation on Sept. 2, 2025, the night before a press conference and rally calling for justice for the crimes committed by Jeffrey Epstein and his associates and passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. (Jenny Warburg)

Giuffre’s life was horrific and tragic. It is the same horror that so many other girls experience, albeit in far less opulent surroundings. And so few of the perpetrators, from the trailer park to Park Avenue, are ever held accountable. In this way, Giuffre speaks for victims and survivors who do not have a public voice but who suffer the same appalling childhood rape and sexual violence. In fact, pick up just about any autobiographical account by a woman who escaped prostitution or pornography, and you will read a similar tale of abuse and violence.

In the final paragraph of the book, and perhaps in some of the final sentences she ever wrote, Giuffre tells that she will have achieved her goal with Nobody’s Girl if “just one person” is moved to create “a world in which predators are punished, not protected; victims are treated with compassion, not shamed; and powerful people face the same consequences as everybody else.”

Although she never lived to see this day, her book, her courage and her rage compel us to fight for this goal in the name of all victims and survivors of sex trafficking.

Sky and Amanda Roberts outside the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 18, 2025. (Heather Diehl / Getty Images)