Bran thought about it. ‘Can a man still be brave if he’s afraid?’
‘That is the only time a man can be brave,’ his father told him.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

---

I hope this post makes sense. Today, I was pulling a new bottle of olive oil off a high shelf when it slipped, hit my head, and smashed into pieces all over the kitchen floor. Google had me throw baking soda and cornstarch over the mess. It worked, but the afternoon was shot, and I have a bit of a headache. I have always been a bit of a klutz, ever since I was little. Thankfully, I developed a sense of humor to get me through.

---

I was watching Night Agent with my husband when I saw that Virginia Giuffre had taken her life. I stopped the show and found myself beginning to cry. This post has little to do with the church, although Queen Elizabeth, the head of the Church of England, paid Virginia an undisclosed amount of money and stripped Prince Andrew of many of his honors and titles, including HRH. Prince Andrew did not admit to the abuse, but Mama paid.

The following picture led me to read about Virginia and her life over the last few years. I always read anything that mentioned her name.

BREAKING: Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre has died by suicide, her family says – NBC pic.twitter.com/4MZ278wXiZ

— BNO News (@BNONews) April 26, 2025

She looked so young and beautiful. Yet she suffered from sexual and other forms of abuse from the age of seven. That happy smile covered up so much pain. Wikipedia summed up her early years.

Virginia Giuffre was born Virginia Louise Roberts^[16] in Sacramento, California, on August 9, 1983, to Sky William Roberts and Lynn Trude Cabell.^[17][18] She had two stepbrothers, Sky and Daniel.^[17] The family relocated to Loxahatchee in Palm Beach County, Florida, when she was four years old.^[19] It was reported that she had come from a “troubled home”^[20] and, from the age of seven, was molested by a close family friend.^[3] “I was just so mentally scarred already at such a young age, and I ran away from that”, she said on Panorama in 2019.^[21] Giuffre told the Miami Herald that she went from being in “an abusive situation, to being a runaway, to living in foster homes”.^[22] She lived on the streets at age 14, where she says she found only “hunger and pain and [more] abuse”.^[21]Later she was abused by a 65-year-old sex trafficker, Ron Eppinger, in Miami.^[23] Giuffre lived with Eppinger for approximately 6 months.^[16] Eppinger reportedly ran a front business for international sex trafficking known as the modeling agency “Perfect 10”.^[24] He was raided by the FBI and later pleaded guilty to charges of alien smuggling for prostitution, interstate travel for prostitution, and money laundering.^[24]

According to Scripps News Service:

Giuffre said she was a teenage spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago — President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach club — when she was approached in 2000 by Epstein’s girlfriend and later employee, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Giuffre said Maxwell hired her as a masseuse for Epstein, but the couple effectively made her a sexual servant, pressuring her into gratifying not only Epstein but his friends and associates. Giuffre she was flown around the world for assignations with men including Prince Andrewwhile she was 17 and 18.

…The men denied it and assailed Giuffre’s credibility. She acknowledged changing some key details of her account, including the age at which she first met Epstein.

But many parts of her story were supported by documents, witness testimony and photos — including one of her and Andrew, with his his arm around her bare midriff, in Maxwell’s London townhouse.

According to the BBC:

Maxwell was found guilty last month of recruiting and trafficking young girls for Epstein to abuse, and is awaiting sentencing.

While Ms Giuffre was referenced on many occasions in court, she was not one of the four women who testified in that case. Maxwell has denied assaulting her.

In 2015, Ms Giuffre filed a defamation case against Maxwell after she accused her of being a liar. The case has since been settled.

According to Wikipedia

When Giuffre arrived at Epstein’s Palm Beach home, she says he was naked lying down and Maxwell told her how to massage him. “They seemed like nice people so I trusted them, and I told them I’d had a really hard time in my life up until then—I’d been a runaway, I’d been sexually abused, physically abused. … That was the worst thing I could have told them because now they knew how vulnerable I was”, Giuffre stated.^[21] Giuffre stated that after Maxwell introduced her to Jeffrey Epstein, the two quickly began grooming her to provide sexual services under the guise that she was to be trained as a professional massage therapist.^[28]

Between 2000 and 2002, Giuffre was closely associated with Epstein and Maxwell, traveling between Epstein’s residences in Palm Beach and Manhattan (at the Herbert N. Straus House), with additional trips to Epstein’s Zorro ranch in New Mexico and private island Little Saint James.^[29] In the Miami Herald‘s investigative journalism series “Perversion of Justice”, Giuffre describes her experiences of being trafficked by Epstein to provide massages and sexual services for him and a number of his business associates over a two-and-a-half-year period.^[30] In her interview with the BBC, Giuffre said she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” to Epstein’s powerful associates, and taken round the world on private jets.^[21]

In my opinion, the best interview that has been given since her death is the one her well-known attorney, David Boies, gave to Piers Morgan. Initially, he said he wasn’t sure if he believed her. So he had her undergo a series of tests, including a polygraph. He became convinced she was telling the truth. He thinks it was her testimony that truly blew open Jeffrey Epstein’s prolific abuse. The interview is 30 minutes long, but it is worth the time.

Boies discussed how the last eleven years of her life were dedicated to fighting against Jeffrey Epstein, championing antitrafficking measures, and most recently starting Speak Out, Act, Reclaim (SOAR).

I do this for victims everywhere. I am no longer the young and vulnerable girl who could be bullied. I am now a survivor, and nobody can ever take that away from me.

Boies believes Andrew needs to come clean, but I doubt that will ever happen.

According to Giuffre, she aged out of Epstein’s preferred ages for his sexual encounters. He offered to send her to Thailand to become a masseuse. While there, she met her husband, and they moved to Australia. Recently, she claimed he was abusing her. He won custody of the kids, and she was involved in a court battle with him. It was during this battle that she took her life.

Virginia lived most of her life under the shadow of abuse. Although she faced off with Epstein, Maxwell, and Prince Andrew successfully, she was unable to overcome the pain from her life of abuse. Although she won a few court battles, it did not compensate for the severe battle scars of abuse. We must remember that the pain lingers, and we need to be there for them. I am sorry that she is gone. We needed her. She was a shining light amidst a horrific darkness, and I am grateful for what she accomplished. I only hope she knew how many of us loved her. I bet some folks are having trouble sleeping tonight. One day, they will face the ultimate judge, and being called a “prince” won’t cut it with that King.