Virginia Giuffre was an emotional, lonely, broken woman when I met her – and our chat left me shocked
WHEN I met Virginia in April 2022 she was a lonely, broken woman — and I was shocked.
Her legal battle with Andrew had been settled for an estimated £12million, so I imagined the worst was behind her.
But it was clear she never got over the Duke of York case.
We were staying at the same hotel in Washington DC, but Virginia was virtually unrecognisable when I first saw her.
She was in a smart suit to meet lawyers but walked slowly. Her face and body were swollen.
It was clear she was aware she was being stared at by not friendly faces. She seemed paranoid and afraid.
Fighting for so long
When our eyes met there was a connection, but it was as if she was asking: “Are you also laughing at me with them?”
She entered the elevator alone and I decided to send her Champagne and chocolates with a nice note because I felt bad for the woman.
My kindness touched Virginia and she invited me to a private meeting that day.
She was wearing a bathrobe and complained about her neck pain, but it was obvious she had much deeper pain too.
She confided: “This hotel is full of my enemies. I am scared to go out of the room.”
I tried to calm her and said that was the nature of any legal battle. I also asked how lonely she felt. “Very,” she told me, “Sometimes very lonely.”
Virginia said the stress had affected her badly.
She knew I was friends with Andrew’s ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, and that I had interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell in jail.
Virginia told me she hated Maxwell and asked: “What would your royal friends say if they knew we were meeting?”
I told her we’d soon find out, because I planned to tell them. That made her smile as she tried to imagine the conversation.
We discussed her three children and she said: “Some people say horrible things. It hurts me a lot. I am trying not to show it to my children.”
In this Epstein saga there were more victims, and more sides to the story
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The entire time I was with Virginia in that room I was affected by how vulnerable she was, and how tired she was from fighting for so long.
She simply said: “I didn’t want to come. I was made to.”
And so I was rather surprised that she was not flying back to Australia the next day — instead she had chosen to stay an extra day or two in that small hotel room, all alone.
The phone rang but we continued talking. She said it was her husband but she would call him later. I wonder if I witnessed a clue there and then about her troubled home life?
Then Virginia gave me her address in Oz and said: “Come to visit me. I’ve a nice home.”
I could see it was all affecting her wellbeing. I gave her a long hug and said, “In this Epstein saga there were more victims, and more sides to the story.”
She looked weak, emotional and, I must say, likeable.
Later, I sent her a purple and yellow scarf for her neck pain and she texted to say she was wearing it all the time.
After that, we communicated regularly.
I’ll always remember the poignant message she sent from hospital when she was receiving painful treatment to her spine.
It read: “Not good news but smiling to still be alive.”
She looked battered and bruised after last month’s bus crash. And by the end, it seemed, the agony of her loneliness simply proved too much.
Who was Virginia Giuffre?
VIRGINIA Roberts - later Virginia Giuffre, 41, was an American-Australian campaigner and a prominent victim of the sex trafficking ring of Jeffrey Epstein.
She made claims against Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, as well as Brit socialite Ghislaine Maxwell – Jeffrey Epstein’s ex-lover.
Giuffre alleged in court documents that she was procured by Maxwell, 63, the daughter of disgraced tycoon Robert Maxwell, as a teenage “sex slave” for Epstein.
She released a manuscript just hours before Epstein’s death, which added to more than 2,000 documents of a lawsuit pending against the former financier and his pals.
The legal documents were released in a defamation case involving Giuffre, who has claimed in court documents that Prince Andrew slept with her three times.
In 2019, Virginia Roberts claimed that she had sex with Prince Andrew in a toilet when she was 17, after a night where he had allegedly been plying her with vodka in a posh London club.
On February 15, 2022, it was announced that Prince Andrew settled the lawsuit – sparing him a humiliating court battle.