Before she became the most visible face among Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre was betrayed, repeatedly, by people who were supposed to protect her.

In her new memoir, "Nobody’s Girl," she recounts a traumatic childhood in South Florida, during which she was sexually abused by her father and a neighbor, to whom her father “traded” her.

She escapes from a sadistic South Florida treatment center at the age of 15 only to be taken in by a sex trafficker named Ron Eppinger who offers to be her “new daddy.”

Eppinger then gifts her to a supposed nightclub owner, only to be freed by an FBI raid.

The treatment center would later close after an investigation revealed rampant abuse at the facility, and Eppinger was ultimately sentenced to nearly two years in prison for international sex trafficking and money laundering.

When her father gets her a job at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club, she is soothed by the care with which the “manicured grounds” are tended and drawn to work at the spa, where she envisions a future in which helping heal the wealthy guests could “fuel her own” healing.

She recounts meeting Trump with her father and later notes that he was one of Epstein’s only prominent friends who cut ties with the financier.

However, any hope that her time at Mar-a-Lago will represent a fresh start is soon dashed after she meets a woman who will come to define her future: Ghislaine Maxwell.

Giuffre recounts what has now become a well-known story of how Maxwell, the British daughter of the deceased and disgraced publisher Robert Maxwell, recruits her to be abused by Maxwell’s boyfriend, Epstein.

The pair then direct Giuffre to have sex with a number of their prominent friends, including, famously, British royal Prince Andrew.

After a particularly disturbing and violent sexual encounter with a “well-known Prime Minister,” in which she fears for her life after repeatedly being choked to the point of losing consciousness, Giuffre realizes that she must escape, which she does after being sent by Epstein to a massage school in Thailand.

While there, Giuffre meets an Australian man named Robert and the two marry and move to Australia, where they start a new life and a new family.

But eight months pregnant with her second child, she is returned to Epstein’s world.

The financier is under investigation in Palm Beach and first Maxwell and then Epstein want to know if she’s been talking.

At this point, Giuffre merely wants to be left alone.

When an FBI agent calls, she hangs up the phone.

But after she learns about the sweetheart deal Epstein is able to negotiate — which only required him to spend 13 months in a county jail and plead guilty to two state prostitution charges — Giuffre changes her mind.

She files a lawsuit against Epstein under a pseudonym, but then agrees to go public with her story when she is contacted by a reporter from the Daily Mail.

The story — and the picture of Giuffre flanked by Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell — draw worldwide attention, though Giuffre will ultimately come to feel betrayed by the experience.

But it is through Giuffre’s relationship with several lawyers — notably Sigrid Maxwell of the firm Boies Schiller Flexner — and several reporters, including the Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown and photographer Emily Michot, that Giuffre is able to finally gain control of her own narrative.

She credits Brown’s "Perversion of Justice" series, published in 2018, with “refocusing the attention of the public and law enforcement on Epstein and Maxwell’s heinous acts.” The series detailed the behind-the-scenes maneuvering that secured Epstein his lenient plea deal and showed how victims like Giuffre were cut out of the process.

She also credits Brown for convincing her of the value of working with “good journalists,” after her prior experiences with tabloid reporters.

Giuffre becomes the face of an increasingly large network of Epstein survivors who go public with their stories and hope for a measure of justice when Epstein faces new criminal charges in 2019.

That hope evaporates after Epstein dies reportedly by suicide in federal custody the same year — denying Giuffre and other victims their “ability to hold him accountable.”

But she gets a sense of satisfaction when Maxwell is arrested the following year and ultimately convicted by a jury of five counts related to sex trafficking.

In 2022, Maxwell is sentenced to 20 years in prison and Giuffre reaches a settlement with Prince Andrew over a civil lawsuit she filed accusing the prince of sexually abusing her when she was a minor, a claim he denies.

Her impact continues to reverberate. Earlier this month, Andrew was stripped of his royal titles in large part because of his association with Epstein.

Despite these legal and cultural victories, Giuffre’s story does not have a happy ending.

She committed suicide six months before her memoir’s publication.

A note from her co-author, Amy Wallace, makes clear that Giuffre was committed to making sure the book would be published even if she was not alive to see it.

And in death, Giuffre reveals a final betrayal.

She tells her co-author that her husband Robert, who she describes in the memoir text as her “protector,” physically abused her multiple times.

Giuffre and her husband were engaged in a rancorous legal dispute at the end of Giuffre’s life which resulted in Giuffre losing custody of her children after each leveled allegations of domestic abuse against the other.

Robert Giuffre didn’t respond to a request for comment about the allegations. Virginia’s father denied her claims that he sexually abused her as a child.

Virginia Giuffre died by suicide in Neergabby, Australia, on April 25.

She was 41.

©2025 Miami Herald. Visit at miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.