'Where are those tapes?' Epstein victim Giuffre begs for files release in posthumous book
WASHINGTON – In a posthumously published memoir, the Jeffrey Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre makes an impassioned plea for the release of all files and records related to the late financier and sex offender who abused young girls and facilitated abuse by powerful men.
“I hope for a world in which predators are punished, not protected; victims are treated with compassion, not shamed; and powerful people face the same consequences as anyone else,” Roberts Giuffre writes.
“I yearn, too, for a world in which perpetrators face more shame than their victims do and where anyone who's been trafficked can confront their abusers when they are ready, no matter how much time has passed.
“We don't live in this world yet – I mean, seriously: Where are those videotapes the FBI confiscated from Epstein's houses? And why haven't they led to the prosecution of any more abusers? – but I believe we could someday.”
Roberts Giuffre killed herself in April. She was 41.
Her book — Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice — will be published next Tuesday. Raw Story obtained a copy.
Excerpts published by Vanity Fair and the Guardian have concerned how Roberts Giuffre met Epstein and his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, and was sexually abused by them and other powerful figures.
Roberts Giuffre’s descriptions of sex with Prince Andrew have generated headlines in the U.K.
In 2022, Roberts Giuffre reached a settlement with Andrew, reportedly worth millions of dollars. The prince did not admit wrongdoing.
The same year, Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in jail on sex-trafficking charges.
The so-called Epstein files — records seized after his second arrest and death in prison in 2019 — remain the subject of fascination.
Epstein’s relationship with Donald Trump, with whom he was long close, generates intense speculation.
The president campaigned on a promise to release the Epstein files but reversed course in office. Revelations have included a sexually suggestive poem Trump contributed to Epstein’s 50th-birthday book, and reports Trump’s name appears many times in the Epstein files.
In July, Maxwell gave an unprecedented jailhouse interview to Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general who was previously Trump’s own lawyer. Maxwell was moved to a more comfortable prison.
Now, as House Republicans exploit the government shutdown to hold up a motion to force release of the Epstein files, many detect an attempt to shield Trump.
The author Michael Wolff, who has written four books on Trump and claims to have hours of interviews with Epstein, has said Epstein showed him a picture of Trump in a compromising position with young girls.
Wolff has said he presumes the FBI has the picture.
Trump vehemently denies wrongdoing.
Roberts Giuffre writes about Trump but does not implicate him in improper behavior.
The writer who worked on Nobody’s Girl, Amy Wallace, this week told the Washington Post Roberts Giuffre “was a huge Trump fan … she was a Trump supporter.
“There were two reasons for it: One, she’d met him. She worked at Mar-a-Lago. Her dad worked at Mar-a-Lago. She met Trump several times, and he was always very kind to her. So she had personal memories. She thought the place was beautiful. She loved working there.
“And secondly, he said he was going to release the Epstein files. He was on her side. That’s how she felt.”
Nobody’s Girl most often opts not to name men Roberts Giuffre says she was forced to have sex with. Exceptions include Prince Andrew and individuals now dead.
She writes: “You may notice that while I've named some men in this book, I have not named all the men I was trafficked to.
“Partly that is because I still don't know some of their names. Partly, too, that is because there are certain men who I fear naming.
“The man who brutally raped me toward the end of my time with Epstein and Maxwell, for example — the man whom I've called ‘the former Prime Minister’ in court documents — I know his name, and he knows what he did to me, even though when others have sought comment from him about my allegations, he has denied them.
“I fear that this man will seek to hurt me if I say his name here.
“There are other men whom I was trafficked to who have threatened me in another way: by asserting that they will use litigation to bankrupt me.
“One of those men's names has come up repeatedly in various court filings, and in response, he has told my lawyers that if I talk about him publicly, he will employ his vast resources to keep me in court for the rest of my life.
“While I have named him in sworn depositions and identified him to the FBI, I fear that if I do so again here, my family will bear the emotional and financial brunt of that decision.
“I have the same fears about another man whom I was forced to have sex with many times — a man whom I also saw having sexual contact with Epstein himself. I would love to identify him here. But this man is very wealthy and very powerful, and I fear that he, too, might engage me in expensive, life-ruining litigation.”
Roberts Giuffre acknowledges that “some readers will question my reluctance to name many of my abusers. If I am, indeed, a fighter for justice, why have I not called them out?
“My answer is simple: Because while I have been a daughter, a prisoner, a survivor, and a warrior, my most important role is that of a mother … I won't put my family at risk if I can help it. Maybe in the future I will be ready to talk about these men. But not now.”
Elsewhere, Wallace writes that Roberts Giuffre wanted the book published in the event of her death.