Virginia Giuffre hailed as ‘fierce warrior’ for ladies who ‘gave voice to the silenced’

Virginia Giuffre has been hailed as an unflinching campaigner for survivors of sexual abuse, who took at the rich and the robust all the way through the process her lifestyles.

“Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She was the light that lifted so many survivors,” her circle of relatives mentioned in a remark confirming her dying.

Her relentless pursuit of justice for what she claimed had been the crimes dedicated towards her via the billionaire financier and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein noticed her change into a public determine in her personal proper.

The allegations she made towards Prince Andrew set in teach a prison combat that culminated in an out-of-court agreement through which the royal admitted no guilt.

Andrew maintains his innocence, however the reputational injury caused by the case – and the disastrous PR marketing campaign he waged to solid doubt over Giuffre’s tale – noticed him step again from frontline tasks together with his symbol in tatters.

In 2000, when she used to be 17-years-old, Giuffre met the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell whilst operating as a locker-room assistant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago hotel in Florida. Maxwell then presented her a task as therapeutic massage therapist to Epstein.

Giuffre alleged that once taking the function she used to be trafficked to the financier’s pals and shoppers and “passed around like a platter of fruit”. Among them, she claimed, used to be Prince Andrew.

It used to be in March 2011 that Giuffre went at the file concerning the alleged horrors she confronted, and claimed that she had met Andrew on 3 events in 2001.

In the Mail on Sunday, she recounted her first alleged assembly with Andrew all the way through a six-week travel to Europe and North Africa when she used to be nonetheless 17. Giuffre mentioned she flew to London with Epstein, who then took her to Maxwell’s area.

She mentioned that she, Epstein and Maxwell all stayed in the home in a single day, and when Maxwell woke her up within the morning, she instructed Giuffre: “We’ve got to go shopping. You need a dress as you’re going to dance with a prince tonight.”

She alleged Andrew arrived at Maxwell’s house ahead of they went out for dinner and visited Tramp nightclub the place, Giuffre claimed, she danced with Andrew.

Later that night, Giuffre mentioned all of them returned to Maxwell’s house the place a now notorious {photograph} of Giuffre, Andrew and Maxwell used to be taken.

She recounted two additional conferences with Andrew: one in New York, and one on Epstein’s personal island in the USA Virgin Islands, through which time she used to be 18. At this level, claims of sexual touch with Andrew weren’t made public.

In 2014, Giuffre made a courtroom submitting in Florida claiming that she used to be made to have intercourse with Andrew. A yr later, a pass judgement on determined that her allegations concerning the prince had been “immaterial and impertinent” to a defamation declare towards Maxwell and ordered them struck out.

In 2019, after Epstein’s arrest and dying in prison, Giuffre gave her first tv interview to NBC News, the place she claimed she used to be “trafficked to that prince”.

Later that yr, after mounting public outcry, Andrew granted the BBC’s Newsnight programme an strange interview that used to be extensively noticed as a humiliation for the duke.

Speaking to Emily Maitlis, Andrew mentioned it used to be now not imaginable for him to had been at Maxwell’s assets in London at the night time in query in 2001. Instead, he mentioned he used to be at house after attending a youngsters’s birthday celebration at Pizza Express in Woking.

He denied claims all the way through the interview that he slept with Giuffre 3 times, pronouncing: “I can absolutely, categorically tell you it never happened. I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever.”

The disastrous reception to the interview precipitated Andrew to “step back from public duties for the foreseeable future”.

In 2021, Giuffre sued Andrew in a New York courtroom, accusing him of sexually abusing her at Epstein’s mansion in Manhattan and at different places in 2001 when she used to be below the age of 18. The duke settled the case for an undisclosed sum in 2022.

A month ahead of he settled the case, Andrew used to be stripped of his army roles and use of the name His Royal Highness. The eventual agreement didn’t come with an act of contrition from the duke, and he has persevered to disclaim the allegations towards him.

Time has achieved little to fix Andrew’s public symbol. Last week, a unprecedented public look on the royal circle of relatives’s Easter Sunday provider with King Charles sparked a recent spherical of adverse headlines.

Giuffre’s dying has now not best drawn tributes, but additionally expressions of sorrow over the instances. Last month, she introduced on social media that she had days to are living after being taken with a bus crash. The tale used to be later clarified via Giuffre and the ones round her.

On Saturday, her circle of relatives mentioned she taken her personal lifestyles at her farm in Western Australia.

Charlotte Proudman, a barrister and ladies’s rights campaigner, mentioned on X: “Virginia Giuffre survived sex trafficking, fought for justice for over a decade, and gave voice to the silenced.

“She donated part of her $12m settlement to other victims. She has now taken her own life. The fight cost her everything. Never forget what this system does to women.”