Virginia Giuffre alleged in her memoir that her father abused her when she was as young as seven and may have accepted money from the billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Sky Roberts, Giuffre’s father, has denied his late daughter’s accusation and said in a statement included in her book, Nobody’s Girl, that he “never knew what was going on with Epstein” until he read about his sex crimes online.
In an interview with NBC News, her brother, Sky Roberts Jr, said that he had confronted their father about the allegation, choking up as he recalled: “I just, I said – we know,” he recalled, choking up. “I mean, you were Dad. You sexually abused your daughter. It’s absolutely heinous what he did.”
He also remembered his father buying “decently nice things” at various points in their childhood, including a boat. He added: “If there was a payment wired to him, like it would, would be disgusting, be disgusting that he accepted money.”
Guiffre was just 41 when she died by suicide in April this year after fighting to expose the true extent of Epstein’s abuses and hold his accomplices to account on behalf of their many victims.
Her 400-page autobiography, which she was working on with co-author Amy Wallace when she died in Western Australia this spring, has already caused a firestorm. The British royal family has stripped Prince Andrew of his titles over his association with Epstein, and the U.K. government is now under pressure to formalize the process by Act of Parliament.
Giuffre claims in the book that she was forced to have sex with the now ex-Duke of York by Epstein and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell on three occasions, the first of which occurred in London when she was 17 and he was 41.
Prince Andrew has denied any wrongdoing or ever meeting Giuffre, but settled with her out of court in 2022 after she sued him for sexual assault in the U.S.
Her book also contains an accusation that the prince tried to hire internet trolls to target her to “cast doubt on my credibility” in response to the allegations against him, allegedly passing her date of birth and social security number on to a Metropolitan Police bodyguard to enable them to attempt to dig up dirt for a smear campaign.
Epstein himself pleaded guilty to procuring an 18-year-old for prostitution in 2008 and went on to serve 13 months of his 18-month jail sentence. Federal prosecutors in New York then brought new charges against him in 2019, but he died in jail in August that year, also by suicide.
Outrage over his crimes flared back into life in early July when President Donald Trump’s Justice Department and FBI issued a joint statement attempting to draw a line under calls for justice for Epstein’s victims by stating that the disgraced financier had left behind no “client list” and that his death was not the result of foul play, contrary to conspiracy theories, which only inspired a fresh wave of indignation.
Trump himself has not been accused of any wrongdoing concerning Epstein, but has faced intense pressure to explain his past friendship with his fellow New Yorker, whom he knew socially in the 1990s and early 2000s when they were neighbours in Palm Beach, Florida.
He has insisted the two men fell out long before Epstein was accused of sex trafficking and is currently suing The Wall Street Journal for $10 billion in damages for reporting that he sent Epstein a “bawdy” signed doodle for his 50th birthday in 2003 – only for the financier’s estate to produce an item closely resembling the newspaper’s description of the note in compliance with a House Oversight Committee subpoena. Trump denies authorship.
If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call the National Suicide Prevention Helpline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255). This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you.
