Virginia Giuffre, the woman who fights to bring Prince Andrew to the bench for sexual abuse

When Virginia Giuffre was 17 years old, she asked her abuser, tycoon Jeffrey Epstein, to take a picture of her with England's Prince Andrew. They were returning from a night out in London and he wanted to immortalize the meeting for his mother. The young woman, with blond hair and blue eyes, appears smiling. The Duke of York, also cheerful, grabs her around the waist. Giuffre — then Roberts, her maiden name — managed to get the 2001 image to reach her mother. And also half the planet. The American has been denouncing for a decade that Andrés sexually abused her when she was a minor. At first, only tabloid newspapers echoed the accusations. Now the third son of Elizabeth II, stripped of his military titles and public duties,faces a civil suit in the New York courts. He denies everything. He even questions photography.

To understand how Giuffre ends up falling into a sordid trap in the mansions where power dwells, you have to go back to a cut-and-dried childhood. A family friend took it from her when he sexually abused her at the age of seven, she has said. The happy home that his parents had formed on a ranch in Sacramento (California) also ended. The aggression precipitated the separation of her parents and aroused in little Virginia a rebellion that no one in her family knew how to deal with. He went in and out of foster homes, until at the age of 13 he left the last one and never came back. He lived on the streets, where he found nothing "except hunger, pain and abuse", he told the BBC. During that period, she slept with at least two older men in exchange for food. "I was a pedophile's dream"assured in his first interview with a medium, the

, in 2011.

Giuffre's parents gave themselves a chance again.

She too.

At the age of 15, he was reunited with his family in Palm Beach, Florida.

Her father worked as a maintenance manager at Donald Trump's golf club, Mar-a-Lago, and the teenager got a part-time job there.

She had to wear a miniskirt and a slim-fitting polo shirt, all white.

One day he was approached by an elegant British woman, the daughter of a late media tycoon.

Kind, he made conversation.

Giuffre told him that he wanted to be a masseur.

The woman told him that she worked for a very rich man who was precisely looking for one and offered to train her and a good salary.

The girl gladly accepted.

That lady from high society was Ghislaine Maxwell and the billionaire, Jeffrey Epstein.

In the first meeting between Giuffre and Epstein, the young woman told him about her history of abuse and her years of homelessness.

He, naked, face down on a stretcher, listened to her.

After the presentation, the powerful financier asked him to massage him.

A woman in the room was giving him instructions on how to perform oral sex on him.

Giuffre, flushed and uncomfortable, did not want to disappoint these people who were giving her what she considered the opportunity of a lifetime.

They paid him $200 in cash and asked him to come back the next day.

It was the beginning of four years of abuse, more and more frequent, increasingly better paid.

perverse family dynamic

The teenager found a kind of home in the perverse family dynamic between Maxwell and Epstein.

They watched series together and went shopping at luxury stores.

They invited her to trips and dinners with renowned politicians and entertainment people.

They gave her jewelry and fine furniture.

In their words, she felt that they cared for her.

Two years later, the relationship between the three entered a new phase.

The sleazy couple asked her to include “entertaining” their friends in her services.

The meetings took place on the magnate's private island in the Caribbean or on his ranch in New Mexico.

The young woman began consuming Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug.

"It was an escape drug," he told the

He took eight pills a day.

They took her to France, Spain, Morocco. Also to London. On that trip he met the Duke of York. He would see it, he affirms, on two other occasions. One at Epstein's mansion in Manhattan and another at Little Saint James Island. Or Little Saint Jeff's, as the tycoon called it. In the three encounters, the American affirms that she was forced to have sexual relations with Prince Andrew. He says he doesn't even remember meeting her.

When Giuffre turned 19, Epstein gave him a massage course in Thailand. That gift would become the escape from the hell in which he lived. The young woman traveled to the Asian country and met an Australian expert in martial arts. Within 10 days, they were married. She phoned Epstein to tell him about her sudden crush, and Epstein replied, "Have a good life." And cut the call.

Giuffre started a new life in Queensland, Australia. When she already had two of her three children, in 2007, her past phoned. First it was Maxwell, then Epstein. They wanted to know if the US authorities had contacted her. Finally, the FBI contacted her to ask questions about the billionaire, investigated for sexual abuse of minors. Giuffre was not very helpful. Two years later, she filed a lawsuit under the pseudonym

against Epstein and Maxwell, accusing them of sex trafficking when she was a minor. They reached an agreement, which included a confidentiality clause, the content of which became known two weeks ago, for which Epstein paid him $500,000 (about 438,000 euros) so that he would not sue him, or anyone linked to him.

The silence was short lived.

A photograph of Prince Andrew walking with Epstein in Central Park in 2011, years after the tycoon's first sexual abuse conviction, stirred up too many ghosts from Giuffre's previous life.

They all pushed her to get in front of a microphone and confess to the world that she was

.

They didn't pay much attention to him.

He had to wait for 2018, when he stood in front of a

, so that his testimony began to be heard in America.

He spoke from the guilt of not having dared to raise his voice earlier.

"The greatest shame I carry, and which I will never get rid of, is having brought girls my age, even younger, into a world they should never have been introduced to," she told the American newspaper.

Giuffre's battle for justice was always focused on Epstein and Maxwell. The first, who committed suicide in prison, was charged with child sex trafficking and conspiracy. The second, also recently found guilty of sexual trafficking of minors, risks 60 years in prison. Now Giuffre turns all his efforts to bring Prince Andrew, 61, to the bench. The accusations against the Duke of York have triggered the worst image crisis for the British crown since the death of Princess Diana.

The queen's son tried to get a New York judge to dismiss the millionaire civil lawsuit, for which he does not risk ending up in jail, but the magistrate rejected the motion last Wednesday.

The next day, Buckingham Palace clarified that the once-hero of the Maldives "will plead his case as a private citizen."

Meanwhile, Virginia Giuffre asks to be believed.

Get on your side.

She does the same with other victims at the foundation she founded in 2015, Victims Refuse Silence, which helps survivors of sexual abuse tell their story.

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