Virginia Giuffre, an earlier accuser of Jeffrey Epstein and founder of the Speak Out, Act Out, Reclaim (SOAR) nonprofit, died at her farm in Western Australia on April 25, according to The New York Times. She was 41.
According to a statement from Giuffre’s family to the Times, she died by suicide, less than a month after she posted on Instagram that she was in danger of dying of renal failure. Giuffre had incurred injuries as part of a car crash with a school bus, in which she was allegedly traveling at nearly 70 miles per hour.
“The world lost a fierce warrior,” Giuffre’s sister-in-law, Amanda Roberts, told People. “She wished for all survivors to get justice. That is who she was.” In a statement, her family described Giuffre as “the light that lifted so many survivors.”
In 2009, Giuffre (then identified as Jane Doe 102) sued Epstein and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, accusing them of recruiting her to join Epstein’s sex trafficking ring when she was a minor. Giuffre went public with her accusations in 2010, citing the birth of her daughter as motivation to come forward and speak publicly about her experience.
In 2022, Giuffre settled out of court with Prince Andrew, Duke of York over a sexual assault case that alleged he’d repeatedly sexually assaulted her when Giuffre was 17. In a joint statement following the settlement, the parties said: “Prince Andrew intends to make a substantial donation to Ms. Giuffre’s charity in support of victims’ rights. Prince Andrew has never intended to malign Ms. Giuffre’s character, and he accepted that she has suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks.”
Giuffre founded Victims Refuses Silence (now SOAR), a non-profit organization, in 2015 to “help survivors surmount the shame, silence, and intimidation typically experienced by victims of sexual abuse, and to help others to escape becoming victims of sex trafficking.” Giuffre’s unpublished memoir, “The Billionaire’s Playboy Club,” was filed as evidence during her 2015 lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell. The memoir was unsealed in 2019.
