“Unreliable”

I’ve been thinking about Virginia Giuffre. From what I understand, she was training in Thailand for massage therapy, at Epstein’s expense, when she met her husband. She was only 19. So she kind of jumped out of the Epstein frying pan into the fire of a new relationship that got serious quickly. She didn’t start publicly advocating until 2010, after her daughter was born – she had been involved behind the scenes in investigations, particularly the ones going on in Palm Beach, but she hadn’t done any of her own advocacy work until 2010.

According to her family, she and her husband separated in 2023, and her husband had been physically abusive to her throughout their marriage. HE filed a restraining order against her – typical DARVO – and her last photo was of her all bruised up. It was clear it wasn’t from the minor car accident she’d been in. And she was in an acrimonious custody battle.

And I think about things like credibility and who is to be believed. Abusers typically paint their victims as inherently unreliable, and the narrative takes off from there.

This woman had men arrayed against her from the time she was a kid. As she grew up, those men became increasingly powerful, including a British royal prince, a noted and famous Harvard lawyer, a Bush-era U.S. Attorney who refused to prosecute Epstein, a hedge fund manager, and a high-end modeling agent. 

And she took them all on. I don’t think “fearless” is the right word – I think the right words are “justifiably irate and looking for reparations.”

She was made to look bonkers. The noted and famous Harvard lawyer sued her into silence, which in turn only added to the “unreliable” mythos. The car accident she was in called into question her truthfulness – the injuries she had sustained were inconsistent with an accident that small.

But they were quite consistent with being beaten within an inch of her life.

It’s important to understand that her husband (they were not yet divorced) is legally entitled to both the settlement she received from Prince Andrew, and an additional settlement “in the millions” that she received from Ghislaine Maxwell. That an abusive man who quite possibly sent his wife into renal failure should receive a large fortune upon the death of his wife, which he may well have contributed to, is both appalling and not remotely unexpected. It is, in fact, by design.

Because women are expendable. Women are a means to an end. Women are not real humans – women are mechanisms for getting things, whether that be children or money or social satisfaction or orgasms. Women are disposable – this one won’t do what you say anymore? Get rid of her and get another one. Did your girlfriend break? Get an upgrade.

Virginia Giuffre – whether dead by suicide or by some other force – died as she lived: abused, derided, made to look crazy, and ultimately discarded. Millions, if not billions, of women over the course of history have died the same way. And millions, if not billions, of women over the course of the future will die this way too. Some truths are fucking eternal.