“A normal girl from a normal family defeated a prince”: Virginia Giuffre's family comments ...
The family of the late Virginia Giuffre says she would be
“She would be so proud. He is just Andrew now. He is no longer a prince.”
With these words, and visibly moved, Sky Roberts, Virginia Giuffre's brother, reacted Following Buckingham Palace's announcement on Thursday that it has begun the process of stripping Prince Andrew, brother of King Charles III, of his title of prince.
Giuffre was one of the victims of the late financier Jeffrey Epstein, convicted of sex trafficking of minors, who committed suicide in prison.
Giuffre, who took her own life in April, alleged that Epstein and his associate and former partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, put her in the hands of Andrew, the second son of Queen Elizabeth II, whom she accused of sexually abusing her on three occasions when she was 17.
Andrew has always denied these allegations.
The British Royal Family's decision is the latest development in a series of events triggered by the publication of Giuffre's posthumous memoir, Nobody's Girl.
“Celebrating in Heaven”
In Speaking to the BBC's Newsnight program, Roberts expressed the Giuffre family's satisfaction with this "unprecedented" decision. "Virginia is celebrating from heaven right now. Saying 'I did it.' This ordinary girl, from an ordinary family, has brought down a prince. We are so proud of her. This is an unprecedented moment in history," he said. In addition to losing his title of prince, Andrew will lose the privileges associated with it, including the right to live at Royal Lodge, his residence in Windsor. Roberts said, however, that these measures are not enough. "We must have some kind of inquiry that looks further into this," he noted. "He [Andrew] is still walking free. I commend the King; I think he is doing an incredible job as a world leader, setting a precedent."But we need to go one step further. “[Andrew] should be behind bars, period,” he added.
The removal of the title of prince comes weeks after Andrew announced he was voluntarily relinquishing his other titles, such as Duke of York, as well as the privileges that came with them.
Andrew reportedly accepted the British monarch's decision, although he continues to deny the charges against him.
From this new measure onward, he will be known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.
The Weight of Abuse
Virginia Giuffre was born in 1983 in California, USA, and later moved with her family to Florida.
She recounted that when she was 7 years old, she was sexually abused by a family friend, and her “childhood was quickly stolen.”
As a child, she went through several foster homes. By the time she was 14, she was living on the streets, where—according to She said she only found “hunger, pain, and more abuse.”
At 17, she had a job as a locker room assistant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach and was trying to rebuild her life.
Then she met British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, who offered her an interview to train as a massage therapist, and that’s how she ended up at Epstein’s Palm Beach home, where—she said—she found him lying naked.
Maxwell instructed her on how to massage him, and according to her testimony, what she expected to be a job interview turned into the beginning of years of abuse.
Giuffre said she went from being abused by Epstein to being “passed around like a fruit platter” among his powerful acquaintances, as they flew her around the world on private jets.
One of those trips took her to London, where Epstein introduced her to Andrew. According to Giuffre, that night she was taken The famous photograph shows Andres embracing her around the waist, while Maxwell smiles in the background.
Giuffre told the Miami Herald that by 2003 Epstein had lost interest in her because she was “too old” for him, but he agreed to pay for her to take a professional massage course in Thailand, on the condition that she recruit a girl from that country to bring to the United States.
But Giuffre fell in love with a man she met during the trip, whom she married ten days later and with whom she went to Australia to start a family.
There they had three children, and she founded a non-profit organization dedicated to “educating and advocating for victims of trafficking.”
But the shadow of what she had experienced never completely left her.
After his death in April,Her family issued a statement indicating that she died as a result of a life marked by sexual abuse and human trafficking. They described her as a “fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse,” and noted that “the weight of the abuse became unbearable.”

