The book Nobody’s Girl: Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice by Virginia Roberts Giuffre has just been released.
She was the young woman who died by suicide in April of this year at the age of 41. Her memoir reveals a horrific life of abuse and exploitation that continued right up to the end. After being sexually abused as a child, starting as a teenager she was sexually abused and trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, passed around to their wealthy and influential friends, including the disgusting Price Andrew, like she was some kind of plaything with whom they could do as they liked. Epstein was a collector of famous people who, having no particular claim to distinction, used his considerable money (the origins of which remain obscure to this day) to buy the friendship of people whom he considered clever, famous , and influential, all this while having a coterie of attractive young single women hanging around his homes.
What is astonishing is that all these people claimed to not have sensed that there was anything amiss. But Emma Brockes, in a review of the book finds these claims of ignorance hard to believe.
Giuffre’s recollections of Prince Andrew, meanwhile, a man with whom she was allegedly forced to have sex three times – once in the context of an orgy on Epstein’s island – present him in an even more buffoonish and grotesque light. “We disrobed and got in the tub, but we didn’t stay there long because the prince was eager to get to the bed … In my memory, the whole thing lasted less than half an hour.” Prince Andrew denies Giuffre’s allegations that he had sex with her, that she had been trafficked to him by Epstein or that he had ever met her. But so much focus has been put on the prince that after reading this book, it wasn’t him I thought about most; it was the casual visitors to Epstein’s New York mansion, the illustrious men and occasional woman whom Giuffre says she encountered at dinners there.
In respect of these people I’d like to ask: who the fuck did they think the 17-year-old at the table was? What did they think she was doing there? Only Melinda Gates, who met Epstein once and cited him as a factor in the breakdown of her marriage to Bill Gates, sensed what apparently none of these people could put their finger on. Giuffre quotes from a statement made by Gates after her meeting with Epstein: “I regretted it the second I walked in the door. He was abhorrent. He was evil personified.” It was an insight that evidently escaped geniuses like the MIT professors Epstein continued to advise long after he’d become a convicted sex offender.
There is a fuller account of Melinda French Gates’s experience.
After three decades of marriage, Bill and Melinda Gates divorced last year. In Melinda’s petition for divorce, she described the marriage as “irretrievably broken.” Now, in an exclusive interview with CBS Mornings, she is speaking out for the first time about what went wrong—including Bill’s affairs and relationship with Jeffery Epstein.
Melinda told host Gayle King that it was “not one thing but many things” that led to their divorce. “I did not like that he had meetings with Jeffrey Epstein, no. I made that clear to him,” the philanthropist, 57, told King.
She met Epstein one time, curious to see who he was, but says, “I regretted it the second I walked in the door. He was abhorrent. He was evil personified. My heart breaks for these women.”
I always felt that there was always something about Epstein in photographs and videos that seemed creepy. Of course I only learned about him after the scandal broke and that may have colored my judgement. But I have had bad vibes from other people as well and thus was not surprised when I later learned that they had engaged in unsavory practices. I may not know on sight that they are sex offenders but I do immediately sense with some people that there is something off and that I do not want to associate with them more than absolutely necessary and definitely not be friends with. I suspect that most people have that basic sense.
While French Gates is clearly a perceptive woman and it is a credit to her that she immediately recognized what Epstein was like and refused to be sucked into his orbit, I doubt that she is possessed of an almost preternatural ability to sniff out someone as being odious. The signs must have always been there but others conveniently chose to ignore them because of the largesse that Epstein showered on them or the opportunities he provided to mingle with celebrities. Their later claims of being shocked, just shocked, at what he had been up to all along right under their noses ring hollow.
When I was a kid, maybe around 10 or 12? a salesman showed up at our house selling water purifiers I think (our water came from a rural well, so was pretty hard). I hated the man on sight. If I’d been a dog, I’d have bit him. It was like I felt this overwhelming urge to protect my parents from him. I attacked with overtly hostile replies to everything he said, and my mom just looked at me like, “What is wrong with you?” not a little embarrassed at my uncharacteristic behavior. All I could say later was, “I didn’t like him, he was full of lies.”
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I’ve never before or since reacted so strongly on meeting a stranger. Though it’s pretty close on seeing Poop Baby’s speeches. Just looking at his evil, beady eyes and smarmy expressions evokes a gut revulsion that I can’t fathom how so many others fail to see it or are, worse, attracted to.
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I think women have developed that sort of radar perhaps more than men, out of necessity. That’s also why women have been carefully socialized to mistrust or ignore their gut feelings, to make them easier targets of predatory men.
After being sexually abused as a child, starting as a teenager she was sexually abused and trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell…
I dunno about spotting abusers, but have no doubt that abusers can easily spot abusees, and know how to push their buttons and continue the pattern of exploitation and harm. As one abuse survivor told me repeatedly, “It’s like they’ve all read the same book.”
Mano: While French Gates is clearly a perceptive woman and it is a credit to her that she immediately recognized what Epstein was like and refused to be sucked into his orbit, I doubt that she is possessed of an almost preternatural ability to sniff out someone as being odious.
She did not have to judge Epstein just by his appearance. Most likely they met in a social gathering with other people interacting with him, possibly also girls like Giuffre. The interactions showed Epstein’s predatory nature.
Jörg @3: Yeah, the giveaway is how they treat others. For example, what is their attitude towards waitstaff in a restaurant? Do they seem to pick on people they see as vulnerable?