Remembering Virginia Giuffre: The woman who helped bring down Jeffrey Epstein
Sammi Taylor - 11 May 2025
Virginia Giuffre's life was never easy.
She had overcome extraordinary tragedy - sexual abuse as a child, homelessness and multiple sex-trafficking rings - to become a powerful advocate for sex abuse survivors around the world.
To her lawyer and friend Sigrid McCawley, she was lion-hearted.
"I think Virginia's legacy is something that we haven't seen before in our history," McCawley told 60 Minutes reporter Tara Brown.
"She has left us with a feeling that irrespective of whether you're a president, a politician, a billionaire, or a prince, that you can be held accountable. You are not above the law."
60 Minutes Australia first met both Giuffre and McCawley in 2019, when Virginia was in combat mode.
She was on a mission to bring to account some of the world's richest and most powerful people.
Her decision to be the first to forgo anonymity to also accuse billionaire Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell of sex abuse and sex trafficking changed the course of many lives.
Giuffre was just 16 when she was hired by Epstein and British socialite Maxwell in 2000 to be a private masseuse.
Giuffre said she was sexually abused by the pair before being trafficked to their powerful friends, including Prince Andrew - a claim he continues to deny, despite settling a civil suit with Giuffre in 2022 for an undisclosed sum.
"She put Epstein in prison. She put Maxwell in prison. She had Prince Andrew stripped of his titles," McCawley said.
"Her words, her actions were incredible. And they started a movement of change."
But on the evening of Anzac Day this year, police and family confirmed the shocking news that Giuffre had taken her own life.
For McCawley, the news was a shock.
"Overwhelming surprise and disbelief. True disbelief," she said.
"It took me several hours to even come to terms with the fact that that was real."
But Giuffre was clearly distressed in the last weeks of her life.
In a recent and confusing social media post, she claimed she was suffering renal failure after a car accident involving a school bus.
Disturbingly, she said she'd been given only four days to live.
Giuffre had also recently become estranged from her children, something McCawley said was devastating to her.
"I think that anybody who's a mother would feel and understand that being deprived access to your children has to be the worst thing that could ever happen to you," she said.
"So I think that while Virginia could face many demons in her life and many villains, that moment of deprivation I think was something that was more than she could handle."
Giuffre's loss will be felt keenly by the survivors of sexual abuse she had always supported.
And for those who knew and loved her, there is now an aching hole.
"I used to say that we had broken through the lawyer-client line because she would sign her emails, 'I love you Siggy'," McCawley said.
"She was just a dear person in my life. And I think that the world will not be the same without her. It just won't be."
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https://9now.nine.com.au/60-minutes/virginia-giuffre-the-woman-who-helped-bring-down-jeffrey-epstein/d3893b22-c893-41e1-9c34-3fff7296c036
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OHL_s7LRPg
—
Q Post #4923
Oct 21 2020 20:55:05 (EST)
https://twitter.com/VRSVirginia/status/1319071346282778624
Dearest Virginia -
We stand with you.
Now and always.
Find peace through prayer.
Never give up the good fight.
God bless you.
Q
https://qanon.pub/#4923