Virginia Roberts Giuffre > Quotes

“Do you know why this world is as bad as it is?…It is because people think only about their own business, and won’t trouble themselves to stand up for the oppressed, nor bring the wrong-doers to light…. My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“I just didn’t know how to set boundaries with men who wanted things from me.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“When you grow up female, danger is everywhere.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“I know this is a lot to take in. The violence. The neglect. The bad decisions. The self-harm. Imagine if a trauma reel like this played in your head all the time, as it does in mine, and not just on the pages of a book you can put down if you need to, just for a moment, to steady your nerves.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“I didn’t want money. I wanted justice.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“When you’re fighting for survival, you don’t process trauma; you bury it.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“It was about how being so fundamentally betrayed often made a person feel deserving of betrayal.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“But just because justice has been served in a handful of high-profile cases doesn’t mean we’ve solved the larger problem: a culture that tells girls their primary worth is to appeal to men; a culture that tells men that young girls are the ideal—the younger, as Epstein said, the better. I’m not saying those cultural trends cause most men to become child molesters. But I do believe that because of those societal forces, when a molester shows his face, many people tend to look the other way.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“I hope for a world in which predators are punished, not protected; victims are treated with compassion, not shamed; and powerful people face the same consequences as anyone else. I yearn, too, for a world in which perpetrators face more shame than their victims do and where anyone who’s been trafficked can confront their abusers when they are ready, no matter how much time has passed. We don’t live in this world yet”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“It drove me crazy to think these people could potentially get away with silencing me for good. When someone on Twitter speculated that the FBI might kill me “to protect the ultrarich and well connected,” I felt the need to respond. If I died suddenly, I tweeted, no one should believe that it was an accident. “I am making it publicly known that in no way, shape, or form am I suicidal,” I typed hastily but resolutely (making several spelling and grammatical errors that I’ve corrected here). “I have made this known to my therapist and GP—If something happens to me—for the sake of my family, do not let this go away and help me to protect them. Too many evil people want to see me quieted.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“Sexual trafficking should not be a secret, only to be whispered about in hushed tones or not at all. It is a horrible trauma-inducing crime, and we must talk about it if we ever want it to end.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“From the start, they manipulated me into participating in behaviors that ate away at me, eroding my ability to comprehend reality and preventing me from defending myself. From the start, I was groomed to be complicit in my own devastation. Of all the terrible wounds they inflicted, that forced complicity was the most destructive.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“I’m sorry to say that for all that’s happened, more action is needed. Much more. Because some people still think Epstein was an anomaly, an outlier. And those people are wrong. While the sheer number of victims Epstein preyed upon may put him in a class by himself, he was no outlier. The way he viewed women and girls—as playthings to be used and discarded—is not uncommon among certain powerful men who believe they are above the law. And many of those men are still going about their daily lives, enjoying the benefits of their power.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“But even the men who didn’t partake of the favors Epstein offered could see the naked photos on his walls and the naked girls on his islands or by his swimming pools. Epstein not only didn’t hide what was happening, he took a certain glee in making people watch. Because he could. And people did watch—scientists, fundraisers from the Ivy League and other heralded institutions, titans of industry. They watched and they didn’t care.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“How do you navigate a healthy relationship with a broken compass? I didn’t know what real love was supposed to look like.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“Is sex all anyone will ever want from me?”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“If I died suddenly, I tweeted, no one should believe that it was an accident. “I am making it publicly known that in no way, shape, or form am I suicidal,” I typed hastily but resolutely (making several spelling and grammatical errors that I’ve corrected here). “I have made this known to my therapist and GP—If something happens to me—for the sake of my family, do not let this go away and help me to protect them. Too many evil people want to see me quieted.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“Don’t be fooled by those in Epstein’s circle who say they didn’t know what Epstein was doing.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“The fact that different nations and states define the age of consent differently (in Florida it’s eighteen; in New York it’s seventeen; in England it’s sixteen) only gave him ammunition. He [Epstein] said these inconsistencies proved these laws were arbitrary and meaningless; no one could convince him that sex with minors was wrong, because no one could agree on what a minor was!”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“I am here to do a job that never gets any easier. I’m here to stand up to those who have hurt me. I am here to reclaim my life.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“I mean, seriously: Where are those videotapes the FBI confiscated from Epstein’s houses? And why haven’t they led to the prosecution of any more abusers?—”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“People are particularly judgmental about our receiving money from him. My response to that is anger. The DOJ—not Epstein’s victims—made the secret deal that ultimately let Epstein off the hook in 2008: Alexander Acosta, the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, approved the nonprosecution agreement behind closed doors without consulting with (and while actively misleading) Epstein’s victims. Afterward, those of us whom Epstein had abused were told that was the end of it—Epstein wouldn’t be prosecuted, no matter how much we wanted him to be. We were also told that extracting money from him was the only way to punish him. (Remember that it was the DOJ that connected me with a lawyer so I could sue.) But here’s the real reason I’m angry at those who judge victims who settle: all that legalese in our lawsuits about pain and suffering and mental anguish—those things are real. And getting treatment for them costs money.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“I had named not only Prince Andrew and Jean-Luc Brunel among my abusers (as I had in my 2014 joinder motion) but also Marvin Minsky, the MIT scientist; Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico; and others. My sworn testimony naming Billionaires Numbers One, Two, and Three would be made public in various document dumps, and they all denied knowledge of and participation in Epstein’s trafficking scheme.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“The second person I was lent out to was a psychology professor whose research Epstein was helping to fund...The psychologist was only the first of many academics from prestigious universities who I was forced to service sexually.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” —Margaret Mead”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“He [Prince Andrew] was friendly enough, but still entitled—as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“have not named all the men I was trafficked to. Partly that is because I still don’t know some of their names. Partly, too, that is because there are certain men who I fear naming. The man who brutally raped me toward the end of my time with Epstein and Maxwell, for example—the man whom I’ve called “the former Prime Minister” in court documents—I know his name, and he knows what he did to me, even though when others have sought comment from him about my allegations, he has denied them.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“When someone on Twitter speculated that the FBI might kill me “to protect the ultrarich and well connected,” I felt the need to respond. If I died suddenly, I tweeted, no one should believe that it was an accident. “I am making it publicly known that in no way, shape, or form am I suicidal,” I typed hastily but resolutely”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“But please don’t stop reading. I know exactly how to help you get through these tough parts, just as I help myself: by focusing on the present.”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre

“The other charges alleged that from 1994 to 1997, Maxwell helped Epstein recruit, groom, and sexually abuse girls as young as fourteen years old. These initial charges mentioned three unidentified minor victims, though”
― Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice