Giuffre met Ghislaine Maxwell in 2000 while she was a teenager working at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago. Maxwell offered her a job as a masseuse to Epstein, a wealthy financier, which allegedly kicked off years of sex trafficking and abuse.
“It is with utterly broken hearts that we announce that Virginia passed away last night at her farm in Western Australia,” her family said in a statement to NBC News. “She lost her life to suicide, after being a lifelong victim of sexual abuse and sex trafficking.”
As an adult, Giuffre sued Epstein and Maxwell, then took her accusations public. Her story featured prominently in the Miami Herald’s series that reexamined how the criminal justice system failed the many young women and girls abused by Epstein. In 2019, he was arrested on federal sex trafficking charges and later died in custody.