LEILA FADEL, HOST:
There's a famous picture that most of the world would recognize. It's of now-disgraced Prince Andrew with his hand around the waist of a teen girl in a pink top and jeans. That was Virginia Roberts Giuffre. As an adult, she was one of the most outspoken survivors of abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein and convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell. Prince Andrew was one of many powerful men that Giuffre says she was trafficked to by the wealthy pair. On Friday, Buckingham Palace released a statement from Prince Andrew. It said he had given up his title as Duke of York amid fresh scrutiny of the allegations, which he has consistently denied.
Virginia wrote about this and all she endured in a book called "Nobody's Girl." But before it was published, she died by suicide in the spring. I spoke to Amy Wallace, her collaborator on the book, along with her brother Sky Roberts. And a warning - sexual abuse and suicide come up in our conversation. The book opens with the last email Wallace received from Virginia.
AMY WALLACE: She basically just said, in the case of my passing, I need and want this book to be published - not just for me, but for all survivors.
FADEL: Sky, you're written about so lovingly. You were her baby brother. You were with her in Australia near the end of her life. What do you want the world to know about your sister?
SKY ROBERTS: I look at my sister as a hero. But at a very fundamental level, like, you can tell in that book, like, how loving she was and how much she wanted to kind of protect me in a lot of ways. But then, as she progressed and she got older and became a mother, you know, there's even circumstances where she was protecting her own daughter. And then I think that expanded to her protecting your daughters, because when she held her daughter for the first time, it was like, this can never happen again.
FADEL: Amy, I want to talk more about the beginning of the book and her childhood. The book goes back much further, to abuses that she first encountered at - what? - 7 years old? If you could just talk about what it was like for Virginia to write in such detail.
WALLACE: Well, I mean, the entire book is an exercise in trying to show her in all her complexity.
FADEL: Yes.
WALLACE: And when we began unpacking all of that, she had always said, I was abused by a family friend. And that was...
FADEL: Yeah.
WALLACE: ...True, as far as it went. But she had also been abused by her own father. As we worked on the book, she said, how can I be calling out all these people who came later - Epstein, Maxwell, all of their wealthy and influential friends who she was trafficked to - and not acknowledge or name the original betrayer of me, the original abuser of me? You have to understand Virginia's history, which is a lot of the victims have tragedy in their pasts, to understand that victims of sexual trafficking are not born. They are made. And they are made by a terrible experience that they have over years. And when you understand that Virginia was just 16 years old when she met Ghislaine Maxwell at Mar-a-Lago, where she was working as a $9-an-hour towel girl in the spa. And up to that point, the world that had been revealed to her was a world in which adult men had sex with young girls - children - and didn't pay the price for it.
FADEL: Yeah. And when you say her original betrayer, you're referring to her father?
WALLACE: Her father. So you have to understand - she didn't believe that if she walked out the door of Epstein's Manhattan townhouse that the world outside was going to be any better to her.
FADEL: Yeah. And you note in the book that you reached out to her father. Actually, there's a lot of meticulous reporting done in this, reaching out to everybody she's accused, and he's continued to deny that. Throughout Virginia's pages, she writes about not being believed - about how it made her feel worthless as a child and teen, about the way she was broken down and used. What Virginia didn't write and what came to light later was that she says her husband was physically abusing her. It's something he denies.
ROBERTS: Our sister was very transparent with us, especially towards the end of her relationship, about the abuse that she was incurring for 22 years throughout her marriage, on and off. She fought off Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein, and she was very proud of that with her survivor sisters. She wanted to continue that advocacy work. But, like, I would say the hardest fight of her battle was in her backyard with her husband. And she was a little embarrassed about that, as anybody would be coming forward. She's a strong figure.
FADEL: At the end of her life, Sky was with her.
ROBERTS: She was laughing when we were there 'cause the chickens would chase me around, and we nicknamed one Raptor at one point.
(LAUGHTER)
ROBERTS: But, yes. We were with her in her final couple of weeks, and...
FADEL: Yeah.
ROBERTS: You know, I was the one that found my sister. And...
FADEL: I'm so sorry, Sky. I didn't know that.
ROBERTS: Yeah. It was - you know, I think we all thought she would make it through because she'd pulled through so many times before.
FADEL: You know, I've been thinking a lot. The fight around Epstein is not over. Right now there is a battle over the release of more Epstein documents. And then there's the question of whether Ghislaine Maxwell might get a pardon, which is something President Trump has not ruled out. I mean, what are you thinking, Sky, as you see what's happening around Epstein and Maxwell even today and what she would think?
ROBERTS: I think it's very important to first start with the fact that this is the president of the United States. And at one point, he ran his campaign on the fact that he would release these files. My sister had hope that he would.
WALLACE: Yeah, and I would add to that. Anyone who has any questions about how involved Ghislaine Maxwell was in the actual sexual abuse of girls will get their answers in this book. She was involved. She was not on the sidelines. This is a woman who has never offered any solace or empathy to the people that she hurt or that Epstein hurt. Jeffrey Epstein has been dead for years, but the specter of him lives on. And I'm so grateful for that, frankly, because this didn't die with him. He's not just some super apex predator who was an anomaly. This is part of our culture. Wealthy people, powerful people get to treat people less wealthy terribly. And I think that's why it resonates beyond sexual abuse. I think people are sick of it.
FADEL: Amy Wallace and Sky Roberts, thank you so much for speaking with us.
WALLACE: Thank you for having us.
ROBERTS: Thank you.
FADEL: The book "Nobody's Girl" is out this week. It's Virginia Roberts Giuffre's story. If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
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