Virginia Louise Giuffre is an American-Australian campaigner who offers support to victims of sex trafficking. She is an alleged victim of the sex trafficking ring of Jeffrey Epstein. Giuffre created Victims Refuse Silence, a non-profit based in the United States, in 2015, which was relaunched under the name Speak Out, Act, Reclaim (SOAR) in November 2021. She has given a detailed account to many American and British reporters about her experiences of being trafficked by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Giuffre has pursued criminal and civil actions against Epstein and Maxwell, and has appealed directly to the public for justice and awareness. She sued Maxwell for defamation in 2015, and the case was settled in Giuffre's favor for an undisclosed sum in 2017. On July 2, 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered the unsealing of documents from the earlier civil suit by Giuffre against Maxwell. The first batch of documents from Giuffre's suit were released to the public on August 9, 2019, further implicating Epstein, Maxwell, and a number of their associates. The following day, August 10, 2019, Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan prison cell.
In an October 2019 interview for BBC's Panorama, aired on December 2, Giuffre described her alleged experiences of being sex trafficked by Epstein for Britain's Prince Andrew, which helped shift public opinion against the prince. She subsequently sued the Prince in civil court in New York. The suit was settled in February 2022 with Prince Andrew paying an undisclosed amount to Giuffre and making a substantial donation to her charity.
