But, of course, money can fix everything – money fixes holes ripped through the very core of your soul.
When the book Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice by Virginia Roberts Giuffre was published, someone asked me why on earth Virginia, Jeffrey Epstein’s most famous victim, committed suicide.
“After all, she got all that money from Prince Andrew,” they said, referring to the reported £12-million settlement. The Andrew Formerly Known as Prince (to borrow The Sun’s brilliant Friday headline) coughed up in a no-fault settlement.
Lessons from the book
Here’s a desperately sad thing I learned from Virginia’s book: that notorious photograph of 17-year-old Virginia smiling beside Andrew – his hand on the ribbon of flesh beneath her pink crop top, Ghilaine Maxwell behind them – was taken with Virginia’s own camera.
“I suddenly thought of something: my mom would never forgive me if I met someone as famous as Prince Andrew and didn’t pose for a picture,” she wrote. “I ran to get a Kodak FunSaver from my room, then returned and handed it to Epstein.”
She was just a teenager in new clothes, meeting a real-life prince. When asked to guess Virginia’s age, Andrew got it right first time, saying his own daughters were a little younger. He then had sex with her on three occasions.
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Money can fix it all
Five years later, Epstein and Maxwell would attend Princess Beatrice’s 18th birthday party. But of course, money can fix everything – money fixes holes ripped through the very core of your soul.
Sure, you’re crying, but you’ve got a big feather pillow and your tissues are three-ply.
By the same logic, being abused multiple times as a teenager, being pimped out but then paid by your employers, makes everything that happened to Virginia – and all the other victims of Epstein, Maxwell and everyone else involved – okay.
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Loss of trust
Because what money really buys is impunity. And maybe with that, there’s a renewed sense that you’re complicit in your own mistreatment.
As one victim said at Maxwell’s sentencing in 2022: “One of the most painful impacts of Maxwell and Epstein’s abuse was the loss of trust in myself.”
They spoke of their shame, because this is what your prison becomes: shame that you let something like this happen to you.
And fear, because they are all-powerful. And sometimes money. And that’s how they silence you.
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