On March 30, Virginia Giuffre, who has accused deceased convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein of trafficking her to Prince Andrew – a claim which the prince has always strongly denied – posted a sombre update to social media.
“This year has been the worst start to a new year … I won’t bore anyone with the details, but I think it important to note that when a school bus driver comes at you driving 110km as we were slowing for a turn no matter what your car is made of it might as well be a tin can,” she captioned a photograph of herself, bruised and battered lying in a hospital bed.
“I’ve gone into kidney renal failure, they’ve given me four days to live, transferring me to a specialist hospital in urology … I’m ready to go, just not until I see my babies one last time.”
While the post was met with some scepticism, Giuffre’s spokesperson, Dini von Mueffling, confirmed the activist was in a bad way. “Virginia has been in a serious accident and is receiving medical care in the hospital,” she told the BBC. “She greatly appreciates the support and well wishes people are sending.”
Just a day later, Giuffre’s representatives released a statement, clarifying her claims. “On March 24, in rural Western Australia, a school bus hit the car in which she was riding,” the statement read. “The police were called but said that there was no-one available to come to the scene. They asked if anyone was injured and suggested that if they were, they should make their way to the hospital.”
With the school bus “full of distraught children”, the driver left the scene to get them home and later filed a police report about the incident. Meanwhile, a “banged up and bruised” Giuffre returned home. “Virginia’s condition worsened and she was admitted to the hospital,” the statement concluded. “Concerning her Instagram post, Virginia thought that she had posted on her private Facebook page. Virginia and her family thank everyone for their concern.”
A decade ago, Giuffre came forward with allegations that she was sex trafficked as a teenager by Epstein and his accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who recruited her while she worked as a spa attendant at US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell on August 10, 2019, while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Maxwell is serving a 20-year prison sentence for conspiring with Epstein to sex-traffic minors.
In 2019, Giuffre went public with allegations that Epstein and Maxwell had trafficked her to Prince Andrew for sex on at least three separate occasions when she was 17.
The royal has repeatedly and strongly denied any wrongdoing, including in an interview with BBC Newsnight in November 2019 (which was later turned into the Netflix film Scoop). “I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever,” he said, claiming a photograph of the pair together may have been doctored.
In an interview with BBC’s Panorama taped in October 2019, Giuffre doubled down on her claims, going into detail about her alleged encounters with the royal. “I implore the people in the UK to stand up beside me, to help me fight this fight,” she said. “This is not some sordid sex story. This is a story of being trafficked.”
In 2021, Giuffre filed a civil lawsuit in federal court in New York against Prince Andrew, who in the wake of the scandal lost his royal and military titles. The two reached an out-of-court agreement in February 2022, with the prince maintaining his innocence but agreeing to an undisclosed financial sum, including a donation to a victims’ rights charity.
Giuffre has reportedly been living in WA and has split with her husband – the father of her three children. In apparent reference to the split, she captioned a March 22 Instagram post, “My beautiful babies have no clue how much I love them,” over a carousel of family snaps. “I have been through hell and back in my 41 years, but this is incredibly hurting me worse than anything else.”
