The internet is buzzing over the sad news that Virginia Giuffre, Epstein accuser and accuser of many others, has committed suicide at the age of 41. The talk I’ve seen, however, isn’t so much about the event itself as about the idea that it wasn’t a suicide at all but a murder in order to silence her.

I disagree, and I’ll explain why.

I see Giuffre as a victim of Epstein and Maxwell, and probably of various people before that, as well as a dysfunctional upbringing. She alleged having been sexually abused as a young child, then living for a while on the streets and being abused there, then falling in with one older man who sexually abused her and then Epstein, all while underage. I don’t doubt that this history is mostly or substantially true: she was damaged and vulnerable early on.

However, she ultimately extended her accusations greatly:

In court documents from a civil suit that were released from seal in 2019, Giuffre named several others that she claims Epstein and Maxwell instructed her to have sex with, including hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin, attorney Alan Dershowitz, politician Bill Richardson, the late MIT scientist Marvin Minsky, lawyer George J. Mitchell, and MC2 modeling agent Jean-Luc Brunel. Many of the men denied Giuffre’s allegations

Dershowitz ultimately got an admission from Giuffre, which I wrote about in this previous post:

… [O]ne of the main people on whom this perception of Epstein shopping young women around for other rich and/or famous men rests is a woman named Virginia Giuffre. You can read about her here and in particular about her accusations against Alan Dershowitz here. Read about her here also. Note that in the latter article she says, “When you are abused, you know your abuser. I might not have my dates right, I might not have my times right… but I know their faces and I know what they’ve done to me.” And yet later, regarding her allegations that she had sex with Dershowitz six times, she said maybe her accusations against him were a case of mistaken identity. Oopsies!

I have come to my own conclusions about her veracity, and you can come to yours.

As I said, I believe Giuffre was an extremely troubled person who’d been abused early in life and that made her vulnerable to all sorts of woe and upheaval later in life. It also made her vulnerable to suicide. It seems to me likely that the proximate cause of her suicide was related to the fact that her husband and she had separated and were involved in a custody battle that seems to have been quite bitter.

Here’s an article from three weeks ago:

Another photo Virginia posted on Sunday, showing her lying on a hospital bed covered in bruises, along with her statement that she had “four days to live” caused the same amount of shock. It wasn’t long, though, until questions began to be raised. Police said there had been only a “minor crash” with no reports of serious injuries, while sources close to Virginia said her post had been a “mistake”. …

The troubling selfie – which Virginia later said she didn’t mean to be a public post – may have been a cry for help. The sex abuse survivor reportedly recently split from her husband of two decades, Robert Giuffre, and became estranged from their three teenage children – two sons and a daughter. Until recently the family had been living an idyllic and quiet life in a £1millions seaside six-bedroomed home in Ocean Reef, Perth. She was reportedly paid more than £12million by Prince Andrew to settled her case out of court.

It was through her husband that Virginia finally escaped paedophile Epstein after years of abuse. In 2002 aged 19, as part of her escape plan, she asked the billionaire to pay her training as a message therapist and he agreed, flying her to an international training school in Thailand – but only on the condition that she would meet a young Thai girl there and bring her back to the US. There she met Robert, an Australian martial arts trainer, and the pair married after ten days. She later credit having with having “rescued me from Epstein and Maxwell’s clutches”. …

However in recent months Virginia’s close bond with the family who supported and protected for so many years appears to have broken down. After her alleged split with Robert it is said that she has been unable to see her children, who were placed with him. It was also revealed this week that a restraining order had been placed on Virginia, which she had then allegedly broken and was charged by police on March 14 – 10 days before the crash on March 24. Virginia had entered no plea in a court appearance and was next due to appear in front of a magistrate on April 9.

And in the weeks before her crash, she appeared to be struggling to cope without her children. In a post on March 22, she wrote: “My beautiful babies have no clue how much I love them and they’re being poisoned with lies. I miss them so very much. I have been through hell & back in my 41 years but this is incredibly hurting me worse than anything else. Hurt me, abuse me but don’t take my babies. My heart is shattered and every day that passes my sadness only deepens.”

Her father Sky Roberts also told how Virgina had been “very depressed” recently, adding that he was “hoping she can hang on” amid her family life struggles and that her younger brother is “trying to get her spirits up”. He told the Daily Mail she is “in really bad shape. I feel like crying. I love my daughter more than life.’

As I said, that article appeared three weeks before her death. It indicates quite clearly, in my opinion, a person who was in deep emotional difficulty and at high risk for suicide. Her family doesn’t seem to be denying her suicide at this point, either – just the conspiracy-minded online contingent.

I’m not writing this to badmouth Giuffre, but just to say that her story is far more complex than the simplistic way it’s usually depicted. I’ll leave it at that and say RIP.