2025; 382 pages. New Author(s)? : Yes. Full
Title: Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse
and Fighting for Justice. Genres
: Biographies & Memoirs; Sexual Abuse & Harassment; Non-Fiction. Overall Rating: 10*/10.
The Epstein Files have sure
been in the headlines a lot lately.
There’s a lot of interest as to who partied with him, who went to his Island (aka Little Saint James),
and who paid how much to be “entertained”.
But little has been said about the girls in
Epstein’s entourage. Were they happy
hookers or indentured servants? Could
they leave anytime they chose or would bad things happen if they failed to show
up when summoned? Were they underage or
just heavily made-up to look young?
I bet a lot of people would be
interested in hearing about the experiences of those girls. I bet a lot of people who hobnobbed with
Jeffrey Epstein would go to great lengths to suppress any and all information about
those girls’ experiences.
That’s what makes Nobody’s Girl such an important book.
What’s To Like...
Nobody’s Girl
is the memoir of one of the key girls in Epstein’s fold, Virginia Roberts Giuffre. The book is divided into four parts, namely:
Part 1: Daughter (pgs. 3-63)
Part 2: Prisoner (pgs. 65-106)
Part 3: Survivor (pgs.
147-256)
Part 4: Warrior (pgs. 257-367)
Those section titles give a
nice overview of the storyline.
Virginia’s father started molesting her when she was seven years old (Part 1).
As a 16-year-old she gets a job, first at Mar-a-Lago, then at Epstein’s
as an aspiring masseuse and sex slave (Part 2). At age 19, she travels to Thailand, meets her
husband-to-be, and quits her Epstein job.
She marries, has kids, and discovers that Epstein will find her wherever she
goes, and do anything to her and her family to keep her quiet (Part 3).
She fights back (Part 4), via
depositions, lawsuits, interviews, and establishing help groups for others who suffered the
same abuse.
If you’re looking for some
“great reveals” about Trump, you’ll be disappointed. He gets scant mention, and that merely has to
do with his Mar-a-Lago resort, where Virginia’s father worked as a
groundskeeper. However, there is some
mention of unnamed clients such as “Billionaire #1”, “Billionaire
#2”, and a “well-known Prime
Minister”. Giuffre admits
she’s too scared to reveal these individuals by name, fearing retribution
against her and her family., especially from one of the Billionaires.
It’s not surprising that most
of the sexploitation tales involve Jeffrey Epstein and the various guests that
accompany him on cruises and visits to his island. He's the chief malefactor, but for sheer depravity, Epstein’s partner,
Ghislaine Maxwell, stands above all others.
Her efforts on behalf of Epstein in recruitment, training,
participation, and intimidation are jaw-dropping.
If I had to describe the tone
of Nobody’s Girl in one word, I would choose harrowing. Virginia Giuffre is subjected to incredible
abuses from a very early age and throughout the rest of her life. Yet if I could include a second word in my
description, it would be uplifting. There are moments of love interspersed among
all the horrors, and it is extremely encouraging to learn that attitudes are
changing about sexual abuse.
Laws are being passed to aid
the victims in obtaining justice against their abusers, and support programs
are becoming available for those suffering trauma from such abuse. Nobody’s
Girl is contributing greatly to those attitude shifts.
Ratings…
Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 6,945 ratings
and 760 reviews.
Goodreads: 4.57*/5,
based on 34,116
ratings and 4,278 reviews.
Excerpts...
In July 2009, Epstein was released from
jail after serving only thirteen months; he was placed on house arrest for a
period of another year. It would later
be revealed that for most of his jail sentence, he’d been allowed to go “on
work release” to the office of a nonprofit he’d newly created called the
Florida Science Foundation. As
delineated in a handwritten addendum to the nonprosecution agreement, he was
permitted to visit this office up to twelve hours a day, six days a week. He continued to molest girls there, and after
he got out of jail, he dissolved the foundation. (pg. 211)
How entitled and selfish do you have to be
to continue hounding and threatening the very victims you’ve hurt before? It drove me crazy to think these people could
potentially get away with silencing me for good. When someone on Twitter speculated that the
FBI might kill me “to protect the ultrarich and well connected,” I felt the
need to respond. If I died suddenly, I
tweeted, no one should believe that it was an accident.
“I am making it publicly known that in no
way, shape, or form am I suicidal,” I typed. (pg. 294)
“Just get the icky
part over with so the good parts of life can go on.” (pg. 95)
The cussing in Nobody’s Girl is relatively light, considering its
topic. I counted just 14 instances in
the first 20% of the book, although about 2/3 of those were f-bombs. Needless to say, the subject material
recounted numerous adult situations. I
was pleasantly surprised that the describing of these horrors never descended
into lewdness. I commend both the author
and her collaborator for achieving this.
My only quibble is with the
memoir’s ending. The final chapter
details Virginia Giuffre’s activities in early 2025 and her immediate plans and hope for the future. Unfortunately, she passed away on April 25,
2025, apparently by suicide. But the reader
learns of this at the very start of the book, along with some disturbing
updates about Giuffre’s crumbling marriage. I
think it would’ve been more appropriate to develop these events into an Epilogue.
But I pick at nits. For me, Nobody’s Girl was a gritty,
gripping tale of systemic sexual abuse perpetrated by certain members of
society’s power elite. It shines a spotlight on a very dark aspect of the American dream, but it also provides hope and resources for the victims of this abuse. Judging from the
reviews at both Amazon and Goodreads, a vast majority of others had the same
reaction.
10 Stars. One last thing. Virginia Giuffre spent quite a few years in Australia, and in the book she utilizes several common phrases that are used Down Under. Among them are “having a whinge” and “faffing around”. Who knew that Australians speak a foreign language?
