Family members of Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who accused Jeffrey Epstein of sexually abusing and trafficking her when she was a teenager, say that she didn’t want her recently announced posthumous memoir to be published in its current form.
In an interview with The Times, Giuffre’s brothers, Sky Roberts and Danny Wilson, and her sisters-in-law, Amanda Roberts and Lanette Wilson, said that Giuffre would not have supported the memoir because it misrepresents her relationship with her husband, Robert Giuffre. When Giuffre wrote the memoir, she depicted her husband in a positive light, and didn’t include allegations that he physically abused her because she feared for her safety and that of her three children, according to her family.
Giuffre was hospitalized in March following a serious car accident in North Perth, Australia, and suffered kidney failure. After the accident, she emailed her collaborator on the memoir, the journalist Amy Wallace, and her publicist, Dini von Mueffling, writing that it was her “heartfelt wish that this work be published, regardless of my circumstances at the time. The content of this book is crucial, as it aims to shed light on the systemic failures that allow the trafficking of vulnerable individuals across borders.”
Less than a month later, she died by suicide at age 41. The book, “Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice,” will be released by Knopf on Oct. 21, with an announced first printing of 250,000 copies.
But in the weeks before Giuffre died, she told multiple people — including her brothers, her sisters-in-law, her lawyer and her caregiver — that she wanted to revise the book to change its portrayal of her husband, who comes across as the person who rescued her from years of abuse by Epstein and members of his circle. She was willing to buy back publication rights, if necessary, in order to rewrite the book, her family said.
“She did not want the book published in its current state,” Sky Roberts said.
Neither Robert Giuffre nor his lawyer immediately responded to a request for comment on Monday. He and Virginia Giuffre were locked in a divorce battle when she died, and he had accused her of violating a protective order earlier this year. His attorney has said in the past that neither he nor his client could comment because of ongoing court proceedings in Australia.
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The post Epstein Accuser’s Family Takes Issue With Plans to Publish Her Memoir appeared first on New York Times.
