Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the woman who says she was recruited as an underage “sex slave” for Jeffrey Epstein and trafficked to other powerful men within his orbit, revealed in her first on-camera interview that she was allegedly trained to find the “youngest-looking” girls for the wealthy financier.
It all started when she was 16 and working as a locker attendant at Mar-a-Lago, she told Dateline NBC’s Savannah Guthrie in an interview that aired Friday night.
“I get approached by this beautiful, well-spoken, well-mannered woman with an English accent," Giuffre said. "She told me her name was Ghislaine Maxwell, and she said, ‘I know this older gentleman who’s looking for a traveling masseuse. He’s super rich, he flies around everywhere. If you want, you can come by for an interview.’”
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Giuffre said Maxwell led her to Epstein, who was laying naked on a massage table, and that’s when the two exchanged a “Cheshire grin,” she said.
“He smiled and nodded, as in, like, approval.”
Giuffre said even after Maxwell ordered her to perform sex acts on Epstein during their first meeting, she went back again because they’d promised they could help her become a real masseuse.
She said she viewed dealing with Epstein at the time as a “necessary evil” to get out of a life of abuse and into a “normal life.”
But she soon learned that his “life revolved around abuse,” she said.
Eventually, she said Maxwell trained her to recruit new girls for Epstein.
“Jeffrey was very particular in the kind of girls he wanted. First off, the younger the better.”
Epstein said that to her, Giuffre claimed, and “Maxwell said that too. During the training and telling me how to do it, she said ‘You always have to go for the youngest-looking ones.’”
Giuffre said she reluctantly brought other girls to Epstein.
“It’ll always haunt me.”
Several of Epstein’s accusers have alleged that Maxwell served as the money-man's madam to lure new girls into his operation, though Maxwell has denied all allegations against her and has not been charged with any crime.
Chauntae Davies, who has alleged she was raped by Epstein on his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, also told NBC that she was first brought to Epstein by Maxwell.
“Just do whatever he likes and you’ll be fine,” Davies said Maxwell told her.
Giuffre said she was expected to be on call for Epstein every day, all day.
“I had to pretend like I was happy. You couldn’t just be depressed around Jeffrey. You had to pretend like… like I told you, he wanted all of us to be his little Lolita.”
Several months in, when she was 17, Giuffre said she was instructed to start having sex with other men at Epstein’s request.
After flying to London, she said, “Ghislaine woke me up in the morning excited. And she said, ‘You’re going to meet a prince today.’”
She said she first met Britain’s Prince Andrew at a nightclub before being told by Maxwell to “do for him what you do for Epstein.”
“The abuse went on for a little bit in the bathroom” at Maxwell’s London home, Giuffre said. “And then it continued to the bedroom. And he wasn’t rude or anything about it. He said, you know, ‘Thank you.’”
She said she was later directed to have sex with Prince Andrew on Epstein’s private island, an incident which she said stands out in her mind because “he was a prince.”
“I grew up watching Disney… and princes and princesses were the good people of the world,” she said.
Prince Andrew has denied having any relationship with Giuffre, and while he acknowledged knowing Epstein, he has maintained he had no knowledge of any of Epstein’s crimes.
“He’s going to keep denying that it ever happened. But he knows the truth. And I know the truth,” Giuffre said.
For Giuffre and Epstein’s other accusers, the convicted sex offender’s suicide in his Manhattan jail cell last month only makes it more important for his alleged accomplices to be held accountable.
“I think that… there should still be some accountability for a lot of the people that were enabling Epstein. You know, there are still people out there, like Ghislaine Maxwell,” said Jennifer Araoz, who said Epstein raped her in his New York home when she was 15. Araoz is suing both Maxwell and Epstein's estate over the alleged rape.
British actress Anouska de Georgiou, another alleged victim of Epstein's, struck a defiant tone in the Dateline interview: “Jeffrey thought that we were disposable. And he threw us all away. And look who’s still standing.”
