New York
Virginia Giuffre, Voice in Epstein Sex-Trafficking Scandal, Dies at 41
Virginia Giuffre, a victim of Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring who said she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” as a teenager to rich and powerful predators, including Prince Andrew of Britain, died on Friday at her farm in Western Australia. She was 41.
Ms. Giuffre (pronounced JIFF-ree) died by suicide, according to a statement by the family. She wrote in an Instagram post in March that she was days away from dying of renal failure after being injured in an automobile crash with a school bus that she said was traveling at nearly 70 miles per hour.
In the statement, her family called her “a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking” and “the light that lifted so many survivors.”
In 2019, Mr. Epstein was arrested and charged by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York with sex-trafficking and conspiracy, accused of soliciting teenage girls to perform massages that became increasingly sexual in nature.
Barely a month after he was apprehended, and a day after documents were released from Ms. Giuffre’s successful defamation suit against him, Mr. Epstein was found hanged in his cell in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan. His death, at 66, was ruled a suicide.
In 2009, Ms. Giuffre, identified then only as Jane Doe 102, sued Mr. Epstein, accusing him and Ghislaine Maxwell, his co-conspirator and the daughter of the disgraced British media magnate Robert Maxwell, of recruiting her to join his sex-trafficking ring when she was a minor under the guise of becoming a professional masseuse.
In 2015, she was the first of Mr. Epstein’s victims to give up her anonymity and go public, selling her story to the British tabloid The Mail on Sunday.
“Basically, I was training to be a prostitute for him and his friends who shared his interest in young girls,” Ms. Giuffre was quoted as saying in Nigel Cawthorne’s 2022 book, “Virginia Giuffre: The Extraordinary Life Story of the Masseuse Who Pursued and Ended the Sex Crimes of Millionaires Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.”
“Ghislaine told me that I have to do for Andrew what I do for Jeffrey,” she said.
Ms. Giuffre accused Mr. Epstein, a multimillionaire financier, and Ms. Maxwell, a British socialite, of forcing her to have sex with Prince Andrew, also known as the Duke of York. He flatly denied the accusations, but he relinquished his royal duties in 2019.
In 2021, she sued the prince, who is the younger brother of King Charles III of England, contending that he had sexually assaulted her at Ms. Maxwell’s home in London and at Mr. Epstein’s homes in Manhattan and Little St. James, in the Virgin Islands.
A widely published photograph showed Prince Andrew with his hand around her waist. He said he had no memory of the occasion.
After Prince Andrew agreed to settle the suit by Ms. Giuffre in 2022, he praised her in a statement for speaking out and pledged to “demonstrate his regret” for his association with Mr. Epstein “by supporting the fight against the evils of sex trafficking, and by supporting its victims.”
The settlement included an undisclosed sum to be paid to her and to her charity, now called Speak Out, Act, Reclaim.
In interviews and depositions, Ms. Giuffre said she was recruited to the sex ring in 2000 while working as a locker room attendant at Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Fla. By her account, she was reading a massage therapy manual when she was approached by Ms. Maxwell and invited to become Mr. Epstein’s traveling masseuse. She said the two of them then groomed her to perform sexual services for wealthy men.
Ms. Giuffre sued Ms. Maxwell for defamation in 2015 for calling her a liar; they settled for an undisclosed sum in 2017. Ms. Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking and other counts. The verdict was viewed as the legal reckoning that Mr. Epstein had denied the judicial system, and his victims, by hanging himself. Ms. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Virginia Louise Roberts was born on Aug. 9, 1983, in Sacramento to Sky and Lynn Roberts. When she was 4, the family moved to Palm Beach County, where her father was a maintenance manager at Mar-a-Lago.
She said she ran away from home after having been molested by a close family friend since she was 7. She was placed in foster homes; boarded with an aunt in California; fled to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, the former hippie haven; lived on the streets when she was 14; and spent six months with a 65-year-old sex trafficker, who abused her.
Compared with living on the streets and earning $9 an hour for her summer job at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Epstein’s offer to make $200 a massage several times a day was, Mr. Cawthorne wrote, one that “Virginia had determined for herself she could not refuse.”
But her mandate went well beyond those duties, she told the BBC in 2019: She said that she was “passed around like a platter of fruit” to Mr. Epstein’s friends and ferried around the world on private jets.
In 2002, when she was 19, Ms. Giuffre enrolled in the International Training Massage School in Thailand to become a professional masseuse. There she met Robert Giuffre, an Australian martial arts instructor, and they married.
The couple had three children, Christian, Noah and Emily, and lived in Australia, Florida and Colorado before settling in Perth in 2020. They have since separated.
He and their children survive her, as do her mother and two brothers, Sky Roberts and Danny Wilson.
Ms. Giuffre told The Miami Herald in 2019 that the birth of her daughter in 2010 prompted her to speak publicly about her victimization. She explained why she had originally agreed to work as a masseuse for Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, and to provide sexual services.
“They seemed like nice people,” she said, “so I trusted them, and I told them I’d had a really hard time in my life up until then — I’d been a runaway, I’d been sexually abused, physically abused. That was the worst thing I could have told them, because now they knew how vulnerable I was.”
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.
Hank Sanders contributed reporting.
new video loaded: Historic Brooklyn Church Destroyed in Fire
By Meg Felling
June 22, 2026
How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
Maruf Abubakari Sadick left Ghana for New York in April 2023, confident he was prepared for chilly weather.
When he arrived that morning, the temperatures were in the 50s. He might as well have arrived during a snowstorm.
“‘It’s really cold,’” he told his brother, who laughed and reminded him it wasn’t even winter. His brother brought him a warm jacket, sparking a love affair with outerwear, as well as clothes and colognes.
Three years later, these are the little luxuries on which Mr. Sadick splurges when he is not working two jobs as a security officer in the city.
“I really like to look good, and I like to smell good,” Mr. Sadick, 37, said. “I just tell myself ‘I work too hard. It’s self care.’”
Together, his security jobs bring in close to $46,000 a year, which pays for rent, remittances to his family in Ghana, Wi-Fi, his phone bill and groceries. At the end of the month, he squirrels away what he can so he can one day pay for nursing school.
His rent is $700 a month, which affords him a room in a four-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in the East Bronx that he shares with two other men and one woman.
“Funny enough, we don’t have a schedule for the bathroom,” Mr. Sadick said. “It’s not easy.”
He buys a 30-pound bag of rice for $30 from the nearby bodega that lasts him about three months and a 40-pack of Poland Spring water for $20 so he can bring a bottle to work.
The housemates often share food, usually fish stews and okra soups that Mr. Sadick pours into a thermos, along with the rice, which he then takes to work. It helps him avoid paying for takeout which can cost more than $20.
Mr. Sadick said he learned quickly that to survive in New York, you need to share.
Two Jobs, Little Sleep
Mr. Sadick makes $17 an hour at both jobs, earning the current minimum wage in the city. By next year, he could be making at least $22.20 an hour, with two weeks of paid vacation and paid holidays.
The bump in pay is part of the Aland Etienne Safety and Security Act, a city law that Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed shortly after he took office that set a minimum wage for security guards. The law, which also requires employers to contribute to paid time off and health benefits, was named after the security officer who was fatally shot in July 2025 at 345 Park Avenue by a gunman who killed three others before killing himself.
Mr. Sadick did not know Mr. Etienne, but he said his death terrified him and other security officers, who realized how vulnerable they were at work.
The job “seems easy,” he said. “It seems quiet. Then, one moment, it’s all chaos.”
From Tuesday to Friday he works a four to eight-hour shift when he guards a sprawling office complex in Long Island City, Queens.
On weekends, he guards a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in East Harlem from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. When his shift ends, he takes the subway for a 40-minute commute back to the office complex in Queens, where he works 12-hour overnight shifts on Saturday and Sunday.
Three days a week he takes GED classes in the morning, which are free to state residents. Mondays are his one day off, which he uses “to make up for the two days that I don’t sleep,” Mr. Sadick said.
During the summers, when school is not in session, he tries to make some money selling bus tours to tourists around Times Square. On a good day, he will make $250 to $500 in commissions. On bad days, he will spend five hours in the heat with nothing to show for it.
He said he was exhausted, but driven to pursue a career in medicine.
“I like to take care of people,” he said.
Sending Help Home
A big part of Mr. Sadick’s salary goes to his family in Ghana. On average, he will send $500 a month to help pay for his parents’ food, his grandmother’s health aide and his sister’s schooling.
Last month, he sent a $1,200 so that his parents could buy two sheep. He sent the money through Taptap Send, an app that lets people send money to countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America.
The sheep should provide enough meat to last them a couple of months, he said. His brother sent over $2,000 around the same time so that their extended family could buy a bull.
Sending money home is “expected,” Mr. Sadick said, adding that he feels “very good” about being able to help.
“We are brought up in a system where it’s all about family,” he said. “You are brought up to provide.”
Self-Care Is Worth the Splurge
When Mr. Sadick has extra money in his pocket, he will pop into Zara or Macy’s, where he shops for shoes, jackets and button-down shirts.
He has six bottles of cologne. His favorites are Al Rehab Lord Eau De Parfum and Mountain Woody Forest from Zara. The Al Rehab cologne, which sells for $10.95 an ounce on Amazon, is for daytime. He saves the Mountain Woody Forest — $74.99 on Amazon — for special occasions.
He owns 18 pairs of shoes, including red and white Air Jordans that he bought for $200 and a pair of brown, suede boots from Zara that cost $100.
“These are my favorites,” he said, stroking the soft Zara boots. “I look a bit professional in them.”
He is still trying to figure out what he will do when his salary goes up.
Most likely, he said he would keep working both jobs so that he could save more money. But he daydreams about quitting one of them.
It would be nice, Mr. Sadick said, to get more sleep, have time to play soccer and visit art museums.
What he would really like is more time to take long walks.
One of his favorite places to walk is Dumbo, where he worked briefly guarding a construction site and fell in love with the sweeping views of Manhattan and the cool breeze that comes off the water.
A place in Dumbo, he said, would be the ultimate indulgence.
“That would be a dream come true,” Mr. Sadick said. “It’s so nice there.”
We are talking to New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save.
new video loaded: Fans Show Up to the Parade in Their Best Knicks-Themed Attire
transcript
transcript
Fans Show Up to the Parade in Their Best Knicks-Themed Attire
New York Knicks fans showed up in droves to a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan in their best orange and blue outfits to honor the N.B.A champions.
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“Patrick Ewing. He didn’t get a ring. But I wear your sneakers, bro. When I was in high school, back in the ’90s, Patrick Ewing, John Starks, they were the team that I rooted for in the ’90s. They didn’t make it. So as a tribute to him because this is where I started at being a fan, Patrick Ewing. Knicks hat in denim — I’m a denim fanatic. So I love denim — Knicks hat. And yeah, that’s it.” “This is my style. I usually dress like this every day. But I did a special Knicks edition. It’s all really fun. I start with my makeup. I did really cute flames on my eyes because the Knicks are fire. I don’t really know what I’m going to do before I put it on. I just figure it out along the way. Like, this is a piece of fabric and I just layer in stuff.” “This is from my online boutique and the hat I just bought on the way to the parade because I wanted to match the jumpsuit, and that’s how I came up with the outfit.” “She was ready to go, man.” “Can you show your fingernail?” “She’s been sleeping in her Jalen Brunson jersey for the last 10 weeks. We’ve been watching all the games. You want to tell them who’s your favorite player?” “Jalen Brunson.” “I’m pretty sure this jersey was actually made for a human baby. But they’re selling them around the block. And we threw it on Chester and everyone started clapping. So — he wears it well.” “Blue and orange.” “So I did blue and orange.” “It had to be orange and blue. “Orange and blue. Orange and blue.”
By Meg Felling, Jeremy Raff, Ang Li and David Cheung
June 18, 2026
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