California-born Virginia Giuffre, a victim of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, has said little in the years since she settled a civil lawsuit with Prince Andrew. While Andrew, a friend of Epstein, rejected any wrongdoing and continues to deny claims he sexually assaulted her when she was 17, the settlement he paid her was reportedly around £12m. In a joint statement with Giuffre released at the time, he said he regretted his association with Epstein and commended “the bravery of Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others”.

Yet, three years on from the settlement, Giuffre’s wellbeing is once again of grave concern after the mother of three, now aged 41, posted a distressing image to Instagram showing her bruised and battered face, and saying she had just four days to live after going into kidney renal failure following a car crash.

Giuffre, writing about the crash, said: “I won’t bore anyone with the details, but I think it important to note that when a school bus driver comes at you driving 110km as we were slowing for a turn that no matter what your car is made of it might as well be a tin can. I’ve gone into kidney renal failure, they’ve given me four days to live, transferring me to a specialist hospital in urology. I’m ready to go, just not until I see my babies one last time, but you know what they say about wishes.”

Since then, she has said, via a family spokesperson, that the picture and caption had been mistakenly posted to her public Instagram and was only meant to be on her private Facebook page.

Fresh accounts disputing Giuffre’s claims have emerged almost daily over the last week.Five years since Andrew’s disastrous – and somewhat bizarre – interview with Emily Maitlis, a series of worrying revelations about his accuser are beginning to emerge.

As the crash story made headlines around the world, Ross Munns, the school bus driver involved in the collision, disputed her account of the incident, saying she had “blown [it] out of proportion” and referring to the incident as “a minor collision”. West Australian police also confirmed that there were “no reported injuries” following the incident, which occurred in Neergabby, 20km north of Perth.

Details also emerged that Giuffre had recently become estranged from Robert, her husband of 22 years. A Western Australia courts spokesperson also confirmed that she had been charged with breaching a family violence restraining order for an alleged incident that took place in Ocean Reef, near Perth, on 2 February. The case was first heard in Joondalup Magistrates Court on 14 March, and she is due back there on 9 April.

It is a far cry from the image of a happy couple who were living a blissful life in that quiet corner of Australia. Giuffre met Robert, a martial arts expert, in Thailand in 2002, after Epstein paid for her to fly to Asia to do a massage course. They married 10 days after meeting, and, after a few peripatetic years, chose the sleepy Ocean Reef suburb as their home in December 2020.

In December 2023, under photographs of the pair cuddling, she wrote: “Twenty-one years ago this amazing man rescued me from Epstein [and] Maxwell’s clutches. I thank God every day for putting this beautiful man in my life!”

The image Giuffre projected was of living in this beach enclave, looking after her pets, doing yoga and baking cakes – a lifestyle which once saw her dubbed “the Duchess of Ocean Reef”. Few, then, would recognise the picture of domestic distress that is now emerging.

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More than two decades after she was preyed upon by Epstein and Maxwell, who hired her when she was working as a locker-room attendant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, Giuffre has become a polarising figure. Some insist that she is a cause celebre for sexual assault victims, while others claim she was always a troubled fantasist.

Even before this week’s bizarre events, a commenter wrote on her Instagram post, claiming: “You’re as guilty as Maxwell in helping Epstein. Lied, lied and lied some more.” This sentiment was echoed by Lady Victoria Hervey, who briefly dated Andrew in 1999, when she waded into the saga on social media on Monday.

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“KARMA,” wrote the 48-year-old over Giuffre’s hospital selfie, adding Europe’s 1986 glam rock smash “The Final Countdown” as background music. She then went on to call Giuffre “the queen of the fake photo” and accused her of inventing her accusations, as well as her injuries. She claimed to have heard from “reliable sources” that the FBI was preparing to arrest Giuffre, and that it was “almost time to celebrate” her downfall.

Giuffre was strolling in a beachside market when she received the call from her lawyer in July 2019 that confirmed Epstein had finally been charged with sex crimes in New York. As Giuffre explained in a rare interview in December 2021, she chose to first tell her story publicly in 2011 after the birth of her daughter a year earlier. Giuffre, who also has two teenage sons, told The Cut: “I don’t want my little girl growing up in a world that is so vicious.”

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She went on to set up a charity, Speak Out, Act, Reclaim (Soar), to which Prince Andrew made a donation. Today, however, it’s unclear how much time and money Giuffre has personally given to supporting fellow victims.

The speculation around the veracity of her claims has never really gone away. Indeed, the unsealing of a cache of documents last year included a 2016 deposition in which she contradicted an earlier report that she had once flown to Epstein’s private island with former US president Bill Clinton.

Although Giuffre was quoted in a Daily Mail article in 2011 saying she had met Clinton twice and had flown to the Caribbean with him in a helicopter when she was 17, in the deposition she says she was never in a helicopter with Clinton and that her conversation with the Mail journalist was “taken out of context”.

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The documents were originally filed as part of a defamation lawsuit brought in 2015 by Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, who was found guilty of helping Epstein sexually abuse young girls and sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2022. While legal experts have previously indicated that victims of abuse and trauma can get dates and details wrong in testimony, multiple media investigations have disputed claims Giuffre has made dating back to her childhood. However, the fact remains that Epstein was facing trial at the time of his death and Maxwell has been convicted for her crimes.

However, the latest story concerning Giuffre grows ever more confusing and worrying. In Australia, 9News Perth reported that Giuffre admitted herself to Joondalup Health Campus in Perth with a pre-existing injury immediately after the car collision. She was discharged the following day.

This week, we were told that she was taken to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital by ambulance and was seeking treatment for pain. It’s understood she has since been discharged. Another television outlet, 7News, has reported that Giuffre’s heavy bruising was the result of a fall. The 71-year-old who was driving the vehicle in which Giuffre was traveling at the time of the crash is also reported to be a carer, adding to the mystery of Giuffre’s current mental and physical condition.

Whether Giuffre is deeply troubled after the breakdown of her marriage or continues to suffer as a result of the abuse she endured in her youth, recent events have raised even more questions about one of the murkiest episodes to envelop the royal family.