Australia was meant to be Virginia Giuffre’s escape from Jeffrey Epstein. It was another secret hell

Virginia Giuffre was finally free.

After more than two years in the clutches of the world’s most famous paedophile and his accomplice, the 19-year-old had found her saviour in a charming Australian tourist.

It was late 2002. Ten days after meeting on holiday in Thailand, she married Robbie Giuffre, 26, inside a Chiang Mai temple. Following their honeymoon, the bride moved to Australia with her new husband. There, she could learn how to be a functioning adult in the normal world. She’d never have to see Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell again.

“It was an escape, but it was an escape with a happy ending,” Giuffre told 60 Minutes’ Tara Brown of the whirlwind courtship in a rare in-depth television interview in 2019. But that wasn’t the full story.

While Giuffre lived a quiet life in Australia with her husband and three children, she rose to global prominence for taking on some of the world’s most powerful people.

She won legal battles against Epstein and Maxwell. She caused the downfall of the man formerly known as Prince Andrew, Duke of York.

She inspired dozens of other victims to come forward. And she fought for justice despite genuine threats to her life.

This strength and suffering has been immortalised in countless headlines, docuseries, and books, including her own posthumous memoir, Nobody’s Girl.

Lesser known was the battle she fought behind closed doors, including what happened in the months leading up to April 2025, when she took her own life on her farm in Neergabby, in WA’s Wheatbelt, an hour north of Perth.

But no longer.

With access to Giuffre’s diaries, court documents, personal texts to her friends and family and exclusive interviews with those who were with her until the end, Good Weekend senior writer and Walkley Award winner Melissa Fyfe and WAtoday journalist Carla Hildebrandt have pieced together what happened in those last months before Giuffre’s death aged 41.

The result is a gripping four-part investigative series, titled Virginia, which examines the violence both Giuffre and her husband reported against each other, the interim restraining order filed against her, the removal of her children by a magistrate, and the system she turned to for protection that ultimately let her down.

She helped vanquish a prince and a millionaire. Before Giuffre died, she was wealthy, with the resources to defend herself. And yet. Still, she was misidentified as a violent abuser and banned from seeing her children.

If this could happen to her, it could happen to anyone.

New episodes of Virginia, hosted by Fyfe and Hildebrandt, will be released every Saturday from July 11 across The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, WAToday, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to the first episode in the player above, or click here.

Responding to domestic abuse allegations in this podcast, Robbie Giuffre has stated through his lawyers that his wife suffered “significant mental health issues and overreliance on prescription medication” due to the pressure of being in the public eye and this may have led to her change of perspective.

His lawyer says that in Nobody’s Girl, “Virginia praised and thanked Robbie for his support throughout their marriage and in particular, her struggle to be heard”.

The statement goes on to say Robbie and the children want to remember Virginia as a loving wife and mother.

If you or anyone you know needs support, you can contact the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732), Lifeline 131 114, or Beyond Blue 1300 224 636.