Virginia Roberts Giuffre, In Her Own Words: How Ghislaine Maxwell Recruited Me for Jeffrey Epstein at Mar-a-Lago
Editor’s note: Virginia Roberts Giuffre completed work on the manuscript for “Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice” in October 2024. Sexual and physical abuse colored Giuffre’s life from early childhood to her experience with the late Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell (a convicted sex trafficker currently in prison for facilitating Epstein’s abuse), and long afterwards, she writes. Following her daring escape from their grasp at nineteen, Giuffre remade her life from scratch and summoned the courage to not only hold her abusers to account but also advocate for other victims. Just weeks before her death, Giuffre wrote to her collaborator on the book, Amy Wallace, “the content of this book is crucial… It is imperative that the truth is understood and that the issues surrounding this topic are addressed, both for the sake of justice and awareness. In the event of my passing, I would like to ensure that “Nobody’s Girl” is still released.” This first excerpt of her memoir, exclusive to Vanity Fair, takes place during the summer of 2000, when Giuffre was sixteen years old and worked in the spa at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
I can still remember walking onto the manicured grounds of
Mar-a-Lago for the first time. It was early morning—my dad’s shift began at 7:00 a.m., and I’d caught a ride to work with him. Already the air was heavy and moist, and the club’s twenty acres of carefully landscaped greens and lawns seemed to shimmer. To look at
the beachfront site that Mar-a-Lago occupies, you’d never suspect that before the original estate was built in the 1920s, it was just a thicket of undergrowth and swampland. I sure couldn’t see that. Instead, as I watched an army of gardeners set out on their daily rounds, the attention being paid to each shrub and palm and blade of grass soothed me. This, I could see, was not a place that rewarded neglect.
My dad was responsible for maintaining the resort’s in-room air-conditioning units, not to mention its five-championship red-clay tennis courts, so he knew his way around, both indoors and out. I remember he gave me a brief tour before presenting me to the hiring manager who—after I passed both a drug test and a polygraph—agreed to take me on. That first day, I was given a uniform—a white polo shirt, emblazoned with the
Mar-a-Lago crest, and a short white skirt— and a name tag that said JENNA in all capital letters. I was also given a sixty-five-page employee handbook. My uniform would be laundered by
Mar-a-Lago, free of charge, said the handbook, which went on to specify everything from basic hygiene (“Body odors are offensive.”) to how many earrings I could wear in my ears (one per lobe, each no larger than a dime); from telephone etiquette (“All calls are to be answered within three rings.”) to general behavior (“Horse-play and practical jokes are prohibited.”). I wasn’t annoyed by the rules and regulations—far from it. Their formality made me feel good—as if working at a place that took itself so seriously might make the world take me seriously too.
In 2021 Giuffre filed a lawsuit against Prince Andrew for sexual assault. The lawsuit alleged that Giuffre was forced to have sexual encounters with Andrew at age 17. He has denied the allegations.Courtesy of Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
It couldn’t have been more than a few days before my dad said he wanted to introduce me to
Donald Trump himself. They weren’t friends, exactly. But Dad worked hard, and Trump liked that— I’d seen photos of them posing together, shaking hands. So one day my father took me to Trump’s office. “This is my daughter,” Dad said, and his voice sounded proud. Trump couldn’t have been friendlier, telling me it was fantastic that I was there. “Do you like kids?” he asked. “Do you babysit at all?” He explained that he owned several houses next to the resort that he lent to friends, many of whom had children who needed tending. I said yes, I’d babysat before, omitting the fact that the last time I’d done so, I’d been reprimanded; in an attempt to entertain the kids in my care, I’d ignited a huge cache of fireworks I’d found hidden in the house. Clearly I was right to leave that out, because soon I was making extra money a few nights a week, minding the children of the elite.
But it was my day job that gave me my first real vision of a better future. The spa, like the resort itself, was gilded, with luxe finishes and an immaculate, sparkling decor. It smelled delicious, like sandalwood and lavender. I remember there were giant gold bathtubs, like something a god would soak in. More than that, I marveled at how peaceful everyone seemed to feel within its walls. My duties—making tea, tidying the bathrooms, restocking towels— kept me just outside the inner sanctum of the massage rooms, but still I could see how relaxed clients looked when they emerged. Whenever possible I questioned the massage therapists about what they did and how they’d learned to do it. I seized on the idea that, with the right training, I could eventually make a living by helping others reduce stress. Maybe, I thought, their healing would fuel my own. For the first time in my life, I allowed a flicker of hope to build inside me. After all I had been through, I believed I might finally leave my abusive past behind.
Then one steaming hot day some weeks before my seventeenth birthday, I was walking toward the Mar-a-Lago spa, on my way to work, when a car slowed behind me. I wish I could say that I sensed that something evil was tracking me, but as I headed into the building, I had no inkling of the danger I was in. In the car I didn’t see were two people I’d not yet met:
a British socialite named Ghislaine Maxwell and her driver,
Juan Alessi, whom she insisted on calling “John.” Alessi would later testify under oath that on this day, when Maxwell spotted me—my long blond hair, my slim build, and what he called my notably “young” appearance— she commanded him from the back seat, “Stop, John, stop!”
Alessi did as he was told, and Maxwell got out and followed after me. I didn’t know it yet, but once again, a predator was closing in. This one, however, would prove different from any I’d met before. Unlike others who had abused me, this was an apex predator—as greedy and demanding on the inside as she appeared to be beautiful, poised, and self-assured on the outside. Again, I wish I could say that I saw through Maxwell’s polished facade—that, like a horse, I intuited the immense threat she posed to me. Instead, my first impression of Maxwell was the same one I formed when I greeted any well-heeled Mar-a-Lago guest. I’d be lucky, I thought, if I could grow up to be anything like her.
Picture a girl in a crisp white uniform sitting behind a marble reception desk. She is sixteen and wears a name tag pinned to her chest. The girl is slender, with the freckled face of a child, and her long blond hair is held back with a tie. A new employee at the Mar-a-Lago spa, the girl is usually in the locker room, handing out towels. But on this blisteringly hot afternoon, the spa is mostly empty, so the girl is at the front desk, which is outside, under an awning that provides shade. The girl is reading a book about anatomy that she’s borrowed from the library. The girl loves to read, and she hopes that studying this book will give her something she’s lacked for too long: purpose. What would it be like, she wonders, to excel at something?
Suddenly, I look up from my book to see a striking woman with short dark hair striding toward me.
“Hello,” the woman says warmly. She looks to be in her late thirties, and her British accent reminds me of Mary Poppins. I couldn’t tell you which designers she’s wearing, but I bet her purse cost more than my dad’s truck. The woman extends her manicured hand for me to shake. “
Ghislaine Maxwell,” she says, pronouncing her first name “Giilen.” Her grip is firm. I point to my name tag. “
I’m Jenna,” I say, smiling like I’ve been told to smile. Mar-a-Lago employees are required to make guests feel welcome. The woman’s eyes alight on my book, which I’ve jammed with sticky notes. “Are you interested in massage?” she asks. “How wonderful!”
Remembering my duties, I offer this mesmerizing woman a beverage, and she chooses hot tea. I go and fetch it, returning with a steaming cup. I expect that to be the end of it, but the woman keeps on talking. Maxwell says she knows a wealthy man—a longtime Mar-a-Lago member, she says—who is looking for a massage therapist to travel with him. “Do you do massage on the side?” she asks. “Oh, no,” I reply, worried I’ve given her the wrong impression. “I’m not trained, but I hope to learn someday.” My lack of experience doesn’t concern her a bit. “I’m sure you’d be terrific,” she insists, looking me up and down. “Will you come for an interview?”
I glance at my library book, with its illustrations of muscles and tendons. “I don’t think I know the body well enough yet,” I protest, but Maxwell shakes her head. What’s important, she says, is my desire to learn. If I impress her friend, she says, he’ll happily pay to get me trained. He’s a mathematician— a genius with a knack for making money. “He loves to help people,” she says, adding that the rich gentleman’s home is right here in Palm Beach, less than two miles from Mar-a-Lago.
“Me, as a six-year-old first grader, around the time I got my first horse, Alixe. These days in Loxahatchee, Florida, were among my happiest.”Courtesy of Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
“Come meet him,” she says, her pretty face glowing. “Come tonight after work.”
Even today, more than twenty years later, I remember how excited I felt. Could my dreams of becoming a professional masseuse be on their way to coming true so quickly? Something about how this proper, well-spoken lady focused on me made that seem possible. I told her I had to get permission from my dad first, but that I really wanted to come. So, as she instructed, I wrote down her phone number and her rich friend’s address: 358 El Brillo Way. “See you later, I hope,” Maxwell said, waving her right hand by twisting it slightly at the wrist. Then she was gone.
The next break I got, I ran to the tennis courts to tell my father I was in the running for a potentially life-changing opportunity. He said he could drive me over after work. I used the phone at the spa’s front desk to call Maxwell and let her know we were on. “Great,” she said. “See you soon.”
A few hours later, Dad gave me a lift up South Ocean Avenue to El Brillo Way, a short hedge-lined spur of a road that dead-ended into the Palm Beach Intracoastal Waterway. The drive took five minutes, and we didn’t talk much. No one ever had to explain to my father the importance of making a buck.
When we arrived at the high wall in front of 358, the last house on the left before we hit the water, Dad pushed a buzzer and spoke into the intercom. A security gate rolled open. We eased into a driveway lined with palm trees and found ourselves in front of a sprawling two-story, six-bedroom mansion. In countless TV documentaries, this house has been shown to be painted a tasteful white, as it was years later. But in the summer of 2000, the home we pulled up to was a garish pink, the color of Pepto-Bismol.
Eager to be punctual, I jumped out of the car before my dad could turn off the engine, walked to the big wooden front door, and rang the bell. Maxwell answered and came outside, the door still open behind her. She shook my father’s hand. “Thank you so very much for dropping her off,” she told Dad, all smiles, but in retrospect, she seemed impatient for him to leave. “We’ll get Jenna home safe,” she said, practically shooing him back into his truck. Then she turned and ushered me into an elegant foyer with a spiral staircase and a huge star-shaped chandelier.
“
Jeffrey has been waiting to meet you,” she said, starting up the stairs. “Come.”
Walking behind her, I tried not to stare at the walls, which were crowded with photos and paintings of nude women. Maybe this was how wealthy people with sophisticated taste decorated their homes? “Be cool,” I thought. “Don’t let her see how nervous you are.” I fixed my eyes on the stairs, which were covered in pink, plush carpet. When we reached the second-floor landing, Maxwell turned right and led me into a bedroom. We made a U- turn around a king- size bed, then entered an adjoining room with a turquoise-green massage table. A naked man lay face down on top of it, his head resting on his folded arms, but when he heard us enter, he lifted up slightly to look around at me. I remember his bushy eyebrows and the deep lines in his face as he grinned a Cheshire-cat smile.
The first excerpt Giuffre's memoir takes place during the summer of 2000 when Giuffre was sixteen.Courtesy of Virginia Roberts Giuffre.
“Say hello to
Mr. Jeffrey Epstein,” Maxwell instructed. But before I could do so, the man spoke to me: “You can just call me Jeffrey.” I nodded at the gray-haired stranger as he lay back down. He was forty-seven years old—nearly three times older than me.
Faced with Epstein’s bare backside, I looked to Maxwell for guidance. I had never gotten a massage before, let alone given one. But still I thought, “Isn’t he supposed to be under a sheet?” Maxwell’s blasé expression indicated that nudity was normal. “Calm down,” I told myself. “Don’t blow this chance.” I wanted to be a good student. Palm Beach was just sixteen miles from Loxahatchee, but the economic divide made it seem way farther. I needed to learn how rich people did things. Besides, while the man on the table was nude, it’s not like I was alone with him. The fact that a woman was with me made me breathe easier. “Fake it ’til you make it,” I thought, as I tried to project a can-do energy.
Epstein and Maxwell’s butler drove me home, dropping me off at my parents’ house on Rackley Road, not the trailer my roommate and I shared. I’d built the job interview up so much that I knew Mom and Dad would expect to hear how it had gone. Given the state I was in, however, I kept the conversation short. I get flushed when I’m upset, so as I ticked off what I’d learned—push the blood away from the heart; always be consistent with a firm, warm touch—I sensed Mom noticing my reddened face and neck. So before she could ask questions, I pleaded exhaustion and excused myself to take a shower. For what seemed like an hour, I sat on the wet tile floor and let my tears mix with the hot water pounding my skin.
So begins the period of my life that has been dissected and analyzed more than any other. I don’t enjoy repeating this story; it hurts to relive what I did and what was done to me. What’s more, as I describe the chronology, transgression by transgression, I worry that the awful details distract from a broader truth. Yes, I was
sexually abused. My body was used in ways that did enormous damage to me. But the worst things Epstein and Maxwell did to me weren’t physical, but psychological. From the start, they manipulated me into participating in behaviors that ate away at me, eroding my ability to comprehend reality and preventing me from defending myself. From the start, I was groomed to be complicit in my own devastation. Of all the terrible wounds they inflicted, that forced complicity was the most destructive.
I was about to spend more than two years in Epstein and Maxwell’s orbit. My job: to do whatever they asked whenever they asked it. There were no bars on the windows or locks on the doors. But I was a prisoner trapped in an invisible cage.
If you need emotional support or are in crisis, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.
Excerpted from “Nobody’s Girl” by Virginia Roberts Giuffre. Copyright © 2025 by Virginia Roberts Giuffre.