The fight that cost Virginia Giuffre her life should never have been hers to carry alone

Virgina Giuffre's “Nobody’s Girl” memoir, released posthumously by her family, is set to release this week. Giuffre's 20 year battle in uncovering the powerful web of wealthy predatory men and the women who enabled them came to a tragic end as she ended her life 6 months before she could see the world’s reaction to her tell-all. Her family was quoted in the press as saying that the “toll of abuse... became unbearable".

I’ve been supporting survivors of gender-based violence for more than a decade and while most cases will not become as well-known as one where a Prince has been accused of the abuse of a 17-year old, the sentiment of a survivor’s spirits being devastated is all too familiar. They tell me they wish they had never gone to the police or courts because it often doesn’t feel worth the pain, harassment, cost and humiliation.

While we encourage survivors to pursue legal action to get “justice”, stories like this give us all a window into how retraumatising, long, expensive and painful it can be for survivors to pursue criminal or legal justice, to prevent the abuser from exploiting more people. According to the Home Office, in the year ending June 2024, approximately 36 per cent of all sexual offences recorded by the police were rape offences. Only 2.6 per cent of those who went to court led to a conviction.

Our legal system is in need of an urgent reimagining. Legal processes need to be survivor-centered. Survivors need long term mental health support alongside financial support. The government needs to make criminal justice rehaul (not just reform) a priority, with urgent training for police, judges and prosecutors. We need transparent systems at each step of the process, from reporting to the police to being or not being in Court.

While the out of court settlement in 2022 meant that Prince Andrew never admitted to any wrongdoing, he recognised her as a survivor of child abuse. It isn’t enough that he gives up a few titles. He should not retain the title of Prince either. It is also time for him to actively help ongoing and future investigations for survivors of Epstein’s network to hold them accountable in some way.

There’s a lot we can take away from Giuffre's story: the years of exploitation and the systems that enabled it, the evasiveness of justice even when it was all in the open, the decades of heroic campaigning.

But perhaps more importantly, we must not forget how our legal systems and social commentary further traumatize survivors and how it’s on all of us to ensure no survivor feels like nobody’s girl.

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Hera Hussain is the Founder and CEO of Chayn, a global nonprofit that creates online resources to address gender-based violence.

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