Virginia Roberts Giuffre died by suicide on April 25, 2025, three months before Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche met twice with the woman serving 20 years for helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually victimize her and other young women.
That remarkable concession last week can only mean Blanche—and therefore U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, and therefore President Donald Trump—wants something from 63-year-old Ghislaine Maxwell.
Whatever it is, it must outweigh the political cost of further rewarding Maxwell with a transfer from an actual prison in Tallahassee, Florida, to what is termed a “prison camp” in Bryan, Texas. This Club Fed is too much like the Michigan summer camp where Maxwell joined Epstein in targeting a 13-year-old who would be the first victim to testify against Maxwell in her 2021 sex trafficking trial.
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The next step might well be the ultimate reward: clemency.
Though Giuffre is unable to voice an objection now, she leaves us with a statement her attorney read at Maxwell’s sentencing on June 28, 2022. Giuffre addressed the statement directly to Maxwell.
“Ghislaine: Twenty-two years ago, in the summer of 2000, you spotted me at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, and you made a choice: You chose to follow me and procure me for Epstein. Just hours later, you and he abused me together for the first time. Together you damaged me physically, mentally, sexually and emotionally. Together you did unthinkable things that still have a corrosive impact on me to this day. I want to be clear about one thing: Without question, Jeffrey Epstein was a terrible pedophile, but I never would have met Jeffrey Epstein if not for you.
“For me, and for so many others, you opened the door to hell, and then, Ghislaine, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, you used your femininity to betray us and you led us all through it. When you did that, you changed the course of our lives forever.
“You joked that you were like a new mother to us. As a woman, I think you understood the damage that you were causing, the price you were making us victims pay. You could have put an end to the rapes, the molestation, the sickening manipulation that you arranged, witnessed, and even took part in. You could have called the authorities and reported that you were part of something awful.
“I was young and naïve when we met, but you knew that. In fact, you were counting on it. My life as a young person was just beginning. You robbed me of that by exploiting my hopes and ambitions.
“Ghislaine, the pain you have caused me is almost indescribable. Because of your choices and the world you brought me into, I don’t sleep. Nightmares wake me at all hours. In those dreams, I relive the awful things that you and others did to me and the things that you forced me to do. Those memories will never go away. I have trouble meeting new people without questioning if somehow they’re going to hurt me, too. There is not a day that doesn’t go by that I don’t ask why. Why did you enjoy hurting us so much?
“I worry every single day and night that you will get away with it and evade being punished. I will worry about that until you’re brought to justice. And what should that justice look like? Ghislaine, you deserve to spend the rest of your life in prison in a jail cell.”
She added, “You deserve to be trapped in a cage forever just like you trapped your victims.”
Maxwell’s subsequent conviction gave her victims reason to believe justice was being done, that she was not going to get away with it.
In her statement before sentencing, Maxwell suggested that Epstein should have been there as the lead defendant.
“But today it is not about Epstein, ultimately,” Maxwell allowed. “It is for me to be sentenced and for the victims to address me, and me alone, in this court. To you, all the victims, those who came in court and to those outside, I am sorry for the pain that you experienced. I hope that my conviction, along with my harsh and unusual incarceration, brings you closure. I hope this brings the women who have suffered some measure of peace and finality to help you put the experiences of those many years ago in a place that allows you to look forward and not back.”
She went on, “It is my sincerest wish to all those in this courtroom and to all those outside this courtroom that this day brings a terrible chapter to the end, to an end.”
She closed by saying: “And to those of you who spoke here today and to those of you who did not, may this day help you travel from darkness into the light.“
Judge Alison Nathan sentenced Maxwell to 20 years. But however much closure that offered the victims, Giuffre was unable to escape the darkness. And she cannot add her voice to the outrage over Maxwell’s efforts to be the one traveling into the light.
If Maxwell can pull it off, her accomplice in that moral crime, however legal, will be the Department of “Justice.”
Those who remember Giuffre will have to make good on a pledge she made to Maxwell in her victim impact statement.
“If you ever get out of prison, I will be here watching you and making sure you never hurt anyone else again.”
