Chapter Thirty-Seven Settling up and Settling Down #2
There is a huge framed picture on our wall in Perth, right at the center of our home.
I placed it there, at the landing at the bottom of the stairs, so that everyone in the family can see it multiple times a day.
It’s a photograph of a cove on Magnetic Island in Queensland—a place where years ago, before Ellie was born, Robbie and I had taken our young sons on our first family vacation.
We had no money back then—we were living paycheck to paycheck—but after Robbie was rear-ended by that Sydney police officer, he’d gotten a settlement to cover his medical expenses, and we’d used it to take our boys, ages two and three, on this trip.
I remember we caught the ferry to Nelly Bay Harbour, and we didn’t come home for six whole weeks.
When I think about places where I have been truly happy, Magnetic Cove tops the list. The island was crawling with koala bears, and the fishing was ridiculously good.
Mackerel, tuna, sea perch—you could catch them all, and Robbie and the boys did.
For my part, I walked the palm-fringed beaches collecting bits of coral and other treasures.
This trip of ours was in 2009. In 2022, as I recovered from my attempts to take my own life, it felt like an eon ago.
But I still thought about that vacation almost every day.
In my brain, Magnetic Island had come to symbolize a path I hadn’t taken.
I imagined I might have lived a beautiful life there, free from all troubles, safe from all dangers, anonymous.
In this fantasy, I did what most people who endure childhood trauma do: process it privately, sometimes without telling a single person other than perhaps a trusted therapist. In other words, in this fantasy, I’d made a choice that was the polar opposite of the one I’d made in real life.
This idyll would never be my reality—I knew that—but imagining it helped me.
I’ve said that I am a visual person—always have been.
Since childhood, I have been able to remember images, faces, details others miss.
If I make a notation in the margin of the book I’m reading, my brain registers the placement of that scribble so I can easily find it again.
I am buoyed by bright colors. So it makes sense that in my darkest time, I turned to something visual for comfort.
In the weeks after I tried to kill myself, I must have stared for hours at that oversized photo of Magnetic Island.
I’d bought it for Robbie in happier times.
I really, truly, wanted to be happy again.
But there was something else that helped me just as much or maybe even more.
I’ve told you how much music has helped me throughout my life.
And I’ve described how we Giuffres enjoy music together as a family.
Well, Alex was recording music now—mixing it in his room on his computer, commissioning beats and vocal tracks from various musicians he’d connected with online.
Now Alex played me one of his favorite compositions.
It was called “Smile Sadness,” and it started with a spare ukulele track, then segued into Alex’s rapping lyrics that could have been plucked straight out of my brain: “There are demons in my mind / Circling me like a haze / It’s amazing / I can’t get up today / I’ve gotta push for it / I cannot go back / If I go back, I’ll be in a fucking trap.
” But it was another line in the song that really made me sit up straight: “I don’t know what I’d do without you. ”
Listening to that song, that’s when I vowed to get better, once and for all. For Alex. For Tyler. For Ellie. For Robbie, of course. But most of all, for myself.
—
In April, Judge Alison J. Nathan had rejected Maxwell’s request for a new trial, denying her claim that her jury could not have been fair or impartial because one juror failed to disclose his own experience of sexual abuse.
Now it was late June, and the day had finally come for Maxwell to be sentenced.
Because of my health problems, my doctors said I couldn’t fly to New York to deliver a victim’s impact statement, as I’d long planned to do.
But Siggy said she would read it for me in open court.
Even before she got a chance to do so, however, a copy of my statement that had been provided to the court made headlines.
“Prince Andrew’s Sex Accuser Says Ghislaine Maxwell ‘Opened Door to Hell’ for Abuse,” blared UK’s Daily Mirror, atop a story that quoted from my statement:
“Ghislaine, twenty-two years ago, in the summer of 2000 you spotted me at the Mar-a-Lago Hotel in Florida and you made a choice. You chose to follow me and procure me for Jeffrey 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 unspeakable 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. ”
At Maxwell’s sentencing hearing on June 28, 2022, Annie Farmer, Sarah Ransome, and another Survivor Sister, Elizabeth Stein, were in the courtroom to deliver their victim-impact statements in person.
Siggy read mine. Judge Nathan listened to everyone, including Maxwell’s lawyers and the prosecutors, then told all those assembled: “The damage done to these young girls was incalculable.” Then she revealed that Maxwell, then sixty, would be sentenced to twenty years in prison, plus five years of supervised release; she was also ordered to pay a $750,000 fine.
With good behavior, she could leave prison in her late seventies.
The Survivor Sisters rejoiced. Together, we’d succeeded in sending one of our most malicious abusers—the woman who’d used her gender to trick so many of us into feeling safe, even as she put us in the worst sort of danger—to prison.
We hadn’t gotten what I’d once told Gayle King I really hoped for: an apology.
Judging by the jailhouse interviews Maxwell had begun giving, she was unrepentant.
Nevertheless, she’d been held accountable.
Despite all her haughty denials, despite her attempts to diminish us as money-grubbing opportunists, a judge and a jury had seen through her.
For all of us, that was the best thing: we’d been believed.
—
Unfortunately, any happiness I felt about Maxwell spending most of her remaining years in prison was dampened by the fact that right around this time, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia—a chronic, long-lasting condition that causes heightened pain and tenderness throughout the body, as well as fatigue and sleep problems. This was not exactly good news, although there was some relief in knowing I wasn’t crazy: the pain was real.
In October, I bought Robbie a used powerboat.
He’s always loved the water, and this vessel had enough beds, couches, and benches down below that our whole family could sleep on board at the same time.
Its previous owner had painted its name—The Renaissance—on the hull in a dark blue script.
I told Robbie he could change that, but he said no, The Renaissance was perfect.
For us, he said, a revival was long overdue.
I knew what he meant: he was hoping I could renew my interest in life.
I wanted that too. I was taking it one day at a time.
As usual, I relied on music to lift me up.
Alex was playing me more and more of his tunes, and I couldn’t have been more proud of him.
I also clung to Sara Bareilles’s song “Brave,” which I’d first heard right around the time I’d said goodbye to my father for the last time.
“Sometimes a shadow wins,” she sang, describing my lowest feelings perfectly.
But then, she helped me rally: “Maybe there’s a way out of the cage where you live / Maybe one of these days you can let the light in / Show me how big your brave is. ”
On November 8, 2022, I announced a settlement between me and lawyer Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard professor emeritus (and friend of Epstein’s) who I’d sued for defamation in 2019.
In a joint statement, I said, “I have long believed that I was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to Alan Dershowitz. However, I was very young at the time, it was a very stressful and traumatic environment, and Mr. Dershowitz has from the beginning consistently denied these allegations. I now recognize I may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz.”
When I had sued Dershowitz in 2019, I’d alleged that he had made defamatory statements about me after I accused him.
He had countersued seven months later. This settlement put an end to both of those claims. No payments were made by either of us to the other.
And we agreed that we would say nothing about one another, other than the agreed statements we made in a joint release.
(In that release, Dershowitz said of me that he had “come to believe that at the time she accused me she believed what she said…She has suffered much at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, and I commend her work combating the evil of sex trafficking.”)
The next day, I got an email from Dr. Annie Farmer.
Annie and her sister Maria had been fighting for justice longer than any of the Survivor Sisters, and I’d gotten to know them both over the years.
Annie’s words meant everything to me because she so clearly understood my emotional state.
“Hi Virginia, I just wanted to send a note because I imagine everything transpiring over these last few days (and throughout this long legal fight you’ve been battling) has been really difficult.
I just wanted to let you know that you are on my mind and I’m sending big hugs and lots of love.
You have focused for years now on helping others and being a strong voice in this fight.
I know your advocacy will continue, but I also hope that you can find the space you need for rest and healing and soaking up time with your family with some relief from all the pressure these cases have brought with them. Xoxo annie.”
I had badly needed some peace. My family had too. Now, at long last, we would set about trying to find it again.