Chapter Twenty-Eight Always My Daughter
Twenty-eight
Always My Daughter
But any desire I had to stay in America was outweighed by how unhappy I knew Robbie was.
While he wanted to work, increasingly he didn’t feel like he could while still keeping our family safe.
It was hard for a proud man like Robbie not to provide for his family.
But he and I both had become—I was going to say paranoid, but that’s not right.
Paranoia is an irrational feeling that people are out to get you.
Based on what we’d been through, it was perfectly rational for us to believe that our family was in danger.
The truth was that Siggy and I had several things to accomplish before it made sense for me to head back Down Under.
Which was fine by me, because the more I got to know Siggy, the more I respected her.
Raised by a single mom who worked three jobs to support her three daughters, Siggy had been ambitious and determined practically since birth.
Though we were just eleven years apart in age, I looked up to her.
I soon learned that she’d faced personal challenges—she’d struggled with infertility before finding a doctor who helped her and her husband have the four kids she calls “IVF miracles.” At work, meanwhile, her intellect was matched only by her compassion.
Siggy told me she felt she’d been preparing her whole career for a case like mine.
“Life takes you places for a reason, Virginia,” she said, recalling the years she’d spent volunteering in a domestic-violence shelter.
“All that positioned me perfectly to hear your story and to take on your case, the most important of my career.”
As I’d done with Brad, I worked closely with Siggy to meticulously study photographs of men who were known to be Epstein associates, and we confirmed several more men I remembered being trafficked to.
Some of their identities shocked me, if only because they represented such a broad swath of power and influence.
I remembered each of these men’s faces as if it were the day they abused me.
As much as I might wish to, I could never forget them.
One of these men would pass away around this time.
It was unclear what, if any, legal action we might take against the rest, but identifying them—even if only to myself—had a redemptive power.
These were well-known, sophisticated, wealthy men—men who enjoyed a certain cachet in their respective fields.
With every name I uncovered, I appreciated more fully something I had sensed as a teenager: had any of us girls reported being trafficked when we were first abused, it was unlikely that anyone would have listened. I wondered if anyone would listen now.
Siggy, meanwhile, had been studying up on defamation, an area of the law that was evolving in the wake of the #MeToo movement, as victims who’d long been silent spoke up.
In response, more and more alleged perpetrators were suing their accusers, claiming they’d been defamed.
But Siggy believed she’d found a different way for me to challenge Maxwell.
Specifically, when Maxwell’s publicist issued a statement in January 2015 that called me a liar, Siggy believed Maxwell had defamed me.
And she thought not only that she could prove it but that such an action would allow us to describe the abuse I’d suffered without being hamstrung by the statute of limitations (which prevented me from bringing a criminal case against Maxwell).
Siggy explained that when accused persons deny the allegations against them, that does not necessarily mean they can be successful in a defamation suit.
Not if it is a mere denial. “But Maxwell was somebody who sexually abused you, and then called you a liar,” she said.
“That denial is different because it is in the context of a sexual-abuse case. Now the public can assume Maxwell has information that others don’t know about.
” That’s the key: that Maxwell called me a liar based on facts that she knew but that were undisclosed.
In other words, her statement implied an assertion of fact.
“So we are going to say that was defamatory and that you have a right to defend yourself,” Siggy said.
“We will sue her for defamation, and in order to establish the defamation, we will have to get into details surrounding the sexual abuse.” Have I mentioned that I see Siggy as a superhero? Well, here was more proof of why.
In September 2015, Siggy filed my claim against Maxwell in Manhattan federal court.
It said Maxwell had made “a deliberate effort to maliciously discredit” me and to silence my efforts to expose sex crimes committed around the world by her, Epstein, and other powerful people.
It said Maxwell’s denials had damaged my credibility and reiterated that “with the assistance of Maxwell, Epstein was able to sexually abuse Giuffre for years until Giuffre eventually escaped.” But my favorite line in my suit explained why I was suing in the first place: “Ultimately, as a mother and one of Epstein’s many victims, Giuffre believed that she should speak out about her sexual abuse experiences in hopes of helping others.
” I wanted the world to know that becoming a mother—particularly the mother of a daughter—had fueled my determination to act.
—
Late one night in Colorado, after Robbie had returned to Australia, I was folding laundry when I saw headlights on our long, winding driveway.
As I’ve said, we lived on a big lot, way off the main road.
There was no reason to drive down our gravel drive unless you were visiting us.
I wasn’t expecting anyone, so the headlights put me on high alert.
The car approached slowly, then stopped.
I watched for some movement, but the driver stayed put in the front seat, idling, with the high beams trained on our see-through front door.
Later I would learn that other Epstein victims had experienced exactly this kind of intimidation: bright lights aimed at their windows at night.
But while I was ignorant of that then, I still knew with certainty that my family was in peril.
Moving quickly through the house, I scooped a sleeping Ellie out of her bed and gently placed her on the floor of my closet.
Then I woke up Alex and Tyler and led them into the closet too.
They were rubbing their eyes, confused, as I grabbed the laundry I’d been folding and threw it on top of them, trying to hide them from view.
“I need you to be quiet,” I whispered as my sons’ faces peeked out from the pile.
“I’m going to mostly close this door, so you will be safe, but don’t be scared,” I said, trying not to sound frightened myself. “Mom is going to take care of this.”
Turning back toward the front door, I went and got The Judge out of the gun safe and loaded it.
Then I grabbed ahold of Bear, our malamute, because he looked scary, even though he wouldn’t hurt a fly.
Slowly, Bear and I approached the front door, which was lit up like a movie set by the headlights.
I had the gun in one hand, and Bear’s collar in the other.
I’m sure the intruders could see us through the leaded-glass window, but to make sure, I opened the door just a bit, waving the gun into the blinding high beams. Then I closed the door and stood there, gun cocked, ready.
For five straight minutes, we faced off like that: the car idling, me gripping the gun, Bear panting next to me.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, the driver put the car in reverse and slowly backed up, then headed off into the darkness.
That’s when I realized I should have already called the sheriff.
So, after sticking my head into the closet to reassure the boys, I did.
Within minutes, two sheriff’s deputies arrived.
No, I told them, I didn’t see a license plate.
No, I wasn’t sure of the make and model of the car, and the sheriff’s department had already removed their cameras in anticipation of our move, so we couldn’t check any surveillance tapes.
The deputies promised to stay in their cruiser outside our house until daybreak.
I thanked them, then returned the kids to their beds.
Ellie had slept through the whole thing, but it took me a while to get the boys back down.
“Who was in the car?” they asked—the first of so many questions whose answers I didn’t know.
“What did they want?” “Why didn’t they say anything?
” Finally, Alex and Tyler wore themselves out and fell asleep.
Not me, though. I didn’t close my eyes at all that night, or on many of the nights thereafter.
I knew this wasn’t a good idea, especially with small kids in the house, but after that, I went to bed each night with my loaded revolver on the nightstand next to me.
“How far will these people take it?” I asked Robbie when he called to check in.
He couldn’t stand to speculate, saying only, “I want you out of there, Jenna. I want you out of there right now.” I’d arrived in the United States hoping that we could start a new life here.
But now, less than two years later, I agreed with Robbie: we couldn’t get back to Australia fast enough.
Mom helped me pack the irreplaceable stuff—a ceramic parrot Tyler had made in the first grade as well as other mementos and keepsakes—to take back to Australia.
On one of our last days in Colorado, Mom and I were boxing up a few last items in one of the kids’ rooms when I heard her say my name.
I looked up from the suitcase I was trying to close and saw her holding a rectangular, needlepointed pillow.
“My mom gave this to me, and now I want you to have it,” Mom said, smoothing the pillow’s crimson velvet piping before offering it to me.
The face of the pillow had a border of tiny cross-stitched red flowers and green leaves that encircled these words, in all capital letters:
ALWAYS MY DAUGHTER
NOW TOO, MY FRIEND
“This is what I want for us,” she said, and her eyes were wet.
In that moment, I thought, “This is probably the closest to an apology I’m ever going to get.
” And I was okay with that. Sitting on the floor of our Colorado rental, I had done enough healing, and maturing, to see Mom more clearly—the woman she was, but also the overwhelmed young mother of three that she once had been.
I think it’s important to know where you come from.
For better or worse, the people who made you will always be part of who you are.
I knew that I couldn’t ever rely on either of my parents and that I could never change them.
They were both too broken. But I also saw that part of Mom wished she could become someone better: a person capable of being there for me.
—
I’d like to say Australia welcomed us with open arms in October 2015.
But we had a difficult reentry. The house Robbie had rented for us in Palm Cove, about twenty-five miles north of Cairns, was fine, but he’d not had time to make it a home.
We had a TV and a microwave but no furniture or bedding, and we couldn’t afford to go shopping.
Robbie had found a job working security at a resort, but still, after we bought a used car and paid the deposit on the rental, money was tight.
Those first couple of nights, we all slept on the floor.
At the end of the year, Robbie scored a better security job at a hospital.
With bankruptcy no longer imminent, we both started to breathe a little easier.
For years now, my increasing activism had created a push-pull between us that at times had taken Robbie’s and my marriage to the brink.
While we both agreed on the principle that had driven me to become a more public figure—the assholes shouldn’t be allowed to win!
—the fact was that my refusal to stay silent, while honorable, had real consequences for our family.
At least now, I told myself, we were back in Robbie’s country, where he felt more at ease.
To the extent that there were more consequences looming ahead, at least my husband would be standing strong on his own turf as he helped me to meet them.