Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice by Virginia Roberts Giuffre... Final Thoughts

 Part II - Prisoner 

If you feel like letting go (hold on) If you think you’ve had too much Of this life, well hang on —“Everybody Hurts,” R.E.M.

I finished this 3-Part devastating Memoir last night! I was unsure how to proceed and finally decided that I would strongly recommend you read this book, if you care about young and older women's treatment in today's world. Over and over, I was appalled as how Jenna was treated by tabloid news representatives, by those who had actually abused her, as they tried to lie their way out of her accusations... But most of all, as I am prone to do, I connected two major paragraphs in the book...

I felt rage. How entitled and selfish do you have to be to continue hounding and threatening the very victims you’ve hurt before? It drove me crazy to think these people could potentially get away with silencing me for good. When someone on Twitter speculated that the FBI might kill me “to protect the ultrarich and well connected,” I felt the need to respond. If I died suddenly, I tweeted, no one should believe that it was an accident. “I am making it publicly known that in no way, shape, or form am I suicidal,” I typed hastily but resolutely (making several spelling and grammatical errors that I’ve corrected here). “I have made this known to my therapist and GP—If something happens to me—for the sake of my family, do not let this go away and help me to protect them. Too many evil people want to see me quieted.”

~

Donald Trump was now president, and in early 2017 he nominated Alexander Acosta—the former federal prosecutor based in Miami who had approved Epstein’s shameful, secretive nonprosecution agreement—to be secretary of labor. Acosta was confirmed in April 2017.

~

“I don’t want to talk to you,” the woman said. “Jeffrey’s dead, and you helped kill him.” That pissed me off. “I’m not here about what Jeffrey’s done,” I said. “I’m here about what you’ve done.” “I’m calling security,” she said, and soon, we were being escorted off the property.

~

“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.”

The above was written when she was told she could not participate in Maxwell's trial, because it would be "too disruptive..." (Everybody knew her name...) This statement was instead read at the trial as other victims testified... 

~

There are other men whom I was trafficked to who have threatened me in another way: by asserting that they will use litigation to bankrupt me. One of those men’s names has come up repeatedly in various court filings, and in response, he has told my lawyers that if I talk about him publicly, he will employ his vast resources to keep me in court for the rest of my life. While I have named him in sworn depositions and identified him to the FBI, I fear that if I do so again here, my family will bear the emotional and financial brunt of that decision. I have the same fears about another man whom I was forced to have sex with many times—a man whom I also saw having sexual contact with Epstein himself. I would love to identify him here. But this man is very wealthy and very powerful, and I fear that he, too, might engage me in expensive, life-ruining litigation. I do not make this decision to hold back lightly. Part of me wants to shout from the highest rooftop the names of every man who ever used me for sex. Some readers will question my reluctance to name many of my abusers. If I am, indeed, a fighter for justice, why have I not called them out? My answer is simple: Because while I have been a daughter, a prisoner, a survivor, and a warrior, my most important role is that of a mother. First and foremost, I am a parent, and I won’t put my family at risk if I can help it. Maybe in the future I will be ready to talk about these men. But not now.

~~~

As I read, the book moves forward as she tells her story... But the faltering begins, when she begins to learn that those with whom she shared, would backstab her later, often coming back for more "dirt" than she was willing to give or to insinuate that she was not telling the whole story--that she was getting rich and famous...et.al., I recognized a brave woman that was willing to stand up and be brave... she shares of interaction online and about her desire and action to help not only those who were abused by Epstein, but the many others--she includes many recent events that have occurred after the Me-Too movement began and how it moved across the country like a fire of those who had been abused in some way... I joined that group...

At one point I was also going to write a memoir, with the title, A Single Christian Woman: Is Sex All That? As you know, I quickly abandoned that once I started paying attention to the news in 2015 and saw just how even a president can treat women who got in his way, or even just didn't support him... Since then I've read many fictional and nonfiction books describing what can and has been done to women... And when I read the story of Tamar, the daughter of King David during early times, I learned...and began to wonder... have we not learned anything since the death of Jesus for us?

Instead, not only rape, but ongoing abuse, trafficking for sex, and so much more is done to today's girls and women... A major book became available years ago about the grooming of our teenagers... Nothing significant has occurred. Indeed during the last decade we learned over and over about the rich and famous using out children for sexual favors... And, today, the leader of the House has sent everybody home, rather than having to deal with a request to release the huge volume of documentation that was accumulated on the Epstein case... Simply because Trump and Epstein were friends for ten years...

So, let's take a final look at the reality of the massive  misogyny that began in the "BC" years--the days of harems, of the theft of daughters from citizens to become a member of the King's courts... Until today.

Of course, there were times of women speaking out to gain the right to vote, to gain equal pay for equal work... Little things like that... Sarcasm intended...

But, still, when it comes to sexual abuse, the ratio of women to men has always been extremely different. Why is that? Why is it when one young girl out of hundreds, possibly thousands of teenagers is chosen, escaped, finally found love, that she is hounded not only by those who had abused her, but those who are afraid of her desire to help solve this major problem?

Could it be that the young boys were never taught to actually respect women--their mothers, their sisters, and later their children? Perhaps because they read that King David did nothing when one of his children was raped, and another, a brother, committed murder in retribution... We began to question what our lives would have been like in biblical times...

Or is it just those who chose power over others, in whatever form, in order to achieve their own personal goals of greed which their power had permitted?

Jenna, yes, did write of her time when she thought it would be better for her family if she was gone... She did try suicide... But remember, by that time, there were trucks driving up to their home, sitting in a menacing manner... There were break-ins as well... There were trolls on social media who blamed her or thought she did it for the money, the glamor of her abuser's attention... Get real. No young virgin has ever thought about selling her body for the honor of being abused night after night, of being trafficked to men who were not even named--all they did was rape her... And sometimes even physically attack her bodily... 

What I know is that, after reading her book and what I might have written about my own abuse, it was minor in comparison of what this young woman went through... Yet, she tried throughout her life, to forgive those family members who participated in her early abuse that was even before her teen years...

I have to ask about Jenna... Did she die just as we all believe that Epstein died? Was she murdered? She goes from claiming early that she would not ever commit suicide due to her experiences... Yet, by the end of her book, she had changed it to admit that there were a number of powerful people so influential that she was afraid to even reveal their names... What happened between the first firm statement of her not being the type to commit suicide... To, by the interaction with news reporters, lawyers representing her as the victim, against the lawyers of those powerful men who she knew were so powerful that she became more afraid for her husband and three children, than for herself... Will these possibilities ever be considered further, I doubt it... 

Right now, the victims, which included Jenna have come together as a sisterhood, working individually and in a group to ensure that what Epstein and Maxwell did to them would be made public... And, right now, the Speaker of the House has sent the members of Congress home for months...for fear that the ultimate ability to vote on the release of the Epstein files, when a new member is sworn in, which he has delayed purposely, and required to proceed with the vote...

We all know that there is only one man who wants the files to never be released... The man who controls the Speaker and everybody else he brought with him...

I really wish I could understand how so many of those who were Christians suddenly bowed down to a man who is now tearing the nation and much of the world apart... What I do know is that Jenna was a woman who I admire, who felt strongly about helping others who had gone through the years of turmoil she had experienced in her life... 

And why powerful men choose to believe that they have the right to do anything they want with the bodies of females... There is no mention of God being a part of her life, before she met Robbie... She began to learn about life--love--when she was 19...

Experts say that children learn by the age of four what they will learn from their parents...

Except if the love learned becomes a nightmare of pain and confusion... That child has also learned...

I was thrilled that Jenna did finally learn about love... And when she had a daughter, especially, that she was even more convinced that she had to work to change this world... I pray that her death will not be in vain...

GABixlerReviews 

If you’ve read this far, I hope my story has moved you—to seek ways to free yourself from a bad situation, say, to stand up for someone else in need, or to simply reframe how you judge victims of sexual abuse. Each one of us can make positive change. I truly believe that. I hope for a world in which predators are punished, not protected; victims are treated with compassion, not shamed; and powerful people face the same consequences as anyone else. I yearn, too, for a world in which perpetrators face more shame than their victims do and where anyone who’s been trafficked can confront their abusers when they are ready, no matter how much time has passed. We don’t live in this world yet—I mean, seriously: Where are those videotapes the FBI confiscated from Epstein’s houses? And why haven’t they led to the prosecution of any more abusers?—but I believe we could someday. Imagining it is the first step. In my mind, I hold a picture of a girl reaching out for help and easily finding it. I picture a woman, too, who—having come to terms with her childhood pain—feels that it’s within her power to take action against those who hurt her. If this book moves us even an inch closer to a reality like that—if it helps just one person—I will have achieved my goal.

Another Victim...

NOBODY'S GIRL - A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice - Published Posthumously by Virginia Roberts Giuffre - Including Playlist - Part 1

My hope is that this book can aim some light at the darkness and force it to crawl back into its cave.

Picture a girl sitting alone on a curb, her face stained with tears. She is fifteen, but so skinny that she appears even younger. She could be pretty, with her blue eyes and long blond hair, but her freckled face is swollen, her throat is bruised, and in her mouth is a taste she will never forget: gunmetal. Bleeding from places she didn’t know she could bleed, this girl has been hurt before, but not like this. A gust of wind makes the palm trees above her shudder. She wipes her bloody lip. What would it be like, she wonders, to matter? Then she sees the stretch limousine. As it glides toward her, black and shiny, the girl catches a glimpse of the driver behind the wheel. Her mind flashes on the limo in Disney’s 101 Dalmatians, the one that Cruella de Vil drives around London, looking for puppies to skin. How many times has she watched that movie? But this isn’t a scene from a cartoon. That’s kids’ stuff, and the girl hasn’t felt like a kid in years. This is real life in Miami, Florida. And the girl is me. Busting out of the juvenile detention facility in Palm Beach County forty-eight hours earlier, I’d been so full of hope. I knew from experience that I needed to ditch my juvie uniform—a navy polo and khakis—or the cops would pick me up right away. So my first stop had been a Marshalls discount store, where I quickly changed into a new T-shirt and jeans and made a show of returning my prison-issue garb, neatly hung on a hanger, to a rack. Then I exited the store without paying and headed straight for Delray Beach. I’ve always been good at talking to strangers. On the sand, I met a stoner dude—way older than me, but with a mellow energy. He was smoking a joint, which he offered to share as we looked out at the Atlantic. When I told him I planned to sleep outside that night, he said I could crash on his couch. I worried that he wanted sex, but I was wrong. When we got to his place, we just smoked some more pot and then he found me a clean towel so I could take a shower. “Please be gone by the morning,” he said before he went to bed. “I go to work early. And please don’t fuck up my house. Do the right thing.” Not all men are monsters. The next morning before dawn, I did the right thing, pulling the front door shut with a quiet click. Then I headed for the train station, where I took most of the money I had—a twenty-dollar bill I’d panhandled from a gas-station attendant—out of my ponytail scrunchie, where I’d hidden it, and bought a one-way ticket to Miami. An hour and a half later, I arrived at the Miami-Dade station, fifty miles south of Palm Beach. I’d run away dozens of times before, but I’d never made it this far. From the station, I headed east on foot, figuring I was about an hour’s walk from the ocean. Right away, I saw the pink and orange glow of a Dunkin’ Donuts up ahead. Back home in Loxahatchee, I’d often begged for change outside the local Dunkin’, so the sight of its logo—a cheerful steaming coffee cup—felt like a good omen. I went inside and bought two of my favorite chocolate-topped donuts. With food in my stomach for the first time in days, I walked out feeling confident. I had no place to go, but I’d figure it out, somehow. I must have been walking for about twenty minutes when a white van pulled over just ahead of me. “Need a lift?” the driver asked, sounding friendly. “I’m going your way.” Maybe it was the sugar high, but my guard was down. Besides, it was hot and humid, and the dark-haired driver looked like a skinny shrimp—bigger than me, but not by much. I got in and buckled up. The driver glanced at me, then back at the road. He was probably in his late thirties and dressed as if he worked construction. “I need to make one quick stop,” he said. He owed someone money, he said, and needed to pay them back. That’s cool, I replied, in a voice I hoped sounded tough. The van turned west, away from the water, then parked in front of a seedy-looking motel. “Come upstairs with me,” the construction worker said. “It’ll only take a sec.” I followed him up, then through a door into a dingy, worn-out room. He was on me immediately, and I knew right away I had underestimated his strength. He overpowered me and held me down on the bed, one hand around my neck. Then he pulled a gun and put its muzzle into my mouth. He raped me from the front first, then from the back. The only lubrication was the saliva he spit into his palm. He choked me until I lost consciousness, then let me breathe, then choked me again. I imagined myself dead, dumped in a ditch. And then a miracle: the man’s cell phone rang, and he released me so he could answer it. “Stay here,” my attacker told me. “Try to leave, and I’ll find you and kill you.” Then he turned back to his phone and stepped outside. I suspected he was going to kill me either way. So I waited until I couldn’t hear his voice anymore. Then I ran. That’s how I became this tearstained girl sitting on a curb in an empty beach parking lot. It is dusk when I see the limousine slow to a stop in front of me. The tinted rear passenger window hums as it opens, revealing the pasty face of a stranger in his sixties. He is heavyset, balding. I watch his eyes as they roam over my swollen, bruised face and battered body. “Oh, you poor baby,” the old man says. His concern sounds genuine. Peering into the car, I see a pretty girl in a short red dress sitting next to him. She smiles at me. The old man wears black slacks and a collared shirt. The men in my family tend toward blue jeans or coveralls. I hope this stranger is different from them in other ways too. “Come in here so we can take care of you,” the old man says, as the girl nods encouragement. I think of my attacker driving around in his white van, his gun in his lap, searching for the girl who got away. I stand up, wobbly. The limo door opens, and the old man slides over to make room for me. The old man tells the limo driver where to go, then introduces himself. His name is Ron Eppinger, and he runs a modeling agency called Perfect 10, he says. He gestures toward Yana, the girl next to him, who is from the Czech Republic. Would I like to become a model like her? He asks me how old I am, and at first I say sixteen because it sounds better to me, less vulnerable. Eppinger shakes his head; he isn’t buying it. So I tell him the truth, that I’m fifteen, which seems to please him. “As long as you never lie to me again, I will take you in,” he says. “What does that mean?” I think, but don’t ask out loud. Then Eppinger’s fleshy face turns sad. He had a daughter once, he says. Susan Marie. She died when she was fifteen, when the driver of a truck she was riding in fell asleep and crashed into a utility pole in Pompano Beach. Eppinger has never gotten over it, he tells me, and for a moment, I feel sorry for him. That’s when he reaches for me and strokes my hair. “If you want,” Eppinger says, “I can be your new daddy.” How quickly he does that, twisting the father-daughter bond into something sickening. But I already know that trick, and I want to believe it doesn’t work on me anymore. I don’t trust parents—especially fathers. I don’t need a daddy, old or new. I just want a break from fending for myself. When you grow up female, danger is everywhere. I’ve known that for as long as I can remember. Just hours ago, the construction worker in the white van showed me a darker shade of evil. I know I can’t go home again. There’s no safety there. My whole body aches, inside and out. I have no good options. The old man, the model, and I order takeout from an oceanfront stand. As we eat—I scarf mine down like an animal—we listen to the waves. Then Eppinger says he wants to take me shopping. We go to a nearby GapKids, and he steers me toward short shorts that don’t cover my backside and tops that are way too small. From the look on the saleswoman’s face, it’s easy to tell what she’s thinking: This isn’t what most grandfathers buy their granddaughters. Next, we go to a lingerie store where Eppinger seems to be a regular. He picks out G-strings and other lacy things that I’ve only seen grown women wear in the movies. He holds them up to my newly developed body, leering. Finally, he tells the chauffeur to take us home. Inside his huge apartment in Key Biscayne, with its sweeping views of Miami across the Rickenbacker Causeway, Eppinger introduces me with a wave of his hand to five other girls, most of them wearing underwear or nothing at all. Only a few speak English. Then, he takes me to a back room—his room. There is a circular bed and a mirrored ceiling. I ask where I can sleep. “With me,” he says. Part of me feels a familiar dread. Is it too late to get away? But another, bigger part remembers how life was in rehab and in foster care and, worst of all, on the run. Maybe this is the way all men behave? I am tired. I want to feel nothing. The old man calls me “Baby.” I am the youngest girl there, so the nickname sort of fits. I want to become someone new so badly that I accept it. “Baby” is now who I am. — It’s breakfast time, and my kids—ages eleven, fourteen, and fifteen—are tearing around the house, almost late for school. At the sunny end of our kitchen island, I sip a perfect cup of coffee, cherishing the chaos. My husband, Robbie, hands out the lunches he’s packed: three healthy snacks and one oversized sandwich. (Robbie’s family is from Sicily, and his Italian subs are hard to beat.) My job is to confirm that everyone has their homework, their permission slips, their gi uniforms for their after-school martial-arts classes. As Robbie herds them toward the car, I hug my daughter and two sons tight, ignoring how they wriggle to get free. “Hurry up!” Robbie yells. “That bell is about to ring!” Then, impulsively, I decide I want to come too. Though still in my pajamas, I jump in the front passenger seat as Robbie opens our electric security gate, and I marvel that this is my life. Later, I’ll take a Pilates class and make coq au vin for dinner, giving Robbie (our family’s primary chef) a well-deserved night off. But first I must return to the job of examining what came before. It’s no fun, this task I’ve assigned myself, but it is necessary. Would it be easier to spend my waking hours walking on the beach with Juno, my French bulldog, or taking my daughter, Ellie, shopping for earrings, or getting ready to overdecorate our house for Christmas? (My husband complains every year, but I can’t help but go overboard on Christmas.) Yes, it would be easier. And I do all those things too. But it’s finally time, I’ve decided, to put all the puzzle pieces of my life together. I couldn’t do that as a child, which is part of the story. Children don’t have the luxury of that kind of reflection. Especially if they are in bad situations as I was, they must focus all their energies on simply trying to survive. In the present, my life is organized around two things: my devotion to my husband and children and my determination to hold my abusers accountable. Part of me would prefer to start in the here and now, describing the gratitude I feel as I arrange Santa Claus figurines, say, or shiny strands of tinsel. But my past demands an audience. It has been hidden for too long. So how did I end up in Miami, penniless, battered, and alone, at the age of fifteen? There are so many answers to that question, but if you’d asked me in 1998, unpacking them all would have hurt too much. Instead, I would have offered the shortest explanation. “I ran away,” I would have said. “I ran away from Growing Together.”

She began as a loving and happy child who her mother daily spent time with her...until she didn't... She had been good in school, had friends...until she didn't... You see, that was about the time that her father had noticed how she'd grown older... Old enough to begin visiting her in her bedroom at night... Her mother pulled away from her, Jenna not knowing why, but missing her terribly, because she had become afraid... She had learned that he'd be back...

Perhaps when her husband started brining his friend around to get to know his daughter--maybe trade daughters... That was when her mother decided that Jenna was unmanageable and sent her away... to a place that, maybe was ever worse than at home... In any event, Jenna was soon out of there, on the streets, running...

When he’d belt out the chorus, in which a young girl demands again and again, “Don’t call me daughter,” I’d chime in at the top of my lungs.

When an older man in a long limousine saw her on the street, and ordered his driver to pull up beside her... For a short while, she was fed, warm, and in a nice room... until he, too, wanted more...

What happened next would be funny if it weren’t so appalling. Forrest stood up and grabbed me by my shoulders, then pushed me to my knees, where he’d forced me to be so many times before. This time, though, he was clothed. “You need to ask God for forgiveness,” he said, sort of bellowing, “for what you did with your dad and me.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. As horrible as I felt about myself, some part of me knew that what had happened with Dad and his friend wasn’t all my fault. But standing over me now, Forrest just kept on, half-yelling, half-preaching. Suddenly, I knew what hate tasted like. It was bile in my mouth, bitter, and I had an appetite for it. I hated Forrest. I hated my parents. I hated every living being in Loxahatchee.

~

In some published accounts about this period in my life, I’ve been inaccurately described as an eager participant in Eppinger’s world. In her book Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story, the Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown writes that after I heard from Eppinger’s other girls about the expensive clothes and jewelry that their clients gave them, I “began to think that this lifestyle wasn’t only exciting; it was an acceptable way to earn a living.” That’s bunk. I wasn’t excited. I was a defeated, hopeless child. I knew what was happening wasn’t right. Soon, after Eppinger began trafficking me to his friends, I knew how it felt to be a puppy picked from a litter, just hoping its new owner wasn’t the whipping kind. I was merely trying to survive. The only bright spot in this dark chapter came when Eppinger, sensing that law enforcement was onto him, sent me away...

Jenna was on the move again since after Forrest's tirade, her mother told her to leave again... Running, on the streets, until she hooked up with a fellow student she'd been friends with, who offered to let her stay with him--a locked room with his mother. Still, it was better than any other place where she was able to be free, to talk, to know somebody was listening, and to choose what she wanted to do... They'd spend hours listening to music...

More than that, though, who am I kidding? I had no place else to go, no one else to turn to. Setting aside all the indignities I’d suffered at the hands of my parents and others, the consequences of my own choices were becoming evident, even to sixteen-year-old me. I was a high school dropout. I had a boyfriend I lived with but didn’t want a future with. I was damaged in more ways than I even knew, and I was a long way from getting the help I needed to repair myself. I had little money and few prospects for making any. “Well, I’ve been down so long / Oh, it can’t be longer still,” Jewel sang into my earphones around this time. “I’ve been down for so long / That the end must be drawing near.” I thought I had nowhere to go but up. What happened next, then, seemed like a gift. In the summer of 2000, my father—then a maintenance man at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach—got me a job there as a $9-an-hour locker-room attendant.

To be Continued...