Latest / The Front / The epic humiliation of Prince Andrew - and Virginia Giuffre’s mysterious last days

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The epic humiliation of Prince Andrew - and Virginia Giuffre’s mysterious last days · The Front

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, January sixth, twenty twenty six. Pressure is mounting
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: on Anthony Albanezi to call a royal commission into the
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: Bondai massacre. As Treasurer Jim Chalmers says, the calls from business,
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: sporting and community leaders make sense. That's as the government
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: prepares to recall Federal Parliament early to debate new laws,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: and the States scramble to bring their outdated gun registers
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  Speaker 1: up to scratch. Check out all the latest on the
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Bondai aftermath at the Australian dot Com dot A you
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  Speaker 1: what really happened to Virginia Dufray as her family wrangles
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  Speaker 1: over the American Australian mother's estate. Her impact is still
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  Speaker 1: reverberating in the United States, Australia and especially the United Kingdom.
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  Speaker 1: The man once known as Prince Andrew, Duke of York,
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  Speaker 1: is starting the new year as plain Old Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.
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  Speaker 1: That's after the King decided to evict him from a
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  Speaker 1: mansion on the Windsor estate and consign him to wintry Norfolk. Today,
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  Speaker 1: I speak with one of our most thoughtful and experienced journos,
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  Speaker 1: Paige Taylor, about how she suddenly found herself reporting the
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  Speaker 1: mysterious last days of Andrew's accuser, Virginia Dufray. Paige Taylor
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  Speaker 1: is The Australian's West Australian Bureau Chief, which means she
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  Speaker 1: covers an incredibly broad array of stories as well as
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  Speaker 1: her day job as our Indigenous Affairs editor page. How
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  Speaker 1: did you come to be reporting on Virginia Dufrey, who
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  Speaker 1: was one of the accusers of Jeffrey Epstein and Prince
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  Speaker 1: Andrew Earlier in twenty twenty five.
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  Speaker 2: I remember I saw an Instagram post by Virginia Giuffrey
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  Speaker 2: and it was that now quite recognizable photo of her
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  Speaker 2: and what appeared to be the back of an ambulance
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  Speaker 2: with bruises all over her face, and the message underneath
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  Speaker 2: was really detailed and quite distressing, and I thought, this
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  Speaker 2: is extraordinary.
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  Speaker 3: This year has been the worst start to a new year.
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  Speaker 3: But I won't bore anyone with the details.
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  Speaker 1: We've used an AI voice to read Virginia Guphray's post.
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  Speaker 3: But I think it's important to note that when a
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  Speaker 3: school bus driver comes at you driving one hundred and
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  Speaker 3: ten kilometers as we were slowing for a turn that
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: no matter what your car is made of, it might
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  Speaker 3: as well be a tin can. I've gone into kidney
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  Speaker 3: renal failure. They've given me four days to live, transferring
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  Speaker 3: me to a specialist hospital in urology. I'm ready to go,
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  Speaker 3: just not until I see my babies one last time.
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  Speaker 3: But you know what they say about wishes, shit in
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  Speaker 3: one hand and wish in the other, and I guarantee
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  Speaker 3: it's still going to be shit at the end of
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  Speaker 3: the day. Thank you all for being the wonderful people
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  Speaker 3: of the world and for being a great part of
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  Speaker 3: my life. God bless you all. Virginia.
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  Speaker 2: So I immediately looked around to see whether the Australian
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  Speaker 2: knew about this. Our London correspondent, of course, Jacqueline Magne
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  Speaker 2: was already onto it, and a few hours from then
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  Speaker 2: I was up and working and helping Jacqueline get that
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  Speaker 2: story together.
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  Speaker 1: She was clearly a woman who at that time of
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  Speaker 1: her life was in some distress, you know, apart from
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  Speaker 1: what seemed to be physical injuries. She was posting on
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  Speaker 1: Instagram about a messy family situation. She was clearly very unhappy.
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  Speaker 1: What was your sense of the truth of what had
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  Speaker 1: happened to Virginia Giffrey.
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  Speaker 4: I was pretty doubtful.
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  Speaker 2: I have to be candid about that, because the timings
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  Speaker 2: of that photograph and her arrival at the hospital.
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  Speaker 4: Once I'd established the arrival time, it didn't match.
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  Speaker 5: To me.
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  Speaker 2: It seemed like the had been taken sometime earlier, perhaps
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  Speaker 2: from an earlier hospital visit, which immediately made me skeptical
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  Speaker 2: about other things she was saying. And then I established
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  Speaker 2: that the bus crash she'd referred to happened on March
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  Speaker 2: twenty four, not that day, not in the early hours
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  Speaker 2: of April one, or even in the last few hours
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  Speaker 2: of March. It had been a week earlier. I also
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  Speaker 2: established she was an a renal patient at the hospital
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  Speaker 2: she was taken to. When you hear that something isn't right,
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  Speaker 2: you start to wonder what else isn't right, and it
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  Speaker 2: can make things you are saying that are true questionable.
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  Speaker 2: So I was trying to withhold judgment about that. But
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  Speaker 2: I was also aware that the more I looked, the
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  Speaker 2: more the statements in that social media post were just
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  Speaker 2: not rite. I could tell that something incredibly awful was
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  Speaker 2: going on in this person's life. To even make a
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  Speaker 2: social media post like that, there needs to be a
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  Speaker 2: certain level of chaos right That dawn me pretty quickly
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  Speaker 2: as well. I started to feel a lot of sympathy
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  Speaker 2: for this person too. She was obviously not in a
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  Speaker 2: good place. I don't mean physically, I mean she was
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  Speaker 2: clearly in a lot of distress.
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  Speaker 1: Not long afterwards, a few weeks later, she was found
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  Speaker 1: dead at her home in New Gabby in Western Australia.
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  Speaker 1: What do we know now, Paige, about what caused her death?
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  Speaker 2: Well, I know there's been a lot of speculation about
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  Speaker 2: whether or not it was suicide. That seems fairly plain
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  Speaker 2: on the evidence that has become public so far. It
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  Speaker 2: does look that she took her own life, and that
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  Speaker 2: was at the end of a long period of torment.
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  Speaker 2: She had been suffering for a long time. Her marriage
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  Speaker 2: had broken up, according to her social media posts, she
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  Speaker 2: had no contact with her children, and I think the
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  Speaker 2: episode at the hospital was fairly calamitous. It must have
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  Speaker 2: been a world of pain for her.
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  Speaker 1: Six months later, her memoir was published, Nobody's Girl. It's
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  Speaker 1: quite a remarkable book and it details her journey. I
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  Speaker 1: guess from a very sad childhood of abuse that she
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: alleges against various people working at Donald Trump's resort mar
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  Speaker 1: A Lago, where she met Glenn Maxwell. While working in
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  Speaker 1: the spa WHI, she had dreams of being a massage therapist,
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  Speaker 1: ended up being trafficked to Jeffrey Epstein by Glenn Maxwell.
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  Speaker 1: This is her allegation, and then sort of descended into
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  Speaker 1: a life of basically being a sex slave.
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  Speaker 5: What's in the next few weeks. Jeffren Gilande told me
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  Speaker 5: that I need to quit my job with mile Ilgo
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  Speaker 5: because I'll be traveling with them as they're traveling massuse.
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  Speaker 1: This is from the TV mini series Surviving Jeffrey Epstein.
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  Speaker 1: Virginia Giuffrey alleges she was sexually assaulted by both Jeffrey
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  Speaker 1: Epstein and Glenn Maxwell and subsequently trafficked and abused for years.
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  Speaker 5: It was abuse straight away from both of them. I
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  Speaker 5: got paid two hundred dollars and the butler drove me home.
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  Speaker 1: The book had a massive impact, didn't it.
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  Speaker 2: He really did, and reading it makes me sad every
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  Speaker 2: time I go back to that book that it didn't
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  Speaker 2: come out while she was alive. She never got to
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  Speaker 2: see the reaction to that book.
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  Speaker 4: It is compelling.
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  Speaker 2: I'll tell you what else I think is compelling is
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  Speaker 2: entitled by Andrew Lowney, the British journalist. He goes into
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  Speaker 2: quite a bit.
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  Speaker 4: Of detail about what happened to Virginia.
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  Speaker 2: He talks about Andrew picking her photo out from emails
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  Speaker 2: that Epstein sent like a catalog. It was fairly awful
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  Speaker 2: revelations in that book too.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he looks very closely at the life of
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  Speaker 1: Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, of course, the former Duke
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  Speaker 1: and Duchess of York, who don't have that title anymore.
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  Speaker 1: Prince Andrew's no longer to be regarded as a prince.
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  Speaker 1: He's now known as just Andrew Mountain Baton Windsor. Was
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  Speaker 1: your sense, just from observing Virginia Deupray and reading her words, Paige,
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  Speaker 1: that the king's decision to strip all those honors from Andrew,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: to kick him out of his house on the Windsor estate,
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  Speaker 1: is that something that she would have wanted?
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  Speaker 4: I think so.
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  Speaker 2: It feels like the kind of response that she had
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  Speaker 2: been seeking but not getting for a long time. Of course,
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  Speaker 2: Andrew has denied all of this.
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  Speaker 4: Throughout. Andrew has suffered.
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  Speaker 2: An epic global humiliation, one that he had been trying
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  Speaker 2: to avoid for a long time, and I suspect one
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  Speaker 2: that maybe at some point he thought wouldn't come. I
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  Speaker 2: think what Charles has done is what a lot of
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  Speaker 2: people hoped the Queen would have done, And of course
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  Speaker 2: she didn't. She stood by her son in lots of ways,
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  Speaker 2: and I think that in a lot of people's minds
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  Speaker 2: had meaning. There was something in the fact that the
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  Speaker 2: Queen didn't strip him of his titles that made some
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  Speaker 2: of us wonder, oh, is that photo real? Is Giffrey
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  Speaker 2: telling the truth? But times amazing, isn't it? A lot
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  Speaker 2: of details come out since then, a lot, and I
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  Speaker 2: have no doubt these days that that photo is real.
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  Speaker 1: We've said, and we have to keep saying. Of course
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  Speaker 1: that Andrew's denied ever even meeting Virginia Gupray, and he
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  Speaker 1: says that he has no recollection of her whatsoever. You'd
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  Speaker 1: expect he's going to stick to that now. I mean,
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  Speaker 1: the life that awaits him now is sad, isn't it.
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  Speaker 1: He's going to end up on the Sandringer mistate apparently
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  Speaker 1: now in Norfolk, very bleak, very lonely. Gill and Maxwell
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  Speaker 1: the person who allegedly trafficked Virginia, then roberts to Jeffrey
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  Speaker 1: Epstein is also in prison now on some sort of
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: minimum security prison. Farmer.
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  Speaker 5: I believe I'm calling BS on this because that's what
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  Speaker 5: it is. He knows what happened. I know what happened,
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  Speaker 5: and there's only one of us telling the truth, and
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  Speaker 5: I know that's me.
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  Speaker 1: This is Virginia and Guphrey speaking to the BBC's program Panorama.
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  Speaker 5: I implore the people in the UK to stand up
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  Speaker 5: beside me, to help me fate this fate, to not
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  Speaker 5: accept this as being okay. This is not some sordid
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  Speaker 5: sex story. This is a story of being trafficked.
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  Speaker 1: I was at a lunch recently page where an older
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  Speaker 1: lady was saying she didn't believe any of what Virginia
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  Speaker 1: dufrocclaimed that you know, she was just a prostitute and
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: that she was probably star struck by meeting the prince,
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  Speaker 1: and the book was an attempt to get attention. I
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  Speaker 1: know you and I have a pretty different view about that.
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  Speaker 1: There's a value, isn't there in a memoir like that
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  Speaker 1: in kind of setting out how you go from being
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  Speaker 1: a innocent young girl to being a kind of abused victim.
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  Speaker 4: Some people call it my truth.
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  Speaker 2: I really do not like that phrase because it gets
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  Speaker 2: used so much and it loses its meaning, and some
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  Speaker 2: people use my truth to put forward things that are
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  Speaker 2: just off the charts.
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  Speaker 4: But you're absolutely right.
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  Speaker 2: There's something so powerful person being able to tell their
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: story their way. And it doesn't mean it's the definitive version,
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  Speaker 2: but I feel like I understand a lot more having
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  Speaker 2: read that book, and I have a lot of sympathy
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  Speaker 2: for that girl. I got an email from a reader
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  Speaker 2: a few months ago which has made me think stayed
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  Speaker 2: with me, and this reader said Virginia did not have
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  Speaker 2: to do those things. She did them for money, and
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  Speaker 2: even on Virginia's own version of events, that's absolutely right.
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  Speaker 2: She did do those things for money. But she was
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  Speaker 2: a seventeen year old girl and she had been abused,
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  Speaker 2: and perhaps she thought that was her only option. Whichever
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  Speaker 2: way you look at it, it's still terribly sad that
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  Speaker 2: a seventeen year old girl was being picked out like
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  Speaker 2: an item from a catalog and told and this is
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  Speaker 2: who you're with this evening.
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  Speaker 1: That's the evil of a predator, isn't it to pay
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  Speaker 1: a victim to make them feel like they're anticipating in
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  Speaker 1: a transaction, as if two hundred dollars, which is what
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  Speaker 1: she says she got paid for that first encounter with
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  Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein, in which they both, according to her, abused her.
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  Speaker 1: But it's not enough for your innocence, is it.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm old enough to have been Virginia's mother
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  Speaker 2: in two thousand and one when she was introduced to Andrew,
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  Speaker 2: according to her. And it's pretty grotesque to me. What's
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  Speaker 2: wrong with someone who wants to pick out a seventeen
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  Speaker 2: year old? And I don't get it myself, and I
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  Speaker 2: think there are a lot of people my age who
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  Speaker 2: don't like it.
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  Speaker 4: We think there's something really gross about it.
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  Speaker 1: That question of like what if this was your daughter,
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  Speaker 1: what if this was your sister? You know, what if
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  Speaker 1: this was you at seventeen? You know, I look back
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  Speaker 1: at myself at seventeen, and I wouldn't have had the
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  Speaker 1: ability to say no to powerful, rich people who wanted
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  Speaker 1: me to do something, you know, even though I came
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  Speaker 1: from a stable, loving home. I think people underrest to
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  Speaker 1: Mayba agency of teenage girls because they seem confident all
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  Speaker 1: they're young and beautiful and vibrant. They're still children. You're
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  Speaker 1: still a child at seventeen, aren't you.
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  Speaker 2: Well yeah, I look at pictures of myself at seventeen.
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  Speaker 2: I look like a grown up, but the stuff coming
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  Speaker 2: out of my mouth was pretty childlike.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Thank god there was no Instagram page. Taylor is The
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Australian's Indigenous Affairs editor and West Australian bureau chief. You
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: can check out her reporting anytime at The Australian dot
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  Speaker 1: com dot au