In the summer of 2000, a vulnerable 16-year-old Virginia Giuffre, who had previously run away from home and endured abuse, sat outside the spa at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. Working as a locker room attendant—a job secured through her father’s maintenance role at the club—she was quietly reading a book on anatomy and massage therapy, dreaming of a future in the field.
It was then that Ghislaine Maxwell, the sophisticated British socialite and Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate, spotted her. Maxwell approached, noting the book and striking up a conversation about massage. She offered Giuffre an exciting opportunity: a job as a traveling masseuse for a wealthy man who could train her and pay well, no experience needed.
Eager for a better life, Giuffre accepted. That same day, her father drove her to Epstein’s nearby mansion. There, Maxwell introduced her to the financier, who lay naked on a massage table. What began as a supposed lesson quickly escalated into sexual abuse, with Maxwell participating and guiding the teen.
Giuffre later described trusting them initially, sharing her traumatic past—which only made her more exploitable. Over the following years, she was groomed, trafficked across Epstein’s properties, and coerced into sexual acts with him and his powerful associates, including allegations involving Prince Andrew (which he denies).
This encounter, detailed in Giuffre’s posthumous memoir and court testimonies, marked the start of her entrapment in Epstein’s sex-trafficking network. Maxwell, convicted in 2021 of trafficking minors, was key in recruiting vulnerable girls under the guise of legitimate work. Giuffre became a leading advocate for victims before her death in 2025, exposing how predators targeted the innocent at elite venues like Mar-a-Lago.
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