Are we finally ready to believe what happened to Virginia Giuffre?

We’ve heard one name, over and over, this weekend: Prince Andrew. Some were sympathetic, a few offered support – and many expressed outright shock that the royal had given up the use of his remaining titles – including the Duke of York, though he will still remain a prince.

The name we haven’t heard half as much? Virginia Giuffre.

It is a classic and eye-watering example of the fact that when a man commits (or is accused of) wrongdoing, particularly sexual assault, the victim is completely erased. You can forget the social media hashtag #believewomen – in truth, we are wiped out. Redacted. Forgotten.

Giuffre, before her tragic suicide in April, had been trying to speak out for years about the horrors she’d experienced at the hands of the late paedophile and financier Jeffrey Epstein, who “sold” her to powerful men when she was just a teenager. We witnessed her long, difficult fight for justice against the establishment – including the settling in 2022 of a sexual assault lawsuit against Prince Andrew, whom she said had had sex with her when she was just 17 (and on two other occasions), though he has always vehemently denied having done anything wrong.

We saw her fight for other women, too – for fellow survivors of sex trafficking. And we watched her get torn down, every single time. We heard the men who spoke about her with such contempt deny ever having met her, before dismissing her testimony out of hand; we read the painful details shared by her family, as they described how she’d faced financial ruin and received death threats for working with the authorities against Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, who hired her as a masseuse when she was only 16. Giuffre later alleged in a lawsuit that she was first abused by Epstein and Maxwell together before being “lent out to other powerful men”, including Prince Andrew.

Andrew, meanwhile, said that their alleged first encounter in 2001 had “absolutely categorically never happened”, while Donald Trump – who socialised with Epstein for many years – blamed the late financier for merely “stealing” Virginia, and other young female employees, from his country club at Mar-a-Lago. Everywhere Giuffre turned, she was made out to be a fame-hungry fantasist, a storyteller, unhinged.

open image in gallery

And now we have heard further accusations: that Andrew – who will remain a prince “as is his birthright” (Giuffre said he had acted as though having sex with her in 2001 “was his birthright”, too) – asked a Met Police bodyguard and one of Queen Elizabeth II’s most senior aides to “dig up dirt” on Giuffre, so as to conduct a smear campaign against her. To make sure that, like so many other women, she wasn’t believed.

Do these latest, sordid allegations – which have emerged in extracts from her posthumous memoir, to be published on Tuesday – shock me, stun me, or even remotely surprise me? Not really. Giuffre was doomed from the start, because no one ever truly “believes women”.

Nobody believed Gisele Pelicot, at first, either – though she went to the doctor numerous times to complain about mysterious gynaecological and neurological ailments, before finding out that her husband had been drugging her and allowing strangers to rape her for more than a decade.

At the trial that shocked the world last year, some of the defence lawyers attempted to claim that Pelicot had been complicit in her abuse; that the acts caught on videotape had been “consensual”. She was questioned about her sex life – asked if she was an exhibitionist or a swinger, or an alcoholic. She was asked why she didn’t seem “angrier” with her husband of 50 years; why she hadn’t “cried more” in court.

Just look at the multitude of other cases, too, in which a woman or girl’s experience has been minimised in order to highlight the impact on men’s lives. Like Trump saying it was a “difficult” and “scary” time for young men in the US, after several women accused his Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, of assault; or Brock Turner, the Stanford swimmer, being sentenced to just six months in prison – rather than six years – after raping an unconscious woman, because of a statement that said it was “a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action”.

open image in gallery

Or the family court judge in New Jersey who resigned after saying that an unnamed 16-year-old boy accused of raping a drunk girl at a party and filming it on his mobile phone “deserved leniency” because he was “from a good family”. In that case, in 2019, Judge James Troiano suggested the alleged incident was a sexual assault rather than a rape – despite investigators saying the boy had sent a clip of the alleged rape to seven of his friends along with a text caption that read: “When your first time having sex is rape.”

I – like many of my female friends – have run the gauntlet of not being believed on far too many occasions, particularly when we report men’s bad behaviour to other men.

From the police officers who asked “Were you in fear for your life, though?” when I reported an ex-boyfriend for harassment, to the assumption that “it’s just banter” when we tell them how angry and shaken we are after being touched or groped; or the ubiquitous “Were you drunk/wearing a short skirt/did you lead him on?” questions, as though any of that matters. One man memorably asked me: “Is it still sexual assault if it’s a joke?” and didn’t seem to know the answer.

Women know all too well the obstacles so many of us face in being believed – in courtrooms and police stations, on social media and in the public sphere. We know, for example, that there are far fewer convictions resulting from rape cases than there are prosecutions – and we also know there are far fewer reports than there are rapes. We also know that according to the NPCC, VAWG (violence against women and girls) makes up just under 20 per cent of all recorded crime in England and Wales; that around 12.8 per cent of women experienced domestic abuse, sexual assault or stalking in the year running up to March. That’s one in eight of us.

We know women like Gisele Pelicot and Virginia Giuffre. We remember their names. We believe them. Do you?

Rape Crisis offers support for those affected by rape and sexual abuse. You can call them on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, and 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland, or visit their website at www.rapecrisis.org.uk. If you are in the US, you can call Rainn on 800-656-HOPE (4673)

If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org, or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch

If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call or text 988, or visit 988lifeline.org to access online chat from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you