The spotlight returned to Virginia Giuffre on Tuesday, following renewed criticism of the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case files.

Giuffre, one of the most vocal accusers in the sex-trafficking scandal involving Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, died by suicide earlier this year.

During a press interaction on Tuesday, US President Donald Trump addressed claims that Epstein “poached” staff from his Mar-a-Lago resort, implying that Giuffre might have been among them. “Yeah, he took people,” Trump stated. “I said, ‘Don’t do it anymore, they work for me.’… He stole her,” Trump added when asked specifically about Giuffre, though he claimed uncertainty about the details, suggesting she may have worked at the resort’s spa.

Giuffre’s allegations were central to legal proceedings against Epstein and Maxwell. In 2009, operating under the pseudonym “Jane Doe 102,” she sued Epstein, alleging that she had been sexually exploited by his adult associates, including prominent individuals such as members of royalty, after being recruited as a teenager to work as his personal masseuse.

In court documents unsealed in 2019, Giuffre said Maxwell approached her in 2000 while she worked as a locker room attendant at Mar-a-Lago and later recruited her into Epstein’s network. She settled with Epstein in 2009 for $500,000.

Giuffre’s 2015 defamation lawsuit against Maxwell, filed after Maxwell labeled her a liar, eventually led to Maxwell facing criminal charges.

Though Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of sex trafficking and other crimes, two perjury charges connected to Giuffre’s lawsuit were not pursued after her conviction.

In addition to her role in the Epstein and Maxwell cases, Giuffre made high-profile allegations against Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, claiming that Epstein had arranged for him to sexually abuse her when she was a minor. Although Prince Andrew denied the accusations, he reached an undisclosed out-of-court settlement with Giuffre in 2022 and stepped back from royal duties.

Giuffre also accused former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz of sexual assault, which he strongly denied.

Both parties dropped defamation lawsuits against each other in 2022 after Giuffre stated, “I now recognize I may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz.”

In March, Giuffre revealed on Instagram that she had narrowly survived a car accident involving a school bus, which left her near renal failure. She died by suicide in April at the age of 41 at her farm in Western Australia.

Her family described her as “a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking” and “the light that lifted so many survivors.” (Nigerian Tribune)