A victim strikes back

Virginia Roberts Giuffre, known as Jenna, was sexually abused by her father at the age of 7 in their house in Florida, raped by teenagers at the back of a truck who said to the police that it was a consensual threesome, and trafficked by a well-known sex trafficker after she was raped by a stranger in a motel when she was trying to escape the “Growing Together” foster system.

- AKANKSHYA ABISMRUTA

Nobody's Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre Publisher: Knopf Pages: 367

Long before Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell made Jenna a sex slave (in the summer of 2000 in Palm Beach county) — she had travelled with them only to be trafficked to academics, scientists, a prime minister, businessmen and even royalty — she had witnesses multiple systems that were meant to protect a child fail her.

Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice is a memoir in four parts — Daughter, Prisoner, Survivor, Warrior — by Giuffre, written in collaboration with the veteran journalist Amy Wallace. Jenna died by suicide in April 2025, and the book was published posthumously in October 2025.

Giuffre writes, “There has always been evil in the world. But human trafficking — the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act — is particularly venal, especially when the victims are minors.” Child sex trafficking is largely seen as a concern in the Third World. In 2026, one questions what development implies. The US is the only UN member that continues to have legal child marriages in 34 of its states. When Roe versus Wade was overturned in 2022, as many as 41 states banned abortion. Can the US be considered a developed state when it is not a safe place for its women and children?