For years, Virginia Roberts Giuffre has been one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most outspoken accusers, and although she did not testify in the sex trafficking of Mr. Epstein’s longtime partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, her story hangs over the case, in the courtroom and beyond.
Ms. Giuffre figured prominently in the testimony of one of the women who accused Ms. Maxwell and Mr. Epstein on the witness stand of trafficking them for sex when they were teenagers. (Mr. Epstein hanged himself in a Manhattan jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Ms. Maxwell faces similar charges in a separate indictment.)
The witness said that when she was 14, Ms. Giuffre, then a teenager known as Virginia Roberts, asked her if she wanted to make money by giving massages to a friend who lived on Palm Beach Island.
The friend turned out to be Mr. Epstein, and the accuser ended up giving him hundreds of sexual massages, she testified, using only her first name, Carolyn. The appointments were set up by Ms. Maxwell, Carolyn said, and typically ended with a sex act, often with Mr. Epstein touching her and masturbating.
The episode is one of several parts of Ms. Giuffre’s previous accounts in civil depositions and in interviews which have been corroborated by witnesses at Ms. Maxwell’s trial. Ms. Giuffre was identified in court by Juan Alessi, a former employee of Mr. Epstein, as one of the underage girls he saw at the financier’s Palm Beach, Fla. estate.
Still, Ms. Giuffre is not one of the alleged victims in the Maxwell indictment. Even though her accounts helped bring attention to the long-simmering allegations about Mr. Epstein, her prominence also makes her a potentially complicated witness for prosecutors: The detailed accounts she has given in court records and in the news media contain discrepancies that could be fodder for long cross-examinations by defense lawyers or allow them to cast doubt on her motives.
Ms. Giuffre, 38, is suing Prince Andrew in federal court in New York, accusing him of raping and sexually abusing her when she was 17 after meeting her through Mr. Epstein, an allegation she had previously asserted in court filings.
Prince Andrew, the second son of Queen Elizabeth II, has called the allegations baseless and has accused Ms. Giuffre of seeking to profit off her claims against Mr. Epstein and others.
Ms. Giuffre is one of several women who have in the past made the same allegation prosecutors are now trying to prove in court: that Ms. Maxwell recruited young girls to engage in illegal sex with Mr. Epstein, broke down their resistance by taking part in the sexual activity herself, and then persuaded them to recruit their friends.
The witness Carolyn, who was identified in the indictment as Minor Victim-4, said that the first time she went to Mr. Epstein’s Palm Beach home, Ms. Giuffre — then known as Ms. Roberts — accompanied her and got fully undressed in his bathroom, while Carolyn kept on her bra and underwear.
After the two teenagers gave Mr. Epstein a back massage, Ms. Roberts had sex with Mr. Epstein in front of her, Carolyn testified, her voice cracking. Each girl got $100, she testified, and Ms. Maxwell took down Carolyn’s phone number, for later.
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