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The woman whose allegations helped expose Jeffrey Epstein’s Palm Beach sex-trafficking operation is once again at the center of an official investigation.
Police in Western Australia announced Wednesday they will review how officers responded to reports from Virginia Giuffre before her death by suicide last year, after her family raised concerns that authorities may have failed to adequately respond to domestic violence complaints involving her former partner.
For South Floridians, Giuffre’s name is inseparable from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Giuffre alleged she was just 16 years old when she was recruited into Epstein’s sex-trafficking network while working as a spa attendant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach in 2000. According to her account, Ghislaine Maxwell approached her at the resort with what appeared to be an opportunity to work as a massage therapist for a wealthy client. Instead, Giuffre said, she was taken to Epstein’s nearby Palm Beach mansion, where years of abuse ensued.
Her allegations eventually became central to unraveling Epstein’s operation.
Western Australian Police Commissioner Col Blanch confirmed Wednesday that the agency will examine how officers handled Giuffre’s domestic violence complaints after receiving a request from her family. The review comes after Giuffre’s brother, Sky Roberts, and sister-in-law, Amanda Roberts, wrote to police and the state coroner seeking an investigation into what they describe as possible systemic failures before her death.
“We’re really asking for a thorough review of the process [about] what happened when Virginia went to the police station on multiple occasions,” Amanda Roberts told Australia’s ABC Radio. “Where are those reports, and why did the police not continue to follow up?”
The family emphasized they are not disputing that Giuffre died by suicide at her Western Australia farm in April 2025. Instead, they want investigators to determine whether police adequately responded to reports of domestic violence involving a former partner.
“I wholeheartedly believe that if the police had done a thorough investigation, that Virginia would still be here,” Sky Roberts told ABC radio on Wednesday morning.
Researchers and domestic violence advocates across Australia have also called for a formal inquest, arguing Giuffre’s case raises broader questions about how victims of domestic abuse are treated by authorities.
Giuffre became one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers after publicly alleging that he and Maxwell groomed and sexually abused her as a teenager before trafficking her to powerful men, including Britain’s Prince Andrew. Andrew has repeatedly denied the allegations. In 2022, he reached an out-of-court settlement with Giuffre without admitting liability.
Maxwell, meanwhile, is serving a 20-year federal prison sentence after being convicted in New York of sex trafficking and conspiracy charges. Epstein died by suicide in a Manhattan jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges.
Although the criminal case expanded to New York, New Mexico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and beyond, many of the events that ultimately exposed Epstein’s operation began in Palm Beach. Giuffre’s allegations about being recruited while working at Mar-a-Lago became one of the defining narratives of the sprawling investigation, alongside the accounts of dozens of teenage girls recruited from Palm Beach County neighborhoods and schools.
Now, more than two decades after she says she first encountered Maxwell in Palm Beach, another investigation is underway — this one focused not on the trafficking network that made Giuffre famous, but on whether authorities in Australia failed to protect one of its most recognizable survivors in the final months of her life.
