Powerful men from across the world, from politicians to scientists, descend on Giuffre to rape her and others. A “former minister” so brutalises Giuffre that she leaves the scene “bleeding from my mouth, vagina, and anus”. Epstein and modelling mogul Brunel abused her and others together, taking a “mutual malignant pleasure in our misfortune”.

Then, of course, there are her repeat encounters with Prince Andrew, who “believed having sex with me was his birthright”. Asked about Giuffre’s age, the then-41-year-old correctly guesses that his “daughters are just a little younger” than the then-17-year-old. The royal, Giuffre writes, proved “particularly attentive” to her feet, “caressing” the toes and “licking” the arches. (Following renewed public backlash, Andrew has now relinquished his Duke of York title.)

After Giuffre flees them, Epstein and Maxwell track her down in Australia, making veiled threats as the financier becomes a person of interest to authorities. Thanks to a forgiving arrangement with prosecutors, Epstein receives reduced charges, a short prison sentence and generous work release terms. Therapy, meanwhile, helps Giuffre start to confront the trauma that had never been fully purged from her tortured past.

It’s only against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement and with renewed public interest in Giuffre’s story that a real reckoning can take place. Giuffre successfully sues Maxwell for defamation, a clever legal tactic that later incriminates Maxwell at her own criminal trial. Thanks also to an explosive exposé in The Miami Herald, prosecutors finally arrest Epstein in July 2019. A month later the financier is found dead in his jail cell under suspicious circumstances.

As the criminal justice system catches up with other assailants, Giuffre begins to become undone from the toll that repeating her abuse takes: “every retelling of my stories of abuse hit me hard … ate away at me”. Health complications (including a broken neck) compound her physical torment, while “thoughts of self-annihilation” become part of her daily mental warfare.

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Thoughts of her own children are never far from Giuffre’s mind throughout Nobody’s Girl. It was the birth of her daughter that empowered Giuffre to finally challenge Epstein and reach beyond her trauma to a greater purpose, despite the many real threats that doing so would pose.

Giuffre finishes by adding that there are still other powerful men to name as her abusers. She decides against outing any more of them to safeguard her family’s future welfare: “My most important role is that of a mother.” Even so, she doesn’t believe the Epstein case can be closed yet: “Where are those videotapes the FBI confiscated from Epstein’s houses?” Through this project, Giuffre exorcises many demons that besieged her during her brief life. Trauma still lingers, a valve difficult to close, but her resilience and courage to advocate for other survivors helps to blunt that pain. It’s all the more tragic that the activist is no longer alive to see the impact this memoir will undoubtedly have on many others.

Nobody’s Girl makes it known that “Virginia Roberts Giuffre” should no longer designate an Epstein victim, but a vocal survivor of sexual abuse who finally reclaimed her name.