Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Friday, April four, twenty twenty five. Anthony Albinizi is
Speaker 1: planning to stockpile Australia's precious critical minerals deposits as a
Speaker 1: negotiating chip. That's after US President Donald Trump announced ten
Speaker 1: percent tariffs on all Australian products. It's part of his
Speaker 1: so called Liberation Day war on foreign made goods that
Speaker 1: has sent markets into a panic. The Museum of Contemporary
Speaker 1: Art has deleted its own websites praise for controversial artist
Speaker 1: Colored Subsabi. Subsabi was chosen and then dumped as Australia's
Speaker 1: representative at the Venice Bienali after The Australian revealed previous
Speaker 1: artworks depicting the nine to eleven attacks and late Hesbala
Speaker 1: leader Hassan Nazrala. The MCA has now removed its own
Speaker 1: reference to Subsabi's Nazraella portrait as suggestive of a divine illumination.
Speaker 1: You can read that exclusive right now at The Australian
Speaker 1: dot com dot au. Virginia Roberts Giuffrey became globally famous
Speaker 1: as the woman accusing Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein of
Speaker 1: collaborating in abusing her when she was a teenager. She's
Speaker 1: been living a quiet family life in Perth until this
Speaker 1: week she became the central character in a real life
Speaker 1: medical mystery today, What's going on with Virginia Gufrey. Virginia
Speaker 1: Giffrey was sixteen and working in the spa at Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's Mara Lago Club in Florida when she crossed paths
Speaker 1: with Gilaine Maxwell.
Speaker 2: She was like this really bright Mary Poppins kind of
Speaker 2: a figure, and she goes, Oh, you know what, I
Speaker 2: know this guy, there's an opportunity. Actually, if you want
Speaker 2: to become a real massage therapist, we can get she trained.
Speaker 1: Her name was Virginia Roberts then, and that guy was
Speaker 1: billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein, vices from the TV mini series
Speaker 1: Surviving Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 2: Within the next few weeks, Jeffrey Gilande told me that
Speaker 2: I need to quit my job with mar al Iago
Speaker 2: because I'll be traveling with them as they're traveling massuse.
Speaker 1: Virginia Giffrey alleges she was sexually assaulted by both Epstein
Speaker 1: and Galline Maxwell on that first meeting, subsequently trafficked and
Speaker 1: abused for years.
Speaker 2: It was abused straight away from both of them. I
Speaker 2: got paid two hundred dollars and the butler drove me home.
Speaker 1: Epstein was found dead in a New York prison cell
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, where he was waiting to stand trial
Speaker 1: on sex trafficking charges.
Speaker 3: The medical examiner has ruled his death a suicide. Attorney
Speaker 3: General William Barr ordered an investigation into his death after
Speaker 3: officials uncovered irregularities at the prison.
Speaker 1: Giffrey claims she was assaulted by the Duke of York,
Speaker 1: Prince Andrew, who counted Epstein and Maxwell among his close
Speaker 1: personal friends. Andrew's always denied the allegations against him, but
Speaker 1: settled with Giffrey out of court for an undisclosed PSALM
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two. Here's Geffrey in an interview with
Speaker 1: the BBC's Panorama program.
Speaker 2: I'm calling BS on this because that's what it is.
Speaker 2: He knows what happened. I know what happened, and there's
Speaker 2: only one of us telling the truth, and I know
Speaker 2: that's me.
Speaker 1: In the years since, Giffrey has become an advocate for
Speaker 1: survivors of sexual abuse and trafficking.
Speaker 2: I implore the people in the UK to stand up
Speaker 2: beside me, to help me fight this fate. To not
Speaker 2: accept this as being okay. This is not some sordid
Speaker 2: sex story. This is a story of being trafficked.
Speaker 1: She's also made a life for herself far away from
Speaker 1: it all in Perth, Western Australia. She married Australian martial
Speaker 1: arts instructor Robert Giuffrey in two thousand and two and
Speaker 1: they have three children.
Speaker 4: Virginia's kept a really low profile in Perth. Actually she
Speaker 4: doesn't give interviews. She had been living quietly in the
Speaker 4: northern suburbs of Perth with her husband and children.
Speaker 1: This is The Australian's West Australia Bureau Chief Page Taylor.
Speaker 4: We knew that she had bought a lovely house in
Speaker 4: a beachside suburb, but it wasn't like there was news
Speaker 4: about her in the media daily or she didn't go
Speaker 4: seeking it either. I think a lot of people were
Speaker 4: quite delighted that she had found some kind of peace
Speaker 4: and then you stop.
Speaker 1: In the early hours of Tuesday, this post appeared on
Speaker 1: Virginia Juphry's Instagram fade. We've used an AI voice to
Speaker 1: raid Virginia Jupry's post.
Speaker 5: This year has been the worst start to a new year.
Speaker 5: But I won't bore anyone with the details, but I
Speaker 5: think it's important to note that when a school bus
Speaker 5: driver comes at you driving one hundred ten kilometers as
Speaker 5: we were slowing for a turn, that no matter what
Speaker 5: your car is made of, it might as well be
Speaker 5: a tin can. I've gone into kidney renal failure. They've
Speaker 5: given me four days to live, transferring me to a
Speaker 5: specialist hospital in urology. I'm ready to go, just not
Speaker 5: until I see my babies one last time. But you
Speaker 5: know what they say about wishes, shit in one hand
Speaker 5: and wish in the other, and I guarantee it's still
Speaker 5: going to be shit at the end of the day.
Speaker 5: Thank you all for being the wonderful people of the
Speaker 5: world and for being a great part of my life.
Speaker 5: God bless you all. Virginia.
Speaker 4: While I was up late finishing a story, was about
Speaker 4: two am on Tuesday, Perth time, and I thought, I'm
Speaker 4: just going to do a bit of scrolling now before
Speaker 4: I go to sleep, and I saw this really confronting
Speaker 4: image of Virginia in what looked to be a hospital bed.
Speaker 4: She had declared she only had days to live. It
Speaker 4: was such a shock.
Speaker 1: In the picture, Giffrey looks very unwell. She's lying on
Speaker 1: something that looks like a hospital bed with medical equipment
Speaker 1: in the background. She has brown marks on one side
Speaker 1: of her face that looked like they could be bruising.
Speaker 4: This is not a terribly big city, Perth, and if
Speaker 4: a school bus had cleaned up a car, the TV
Speaker 4: crews would be there, it'd be all over social media,
Speaker 4: the parents would have been contacted, the school would have
Speaker 4: had to make a statement. There was none of that,
Speaker 4: which was a bit unusual. And then I thought, oh,
Speaker 4: I'll read that again. Maybe she's saying one thing happened
Speaker 4: after the other. Maybe she's not saying they're connected. I
Speaker 4: couldn't quite understand what was going on there. But then
Speaker 4: I also did think, perhaps this is also a person
Speaker 4: who's very sick and possibly a bit dazed and confused
Speaker 4: in that process, and she might not be even understanding
Speaker 4: what's happening to her.
Speaker 1: Journalists, including page from around the world, started asking questions,
Speaker 1: when had this road accident happened, where, Why hadn't it
Speaker 1: made The news page found out that yes, Virginia. Giffrey
Speaker 1: had been in an ambulance which picked her up from
Speaker 1: a tiny town north of Perth. It arrived at Sir
Speaker 1: Charles Gardener Hospital at about two thirty am on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: April one.
Speaker 4: That's a really big tertiary hospital in Perth. It does
Speaker 4: everything except major trauma and complex burns. You can't have
Speaker 4: a baby at Sir Charles gar A Hospital, but they
Speaker 4: do everything else. They do organ transplants and they deal
Speaker 4: with surgeries of all kinds. I have confirmed that she
Speaker 4: arrived about two thirty am on the Tuesday, which suggests
Speaker 4: to me that perhaps that photograph was taken in the
Speaker 4: back of the ambulance. She had been in the rural
Speaker 4: area of near Gabby, which is a tiny hamlet, doesn't
Speaker 4: have a town square or a shops or anything, and
Speaker 4: the ambulance service got a tripoo call round midnight. Some
Speaker 4: volunteers came from the beachside suburb of Two Rocks and
Speaker 4: they took her to the Two Rocks depot. That's not
Speaker 4: even a nursing post or a medical center, it's literally
Speaker 4: where they keep the ambulance. And then a professional crew
Speaker 4: from the city came and picked her up and in
Speaker 4: normal road conditions. They drove her to Sir Charles Garden Hospital,
Speaker 4: about seventy kilometers south. They didn't use the sirens, which
Speaker 4: suggests it's not an emergency but serious enough to warrant
Speaker 4: an ambulance transfer.
Speaker 1: So the ambulance right happened on Tuesday this week, that's
Speaker 1: April one. But the authorities in Wa have told Page
Speaker 1: the incident between the school bus and the car that
Speaker 1: happened last week on the twenty fourth of March.
Speaker 4: It was relatively minor, and it did happen in near
Speaker 4: Gabby Up, near where Virginia was picked up in the
Speaker 4: ambulance six days later. But it was so minor that
Speaker 4: the police said there was only two thousand dollars worth
Speaker 4: of damage to the car and no major injuries. We
Speaker 4: know the ambulance did not attend that incident either.
Speaker 1: In a statement, Virginia Deuphray's agent said she'd been injured
Speaker 1: in the crash, but it had returned home and it
Speaker 1: wasn't until her condition worsened after several days that she
Speaker 1: called the ambulance and then it emerged. Virginia Euphras facing
Speaker 1: a criminal charge in the Wa courts on March fourteen,
Speaker 1: Ten days before the road accident, she'd appeared at the
Speaker 1: magistrates Court in joodle Up, in Perth's northern suburbs. She
Speaker 1: was charged with breaching a family violence restraining order. She
Speaker 1: hasn't had to enter a plea and the matters listed
Speaker 1: for court on April nine. Also facing charges is her husband,
Speaker 1: Robert Giffrey. In February, he was charged with an inadequate
Speaker 1: storage facility for firearms. He's also been in trouble for
Speaker 1: a driving offense. He was fined twelve hundred dollars and
Speaker 1: lost his license for six months for reckless driving exceeding
Speaker 1: the speed limit by forty five kilometers an hour or more.
Speaker 1: Back in September. On the twenty second of March, she
Speaker 1: posted some photos of her children and some words that
Speaker 1: suggested that there was something going on in the family.
Speaker 1: She said her heart was shattered and that every day
Speaker 1: that passes her sadness only deepened. Did that attract attention
Speaker 1: at the time or did that kind of go a
Speaker 1: bit unnoticed until she made the post about being in hospital.
Speaker 4: I never saw that post, and I never saw any
Speaker 4: media about it either. I sort of wondered if that
Speaker 4: when under the radar because she had not been in
Speaker 4: the media for such a long time, maybe people had
Speaker 4: taken their eyes off her. When I did see it,
Speaker 4: it struck me as so tragic, just horrible.
Speaker 1: And then another twist. We've used a voice actor to
Speaker 1: read a statement released by Virginia Geffray's agent overnight on
Speaker 1: Wednesday this week. There are some sensitive personal issues mentioned
Speaker 1: in the statement, so we've redacted some of it.
Speaker 6: On January ninth, twenty twenty five, and Virginia was hospitalized
Speaker 6: for her serious injuries and he was granted a restraining order.
Speaker 6: Virginia looks forward to defending herself. She is deeply concerned
Speaker 6: about her children. Virginia continues to be hospitalized in serious condition.
Speaker 4: We heard that she'd been in a hospital as early
Speaker 4: as January. The fact that she'd been in hospital multiple
Speaker 4: times this year was a surprise and a big cause
Speaker 4: for concern. She has been charged with one count of
Speaker 4: breaching what is known as a family violence restraining order.
Speaker 4: What I know about those orders is that there are
Speaker 4: ways of breaching them that are minor, and there are
Speaker 4: ways of breaching them that are major. So a person
Speaker 4: can breach a family violence restraining order by sending a
Speaker 4: text or an email. And there have been cases in
Speaker 4: the past, the recent past where a man has been
Speaker 4: fined a small fine for breaching one of these orders
Speaker 4: by sending an email that asked to see his children.
Speaker 4: But people have also been jailed because they breach the
Speaker 4: order with an act of violence. So we actually don't
Speaker 4: know what's gone on here, and it could be any
Speaker 4: of those things that the police are alleging.
Speaker 1: Coming up. What are the ethics of covering a complex
Speaker 1: story where the subject seems to be in such distress.
Speaker 1: This is such a delicate thing to cover, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Page This woman has made allegations of really horrendous abuse
Speaker 1: against three people, Jeffrey Epstein, Gilaine Maxwell, and Prince Andrew.
Speaker 1: She's accepted a settlement, a payout in some form of
Speaker 1: acknowledgment of her abuse. She's been trying to live a
Speaker 1: private life in wa and it sounds like the media
Speaker 1: has really left her alone. How do you navigate the
Speaker 1: delicacy of stepping your way through covering this story.
Speaker 4: She's an important thing to a lot of people because
Speaker 4: she's been a hero actually campaigning for victims of sexual abuse,
Speaker 4: and so I think there's a lot of care and
Speaker 4: concern for her. But you're right, it's so difficult to
Speaker 4: tell this story when this is a person whose life
Speaker 4: is obviously in a lot of turmoil. I get a
Speaker 4: sense she's a person who's lived through a lot of pain.
Speaker 4: I think that she was genuinely trying to have a
Speaker 4: quiet and good life. And if you're going to live
Speaker 4: in Australia, in a capital city, Perth's probably the place
Speaker 4: to do it. She's going to appear in court now
Speaker 4: as a result of this family violence restraining order charge,
Speaker 4: and that, of course, is going to attract a lot
Speaker 4: of media attention. That's going to be hard to watch.
Speaker 4: It's going to be difficult for her, and it's going
Speaker 4: to be quite the spectacle.
Speaker 1: I think Virginia giuphrase Agent's initial response to this page
Speaker 1: was to say in a statement that her intention had
Speaker 1: been to post it in a more private way, perhaps
Speaker 1: on a face book closed group, rather than publicly on Instagram.
Speaker 1: What should we draw from that, given that the statement
Speaker 1: is still there on Instagram.
Speaker 4: I've been wondering if it hasn't been removed because Virginia
Speaker 4: is so unwell. As far as we know, she's still
Speaker 4: an impatient she may be under the influence of pretty
Speaker 4: strong painkillers. She might not even be in a position
Speaker 4: to communicate well with her spokesperson or pass on her passwords.
Speaker 4: I don't know what to take from that. This is
Speaker 4: a person who's obviously sick, or else she wouldn't have
Speaker 4: been taken by ambulance to a hospital and she wouldn't
Speaker 4: still be there. What her illness is we don't know.
Speaker 4: But I know that public hospitals are not in the
Speaker 4: habit of keeping people on the ward if they're well
Speaker 4: enough to leave.
Speaker 1: Ah Taylor is The Australian's wad Your Chief. You can
Speaker 1: follow this developing story at the Australian dot com dot
Speaker 1: au