Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Christinamio.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, April twenty eight, twenty twenty five. The government
Speaker 1: knew Russia had designs on an Indonesian military base back
Speaker 1: in March before the federal election was called. Anthony Albanesi
Speaker 1: is shaping up to be a bigger spender than his predecessor,
Speaker 1: Bill Shorten. But the big difference is the PM doesn't
Speaker 1: appear to have a plan to pay for his cost
Speaker 1: of living cash splash. That exclusive analysis is live right
Speaker 1: now at the Australian dot com dot au. Prince Andrew
Speaker 1: accuser Virginia Duffrey was in and out of hospital emergency
Speaker 1: departments in the final months of her life. The Australian
Speaker 1: is revealing today the forty one year old mother of
Speaker 1: three died by suicide at her Perth home on Friday. Today,
Speaker 1: our Queensland Bureau Chief Michael McKenna reflects on his last
Speaker 1: conversation with the woman who waged war against sex trafficking
Speaker 1: and abuse. A note before we begin this episode discusses
Speaker 1: sexual abuse and suicide. Audrey Strauss had only been acting
Speaker 1: as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of
Speaker 1: New York for a month when she made a stunning announcement.
Speaker 2: Maxwell and Epstein had a method. Typically there, we befriend
Speaker 2: these young girls by asking them questions about their lives,
Speaker 2: pretending to be taking an interest in them.
Speaker 1: That morning, the socialite Galline Maxwell had been arrested following
Speaker 1: a raid on her secluded New Hampshire mansion and charged
Speaker 1: with trafficking teenagers and girls for abuse by the disgraced
Speaker 1: financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 2: Maxwell was among Epstein's closest associatest and helped him exploit
Speaker 2: girls who were as young as fourteen years old. Maxwell
Speaker 2: played a critical role in helping Epstein to identify a
Speaker 2: friend and groom minor victims for abuse. In some cases,
Speaker 2: Maxwell participated in the abuse herself.
Speaker 1: It was July of twenty twenty and the world had
Speaker 1: rearranged itself around the coronavirus pandemic. On the other side
Speaker 1: of the world, one of Epstein's most prominent accuses received
Speaker 1: news of Maxwell's arrest.
Speaker 3: Last night at eleven seventy m My lawyer calls me,
Speaker 3: sickred colleague, and she says, are you singing down for this?
Speaker 4: Because Gilan's been arrested.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: I was elated. I was crying with tears of joy.
Speaker 4: My heart was raising miles, like a million miles a minute.
Speaker 1: Virginia Giuffrey living a quiet suburban life in cans with
Speaker 1: her former husband Robert at the time. The next day,
Speaker 1: she was on the phone with the Australian's Queensland Bureau
Speaker 1: chief Michael McKenna, who was racing to meet a looming
Speaker 1: print deadline.
Speaker 6: Thanks for doing this again, I really appreciate it. If
Speaker 6: you're here's some tapping, It's just me trying to tap
Speaker 6: some of the answers out so I can make sure
Speaker 6: I get deadline. I do a lot of work up
Speaker 6: in Cape York and North Queensland and was aware that
Speaker 6: Virginia was living in far North Queensland, and I was
Speaker 6: given her telephone number by a friend. I rang up
Speaker 6: that number and her husband Robert answered. I said who
Speaker 6: I was, and that I was interested in talking to
Speaker 6: her about Maxwell's arrest and how she felt. And you know,
Speaker 6: some people respond differently when contacted by journalists, and in
Speaker 6: this case, Robert really gave it to me. He called
Speaker 6: me a few names, and he peppered it with a
Speaker 6: few expletives. It's not my first radio I'm being generalist
Speaker 6: for a long time, and look. I told him that
Speaker 6: I understood his passion and apologized for the intrusion and
Speaker 6: put the phone down. A few minutes later, my phone
Speaker 6: rang and it was Virginia on the phone, apologizing.
Speaker 5: We had a bit of a chuckle.
Speaker 6: I said that I understood, and that if I was
Speaker 6: in his shoes, I probably would have laden the assault
Speaker 6: with a few more expletives. I heard a laugh in
Speaker 6: the background. It was him, and then from that moment
Speaker 6: on we started having a pretty friendly conversation. They then
Speaker 6: later agreed to do the interview.
Speaker 1: Virginia Drew Frey died by suicide at her home in
Speaker 1: Perth on Friday. She was forty one years old.
Speaker 7: In a statement, Virginia Geuphra's family said she was a
Speaker 7: fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking.
Speaker 7: She was the light that lifted so many survivors. In
Speaker 7: the end, the toll of abuse is so heavy that
Speaker 7: it became unbearable for Virginia to handle its weight. We
Speaker 7: know that she is with the angels. Western Australia Police
Speaker 7: say they're not treating her death as suspicious.
Speaker 1: Giffrey alleged she was recruited by Maxwell following a chance
Speaker 1: meeting at Donald Trump's Mara a Lago club in the
Speaker 1: year two thousand, when she was sixteen years old and
Speaker 1: working as a locker room attendant. She described the encounter
Speaker 1: in the twenty twenty documentary Surviving Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 3: She was like this really bright Mary Poppins kind of
Speaker 3: a figure, and then she goes, oh, you know what,
Speaker 3: I know this guy. There's an opportunity. Actually, if you
Speaker 3: want to become a real massage therapist, we can get
Speaker 3: she trained within the next few weeks. Jeffrey Giland told
Speaker 3: me that I need to quit my job with mar
Speaker 3: Lago because I'll be traveling with them as they're traveling massuse.
Speaker 1: Giffrey claims she was also assaulted by the Duke of York,
Speaker 1: Prince Andrew, who counted Epstein and Maxwell among his close
Speaker 1: personal friends. The UK Royal has always denied the allegations
Speaker 1: against him, settled with Juffrey out of court in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. Michael Virginia Guffrey had less than a day
Speaker 1: to process the news that Glenn Maxwell had been arrested
Speaker 1: and charged with a range of trafficking and conspiracy charges.
Speaker 1: What was her demeanor like when you spoke with her
Speaker 1: back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: She was a little reluctant, and she was reluctant in
Speaker 5: one way. She had at various times.
Speaker 6: Been in the middle of a global story, and she
Speaker 6: wasn't like a politician or an actor.
Speaker 5: She didn't really know how to deal with it. It
Speaker 5: was all.
Speaker 6: Really overwhelming to her, and she wasn't someone that really
Speaker 6: chased the limelight or anything like that. But she kept
Speaker 6: saying to me in off the record conversations that she
Speaker 6: had to be careful that she was going to do
Speaker 6: the interview, but what was most important to her was
Speaker 6: not to imperil the trial, given that Maxwell had just
Speaker 6: been arrested, and that's why she wasn't going to give
Speaker 6: a press conference or give interviews generally. But she was
Speaker 6: very considered when she said, but this was different. This
Speaker 6: was a woman who had found me, who had groomed me,
Speaker 6: abused me, and then handed me over to Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 6: There was a real I noticed a real steal with
Speaker 6: her when she talked about that.
Speaker 1: Virginia Giufray was never called to give evidence at Gallaine
Speaker 1: Maxwell's trial, where she was ultimately found guilty of five
Speaker 1: counts of sex trafficking.
Speaker 8: Jeffrey Epstein's partner in crime, were sentenced today to twenty
Speaker 8: years in prison for sex trafficking minors. Epstein was indicted
Speaker 8: on federal sex trafficking charges back in twenty nineteen, but
Speaker 8: committed suicide in prison.
Speaker 6: Certainly in the day after Maxwell's arrest in the United States,
Speaker 6: when I spoke to Virginia, she expected that she was
Speaker 6: going to give evidence at the trial, and she told
Speaker 6: me that she was willing and eager to give evidence
Speaker 6: at that trial. And her absence from the trial was
Speaker 6: quite extraordinary, given it was her story that really pushed
Speaker 6: the allegations against Epstein and Maxwell onto the front pages globally.
Speaker 6: There's been speculation in the United States press that because
Speaker 6: she had a parallel civil case against Prince Andrew, which
Speaker 6: was later settled purportedly with a payout of fourteen point
Speaker 6: six million pounds he paid out to her without any
Speaker 6: admission of liability or guilt.
Speaker 5: That was one of the reasons that there was a.
Speaker 6: Parallel civil case, and Maxwell's lawyers could argue that there
Speaker 6: was a financial incentive for her to give evidence against
Speaker 6: her Equally, there was also speculation that there had been
Speaker 6: inconsistencies in her public accounts given to the media about
Speaker 6: what happened with Epstein and Maxwell and Prince Andrew, starting
Speaker 6: from when she was first recruited to work at Moreligo.
Speaker 6: When we last spoke, she told me that if she
Speaker 6: was ultimately paid out or she did get any more compensation,
Speaker 6: that she really wanted to dedicate her life to helping
Speaker 6: victims of abuse, and that's what she hoped would be
Speaker 6: her legacy was to help people to set an example
Speaker 6: as to someone who was willing to get up and
Speaker 6: make the accusations against her alleged offender, and also to
Speaker 6: help provide platforms with support for those victims.
Speaker 1: Coming up. How Virginia Dufray became a symbol of the
Speaker 1: me too movement. Virginia Dufrey kept a reasonably low profile
Speaker 1: after relocating to Perth with her husband and children a
Speaker 1: few years ago. She told the Australians Michael McKenna in
Speaker 1: twenty that she appreciated the power of the media in
Speaker 1: bringing perpetrators like Jeffrey Epstein and Glen Maxwell to justice,
Speaker 1: but she didn't necessarily seek it out.
Speaker 4: And unfortunately I have more faith in the media at
Speaker 4: the moment than I view the Justice Department, because you
Speaker 4: guys are actually helping us tell the Justice Department how
Speaker 4: do the jobs? Like, guys, we cannot let these people
Speaker 4: keep getting off the hook.
Speaker 1: In turn, the media has handled her story with relative care,
Speaker 1: but Jiffrey exploded back into the public sphere in February
Speaker 1: when she shared a post on Instagram that suggested she
Speaker 1: had days to live following a collision with a bus
Speaker 1: on a Perth Highway. Giffrey later backtracked, saying the post
Speaker 1: had been made in error, and Western Australian Police said
Speaker 1: the crash wasn't as serious as Giffrey suggested. Around the
Speaker 1: same time, it emerged that the mother of three was
Speaker 1: facing a criminal charge in the West Australian courts for
Speaker 1: breaching a family violence restraining order. Michael Virginia Jefrey did
Speaker 1: some big interviews in her time, most notably with the
Speaker 1: BBC's Panorama program, in which she really doubled down on
Speaker 1: her allegations against Prince Andrew, and with the documentary Surviving
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Epstein. In many ways, she was the face of
Speaker 1: what she called the fight against trafficking and sexual abuse.
Speaker 1: But she didn't really seek out the media after she
Speaker 1: spoke to you in twenty twenty, and the media mostly
Speaker 1: let her be. How do you report the public interest
Speaker 1: aspects of a story like this when the central figures
Speaker 1: life is so obviously in turmoil.
Speaker 6: The first thing is to respect all involved, and that
Speaker 6: includes the alleged defender.
Speaker 5: So you keep to the facts that.
Speaker 6: Are known, and you respect the people involved insomuch as.
Speaker 5: With a victim, is you have empathy for these people.
Speaker 6: For victims, know that they've been through a lot, know
Speaker 6: that they are probably going through a lot in now,
Speaker 6: probably going through this process of being in the public
Speaker 6: eye and the possible ability of having to give a testimony.
Speaker 6: So I've done this quite a lot over my career,
Speaker 6: and it's really just to show respect, ask the questions
Speaker 6: and lay it out that you're going to in some
Speaker 6: cases test what they're going to say, and ask those
Speaker 6: questions and report dutifully. We've seen in recent years that
Speaker 6: some of the media can take an advocacy role in
Speaker 6: reporting these sorts of cases. So it's really down to
Speaker 6: the journalists and the publication or the broadcaster to do
Speaker 6: their job. The way that they're supposed to do, and.
Speaker 5: That is to keep to the facts.
Speaker 6: Do not introduce evidence into the public arena during a trial,
Speaker 6: for instance, unless that evidence has been placed before the jury.
Speaker 6: There are rules, and some of them are legal and
Speaker 6: some of them are just obvious, and that involves not
Speaker 6: being an advocate the facts, asking the right questions and
Speaker 6: reporting without favor.
Speaker 5: That's what the public expects.
Speaker 1: Michael McKenna is the Australian's Queensland Bureau chief. You can
Speaker 1: watch the video of his interview with Virginia Dufrey and
Speaker 1: read the latest about her death at forty one at
Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot au