We may never know the extent of the damage done by Jeffrey Epstein and those whom he considered part of his world. The files are out there, but as we have seen this week, people will go to alarming lengths to protect the people who perpetrated some of the worst sex crimes this world has seen. Before her death, Virginia Giuffre was trying to get at least some accountability. Unfortunately, the toll that the fight had on her mental stability eventually caused her to take her own life.

Nobody’s Girl was written over the course of four years by Virginia Giuffre and Amy Wallace. It was published after Giuffre’s death, having been completed before she died. Amy adds her own introduction to the book, detailing some of the work the two of them put into this. She also adds her suspicions about Giuffre’s own mental state at the time of her death.

Many people wonder why the girls involved in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking ring didn’t just walk away. Nobody’s Girl shows that he and Ghislaine Maxwell knew how to prey on the right ones who wouldn’t. Virginia was abused by her father and trafficked to one of his friends at a very young age. Her mother turned a blind eye to what was going on. When you feel like there is no one in the world who cares about you, it makes you a prime target for those who show any degree of affection for you, even if that affection is rooted in something truly terrible. When Virginia first met Epstein and Maxwell, she felt valued by them, even as they were forcing her to have sexual encounters with them. Eventually, this led to her traveling the world and servicing men in Epstein’s circle.

Giuffre did try to leave once, but ended up back there when she lost the waitressing job she’d secured after her boyfriend stole the tip jar. She finally managed to leave their circle by getting married while attending massage school in Thailand, then moving to Australia with her new husband, Robbie. There, she experienced what a normal family was like for the first time. The love her in-laws showered her with was incredibly nurturing, and she tried to put her past behind her.

That wasn’t to be, though, as in the late 2000’s Epstein was being investigated for the first time for sex trafficking. He and Maxwell reached out to Giuffre, trying to make sure she didn’t talk. She was frightened at first that they were able to find out where she lived. By this time, she had two children with her husband, and worried about the safety of her family. Believing that it was safer to go public than stay silent, she was soon speaking up.

Nobody’s Girl was a difficult book to listen to in many ways. It can be hard to believe there is this much evil in the world. From the start, Virginia was failed by everyone who should have protected her in life. This made her ripe for exploitation. I came away with a greater understanding of how these girls end up being trafficked by the likes of Epstein. If there’s someone to blame in this situation, it’s Epstein and his circle. They wanted to have these sexual encounters, knowing they were having them with teenagers or women in their early twenties who looked younger. This was a choice they made. You only have to look at songs by certain musical artists to understand how drawn many men are to young women they can influence.

I found Nobody’s Girl to be easy to listen to. The narrator, Thérèse Plummer, does a great job with very difficult material. It felt like Giuffre’s voice reading the text, as she has a young-sounding voice. I listened to it over the course of a couple of days as I wanted to finish it quickly. It’s not something I can listen to with my grandchildren around, as there is a lot of fairly explicit material. This is not the fault of the author or her ghost-writer. It’s simply due to what she went through both at the hands of her father and many of the men she encountered in her life.

Giuffre talked easily about her encounters with Prince Andrew. With other men, she was more circumspect. There’s one “former Prime Minister” she talked about who beat the crap out of her and raped her at one point. She worries that naming some of these people would be dangerous not just to her but to her family. In light of what I’ve seen going on with a former Prime Minister of Norway this week, I do wonder if it was him. The general consensus on the forums I’ve read seems to be that it was an Israeli Prime Minister, though. This would account for why she was so afraid of someone going after her family as he would have access to Israeli intelligence and military.

Donald Trump is mentioned only when she gets a job at Mar-a-Lago when her father is working there as well. He doesn’t do anything to her while she is working there. When she is in Epstein’s circle, one of the things he tells her is he can do for her what he did for one of his former “special” girls which was to marry her off to one of his wealthy, powerful friends once he was done with her. By the details she gives about what Epstein told her, and what has been made public over the years, it’s pretty obvious he was talking about Melania. It’s also obvious she was more worried about Trump suing her family into oblivion if she said too much about him.

If you’d like to be educated as to why girls fall into being trafficked, Nobody’s Girl is a good place to start. It’s not just for people looking for dirt on Epstein, but also about trafficking in general. These girls come from bad situations at home and are easy prey for people like Epstein and Maxwell. We need to do more to stop this from happening and supporting the girls that it does happen to. Giuffre was trying to do that with some of the money she received in settlements. She felt that she owed it to try to help victims of sex trafficking, since she also helped bring new girls into the Epstein circle.

Nobody’s Girl is not an uplifting book, it’s more something you look to when you want to gain understanding of a situation. I came away quite thankful for several bullets I likely dodged myself when I was younger. Thankfully, we, as a culture, are starting to wake up and say “no more” to the type of people who would do something like this, rather than excusing it away. That is the best way society can honor what Giuffre and other victims fought for.