Amy Wallace, writer: We all need to speak up

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2:24We need healing. We need trust. These companies don't really, they don't care what governments do. This is a war. The first thing that we want is the war to end. For this interview, I met Amy Wallace, who co-authored Virginia Giffray's memoir, Nobody's Girl. Giffray accused the then Prince Andrew and late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse. The former prince, now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, has strenuously denied any wrongdoing. The memoir, published six months after Jafre took her own life, describes her encounters with Epstein and his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell. Wallace tells me she expected to be a ghostwriter, but explains why, after Jafre's death, she decided to speak out.

3:10As I've reflected over these incredible nine months, where I'm unusually stepping forward to speak up for her when I was going to be completely in the shadows, which is what I signed up for, I do think that that's one of the takeaways I hope people glean out of this book, is that we all need to be speaking up about it, not just the survivors. Welcome to The Interview from the BBC World Service with Amy Wallace.

3:42You know, it comes out and nine days later, King Charles strips Prince Andrew, then Prince Andrew of his titles. And that kind of kicked off a million different ripple effects of the book, which are beyond anything that I think Virginia or I or the publishers ever anticipated. I mean, I think it goes to how the things that Virginia talks about in the book, not just about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, but about the impacts of sexual abuse, particularly when you're a young person, really have resonated. I think it's because so many people in our culture have been abused as kids. She never got to see the impact of this book.

4:31Tell me how, for anyone who doesn't know, how it came to be published even after her death. Yes, she took her own life in April of last year. And just it wouldn't have been able to be published except that we had already locked the manuscript, which is a publishing term. But we had I had flown to Australia in the fall of 2024 and basically read her every word and we made adjustments. I had the cover with me. I had everything done. We had but I just I really wanted her to feel like she was ready for it to be born. It was such a personal book. So I went back to Australia. I'd been there once before.

5:18And we went over it. And she said, that's it. That's what I want. And then in the coming months, there were a lot of things going on in her life. And at one point, she was in a car accident. And there were various things going on. And she sent an email to me and to her publicist, Dini von Mufling, saying, in the event of my death, preparing, you know, in the event of my death, I want this book published. So we had not only do we have a finished book, but we also had express desires from Virginia that it be published. And it's almost an odd way of doing an interview, but just to pick up the point of her life then, she was fearful for her life.

5:55And I know she'd made attempts at taking her own life. Yes. But she was fearful for the safety of herself and her family at that point still. She always was. I mean, ever since she came forward publicly in 2011, and I note publicly because she, like many survivors, had come forward privately and made allegations. But she was the first survivor sister, as they call themselves, the survivor sisters, to come forward with her face and her name. And that happened in 2011. And she was definitely made aware very quickly from the men that she would ultimately accuse that they wanted her to take their names out of her mouth.

6:37And she received credible death threats. She had her house broken into. so yes it was a constant and this was a backbeat to the writing of this book which we did mostly in secret but you know she knew that I was going to open herself up again to these same kinds of attacks. I'm really interested in the process of writing this book because when I started reading it now I've had to take a couple of weeks to read it because I had to have a break yeah and I think even she says right I think it's time for I think you need a break and I need a break she says that during the book. She does. That was a device we came up with to help readers because it's so dark.

7:16Yeah. In the beginning of the book, particularly. Yeah. And it becomes much more uplifting and hopeful and defiant closer to the end. But you have to get through the start of, you know, her experience of abuse, which started at a very, very young age at the hands of her own father. Yeah. When you sat down with Virginia, what did you know of her? What did you think the process would be like, how, as a journalist, were you able to push and probe and encourage her to get very painful memories and painful parts of her life down on paper and yet keep her safe? Yeah, that's a really good and deep question.

8:00You know, I'd done other collaborative books as a ghostwriter, that's generally the term that's used. But this was clearly an unusual, unusual, unusually traumatic story that she was about to tell. I've got to give Virginia credit, though, in terms of many people have asked me, did you have to push her to put this in? Did you have to, you know, make set, tell her maybe be better if you told this? She was the one that really drove the bus on, I want this in, I want to include what had happened at the hands of her father, for example. She had never said that publicly. What she had said publicly was, I was sexually abused by a family friend as a child.

8:41And that was true. And we talked about it a lot. She would say, how can I name the names of so many rich and powerful men who I was trafficked to and never speak out about sort of the original sin? So she had a lot of kind of internal motivations and clarity about what she wanted to put in. The other example is when she did try to take her own life while we were writing the book, the minute she got out of the hospital and we got on the phone or on Zoom, whatever it was, she was like, we're putting that in. Because she was very clear about the shame that sexual abuse survivors feel. And she never wanted her own story if she cleaned it up and made it all tidy.

9:26And then I got married and had children and I won a settlement from these bad people, so I had money, yay, life is great, that she would make other survivors feel shameful, that they couldn't just get over it. There's an interesting part, actually. I think she talks about being in one of the places she lived and another mother said, oh, it's you. And she said, oh, we don't have to talk about it if it's awkward or if it's embarrassing. And she says, no, I will talk about this. I will not hide in the shadows about this because it's not my shame. Yeah, and it kind of goes further. It's I will talk about it and we all should be talking about it.

10:08And I think, again, I think that as I've reflected over these incredible nine months where I'm unusually stepping forward to speak up for her when I was going to be completely in the shadows, which is what I signed up for, I do think that that's one of the takeaways I hope people glean out of this book is that we all need to be speaking up about it, not just the survivors. And we put so much burden on the people who've actually suffered the most, the most vulnerable among us, often victimized when they were very young. What changed in you in regards to your understanding of sexual abuse and survivors of it during this process?

10:54Because I think as a woman, you know, you have an idea. It's atrocious. It's abominable. You know, people who have been abused. Oh, my goodness. They're standing up. They're speaking up. But it's the chain of events, I think, for me as a woman that has shocked me in her life. I don't know just how it affected you. I mean, gosh, there were so many ways it affected me. I mean, I was very concerned. And Virginia was easy to love. And I was very concerned from a very early point in our relationship that I didn't want the process of us writing the book as much as she wanted to write it to further traumatize her.

11:35And the repeating and repeating and repeating of the stories, she writes about that in the book where it really takes a toll. And in some ways, these survivors, that's the only thing they can think of to do to keep the pressure on is to keep basically opening up their worst experiences and repeat them. But that takes a toll every time they do it. And so we had to kind of find our way as a collaborative team. I tried to always let her know what we were going to be talking about in advance so she could be ready, so she could say, I'm not really up for that today. And sometimes she would say that.

12:14We really started. I wanted to understand how she's such a remarkably resilient person, despite how much she had endured. And I knew there were things in her childhood that had to be the answer to why she was that kind of a person. So we didn't start with the abuse when we started talking. She was so used to serving up those stories because she was always asked to do it on demand. that I had to kind of go, we're not starting there. You know, we're going to get to know each other. We're going to need to develop trust between each other. So we really started in the few happy years of her childhood where you see her as a sort of rambunctious tomboy, loved animals, climbed trees, and sort of became the person that could take on all of this stuff.

13:04You know, I remember when she had a horse and her horse was given away as a punishment. Yeah, Alice. And her love of animals and the cruelty that was meted out to her, not only by her father but by her mother. And one of the things that jarred with me, and it doesn't sit well, is how she constantly tried to repair and improve that relationship. Yeah, I mean, this gets to your earlier question with things I learned. One of the things I learned is that that is really not uncommon for children, you know, grown up children who were sexually abused when they were young. You know, there's so much pressure put on that child to keep the secret and basically to keep the family together by not saying, by not telling.

13:57And that driving force was alive in Virginia when she became an adult and when she became a mother. She knew exactly what her father had done to her, but she also could remember the good things about him. and it made her sad that her kids wouldn't know those good things. And so there was this conflict within her that is really hard to read. And as the person who worked with her, it was kind of hard to understand at first. Like, why would you want to make up with this guy? And to write it reasonably. Yeah. With reason. Do you know what I mean? But I came to really understand it, which is you're the young child who's been hurt.

14:36You're grown up now, but you want to fix it. And if you can fix it, that would be, you know, of course, that's what we all want. We all want to fix all the hurts of our young lives or the things we wish were done differently. So that was what that was about. And also particularly, it wasn't just that she was tenacious Virginia, which she was. It was that I think this is something that happens to all young victims, is that they feel the pressure that it's on them to fix it. And that's pretty powerful. That's yet another burden that is placed on the young person who's been hurt.

15:35that she was responsible for telling her story in the event of Virginia Giffray's death. It's important to say that Virginia Giffray's father has denied all allegations of abuse. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor told Newsnight in 2019 that he did not remember meeting Giffray and he has strenuously denied any wrongdoing. How did a boycott Jimmy become a billionaire from posting videos? On Good Bad Billionaire, we're going to find out how the world's most popular YouTuber, Mr Beast, made his fortune. He's buried himself in a coffin for days. Counted to 100 ,000 on camera. And even recreated Squid Games, all in an attempt to go viral on the internet.

16:17But it all started when he gave a homeless man$10 ,000. So is he a philanthropist reshaping capitalism? Or is he just the king of the attention economy? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

16:33Okay, let's return to my conversation with Amy Wallace. Like you said, you've ghostwritten other books and, you know, with very influential, high profile people. What we discover about this world of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell is something very frightening that exists that you kind of think, does it? Yeah, it does. Did you, I mean, how much did it surprise you how much power was there and how it was used and with impunity, with no feeling of responsibility or regret, shame, anything? Well, I think the way that works is that you look at the person you're abusing as less than you. You know, like any horrible abuse, that person isn't a person.

17:26They are there to meet your needs. And because you are higher and better, and the word that's being used a lot now is more elite, and generally there's a lot of class issues going on here, that you're not hurting a person. You're hurting somebody who doesn't matter. And I think I kind of understood that idea when I started working with Virginia. But because of what's happened since, you know, the Epstein Files Transparency Act, these documents coming out that even ones that don't show explicit wrongdoing, you read the way these people speak to each other, the way they talk about women, the way they talk about meeting their own needs at the expense of other people.

18:09And it's pretty casual. It's pretty. This is just the way of it for us. It's like going to the supermarket for them. Yeah. Picking up, oh, what cereal do I want today? Completely. And so the window into that, which has been enabled not just by Virginia's book and her memories of how she watched them interact, but now through so many more public documents and things that have come out since, in part because of Virginia's book and also the activism of other survivor sisters. that picture of how elites, for lack of a better term, feel they are entitled to do anything they wish and not face the consequences that you or I would face.

18:51That is a pretty pervasive way of looking at the world at certain echelons of society. And I think we've gotten a really bracing look at that in these last months since Virginia's book came out. One of the things, and there were very few that made me feel uplifted about her life, understandably. But one of the things was that she could witness certain incidences of people being brought to justice. More people feeling empowered to speak out. The Me Too movement, for example. but people being held to account for their behavior and it not being pushed aside, swept under the carpet or thought of as they're too difficult to go after.

19:38She did. She saw the beginnings of that, in part because she had these amazing lawyers. One in particular, Sigrid McCauley, came up with this idea that maybe we can't get them on their sexual abuse of you because statutes of limitations have run out. But if they call you a liar when you say it happened, we can get them on that. And that was a brilliant, a sort of masterstroke. And that's how they sued Ghislaine Maxwell in civil court for defamation, for calling her a liar when she was not a liar and won a settlement. So little by little, there were these creative ways to try to get people held to account.

20:17But let's remember, in the United States, not a single man that Virginia or any of the other survivor sisters were trafficked to has been prosecuted, let alone, we think, investigated. There's no evidence that they've even been questioned. So these women have come forward and named the names of men that they were given to, and those men have not been interviewed. Why? I mean, it's kind of mind boggling. You know, if you are accused of, and not everybody understands what trafficking is, you can be trafficked as an adult. Trafficking is being coerced into a sexual situation that you do not want to be in.

21:01And there are a lot of different definitions to it. So a lot of women have come forward and said, this happened to me, and here's who I was given to, here's who I was trafficked to. And those men are culpable. That is a crime to have sex with somebody who's being trafficked, no matter how old they are. And they have not been held to account. That's just not the way justice is supposed to work. If you're accused of something, you shouldn't immediately be prosecuted. It has to be proven. Obviously, you're innocent until proven guilty. But you should be questioned. And so, I mean, it's been the acting attorney general in the United States, Todd Blanch, who's up for confirmation in the next two weeks, has a former Trump personal lawyer, has basically said nothing to see here.

21:50We're done. The Epstein files have taken up enough of our time. Hearing what you say there, what do you think people will learn and how will they be bolstered by this book? because we have spoken in this country about the conviction rate for rape, for example, being abysmally low. And it is very difficult to encourage or to assure people who have been sexually assaulted that they will be listened to. This book does give a little bit of hope. Yeah, you know, I think you can read it two ways. On the one hand, you can hear what I just said and go, okay, these women have come forward in droves. They've been brave.

22:38They've named names. They've talked to the FBI and still nothing's done. So that just could be depressing. The optimism that I find and that I hope people take out of this book is, and I've said it again and again, is I hope people understand that they should never underestimate the power of their own individual outrage. Do you want to live in a society that allows wealthy men, mostly some women, to rape underage children? Do you want to live in a world like that? If you don't, you can speak up. And how do we have the proof of that that can matter? Virginia. Virginia is a young woman who never graduated from high school in the United States.

23:29She had no material wealth. And at one point, after she has her third child, who happens to be female, she decides, I don't want to live in a world like this. I don't want to raise my children in a world like this. And I'm going to make the world better. She had no reason to believe that she could do that. She didn't have power behind her at that point or resources. But she decided and she started speaking up. And I think there is no question, while there is a lot of credit to go around for the progress that's been made, that Virginia, she inspired a lot of these other Survivor Sisters to come forward.

24:06She started a movement. And if she can do that, we all need to be doing it. And we should be inspired by that. You know, what kind of world do you want to live in? Decide and then start doing something about it. Don't sit on your hands or in the United States. Don't go like, what can I do? You know, all these, you know, the Trump administration is corrupt or whatever people are saying. That's a cop out. Step up, speak out, make your world, whether it's your local community, the world you want it to be and be loud about it. And I think I do find that inspiring. I'm all for being loud. I can tell that.

24:48Amy Wallace, it is, you know, I'm very glad I've read the book. It wasn't easy, but it got easier and more hopeful. And I think you've articulated that really, really, really well. Thank you so much. Thank you for the work you've put in. Of course. It's my pleasure.

25:11Thank you for listening to The Interview. For more compelling conversations, search for The Interview wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You'll find episodes from writer Maggie O 'Farrell, Sierra Leone's First Lady, Fatima Biot, and head of the World Health Organization, Dr Tedros. Until the next time, bye for now.

25:38How did a boycott Jimmy become a billionaire from posting videos? On Good Bad Billionaire, we're going to find out how the world's most popular YouTuber, Mr Beast, made his fortune. He's buried himself in a coffin for days. Counted to 100 ,000 on camera. And even recreated Squid Games, all in an attempt to go viral on the internet. But it all started when he gave a homeless man$10 ,000. So is he a philanthropist reshaping capitalism? Or is he just the king of the attention economy? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.