Legal Pressure Was Mounting on Virginia Giuffre Who Had Attempted Suicide Before

I Talked With Epstein Survivor Rina Oh

An update on what I wrote on Saturday about Virginia Giuffre and her tragic suicide.

I was incorrect when I wrote that the litigation between Epstein survivor, New Jersey-based artist, Rina Oh and Virginia was over.

Oh herself reached out to me, and her lawyer, Alexander M. Dudelson, emailed me: “Rina Oh's claim under the Adult Victim Act was reinstated after the Appellate Division - First Judicial Department unanimously reversed Justice Arthur F. Engoron. The Court found that the START Act does not insulate Ms. Giuffre from civil liability for her intentional acts against Ms. Oh.

Right now, each of the respective courts have been divested of jurisdiction until an estate fiduciary can be substituted as a party in the place of the decedent. As soon as one is appointed, we intend on proceeding with the adjudication of Ms. Oh's meritorious claims.”

In fact, I’ve learned that on April 7, just a couple weeks before her death on April 24th, Giuffre experienced a legal setback. The timing is important, because it was just two days before she was also reportedly due in family court in Australia over her messy divorce. So she was under a lot of pressure apart from her family troubles, which were severe. She had lost custody of her three children and her estranged husband had a restraining order against her.

On April 7th New York State’s Appellate Court denied Giuffre her motion to dismiss one of Oh’s two civil lawsuits against her. In this one, Oh alleged that Giuffre had sexually assaulted Oh back in 2001 in a massage room while Jeffrey Epstein watched. (Giuffre had claimed on Twitter and elsewhere it was the other way around).

Meanwhile another federal lawsuit filed by Oh in the Southern District of New York in 2021 against Giuffre for defamation was in all likelihood headed to court in the very near future, having failed to settle in the past four years. (Giuffre had counter-sued, claiming under the anti-SLAPP laws she had the right to express her opinions freely in a podcast, and subsequently in a series of Tweets).

Rina Oh.

Oh had served Giuffre with the defamation lawsuit papers delivered to her Australia address in 2021 after Giuffre alleged on a podcast series hosted by Tara Palmeri, that Oh had been a “recruiter” for Epstein, and followed this up with a series of aggressive tweets. Ironically, Oh was represented in the victims’ class action suit against Epstein’s estate, by Brad Edwards and Brittany Henderson, the same lawyers who had previously represented Giuffre. “We were lead counsel. So we automatically represented everyone. Rina was automatically by definition in the class and we represented more than 200 members,” Edwards wrote me by way of explanation.

Oh says that the government interviewed her and placed her on the witness list for Ghislaine Maxwell’s criminal trial. Ultimately, she was not called to the stand.

The tragedy of the legal battle is that ultimately Oh and Giuffre had much shared history.

It seems that both Giuffre and Oh were part of the sex pyramid scheme deployed by Epstein. Legally Oh may have legally been an adult when she met Epstein, and she has said she knew she wasn’t his only girlfriend - but she says she didn’t comprehend that she was part of a pattern and a sick scheme at scale involving minors until many years later.

Her story is by now all too familiar; she met Epstein when she was 21 and fell into a relationship with him. He took her under his wing, paying for her art classes at New York’s School of Visual Arts. While they were together, she says she had friends including those who wanted him to offer them scholarships to obtain college degrees, and she introduced him to three women. She encountered Giuffre on a few occasions in Epstein’s homes. She has said that her relationship with him lasted for nearly two years, ending when Epstein performed a violent sex act that left her barely able to walk.

Oh has said in court papers that on the day of the encounter with Epstein and Giuffre, Guiffre surprised her in the massage room and that it was Giuffre who made the first move on her sexually in front of Epstein, in order to please Epstein’s voyeuristic, sadistic nature. Oh says she never consented to the sex acts while Giuffre later countered that during an S&M act, Oh once cut her with a razor from which she had a six inch scar. Oh denied this happened.

I spoke to Oh on the phone several times these past few days, after she reached out to me after the weekend’s post, to let me know that neither of her legal cases against Giuffre had been dismissed.

“I was in shock and I had mixed emotions when I heard the news,” she says. “I wanted her to live and face the truth. I can be a very forgiving person, if I am asked very nicely and with kindness. I wanted to see her[Virginia] redeem herself,” she says, adding now she will never get closure. “Virginia has hindered my recovery from what Jeffrey did to me, in a way that was just so cruel. I should’ve spent these past few years recovering, not battling her false allegations,” she said.

Ironically, it seems that Giuffre understood that the Epstein survivors were far stronger together than fighting each other. The New York Post has reported that family members found a note in her belongings urging people to stand together in protest for victims:

Oh cried several times on our calls. She told me she’s been in therapy for over 20 years and is heavily medicated: “As someone who is receiving intense mental health treatment, I clearly saw the signs of someone in crisis,” says Oh of Giuffre’s Instagram post, in which she was lying in hospital claiming she had four days to live. “The black screen followed by the heart emoji I saw in the news screamed crisis”

The two women had not seen each other since 2001 until they came face to face in a conference room in the offices of Giuffre’s attorney, Kathleen Thomas in the World Trade Center in New York 2023 when Giuffre had to give a deposition in the defamation case.

She was photographed by the Daily Mail tripping on the sidewalk outside.

Inside the offices, according to Oh, Giuffre was palpably angry. The two women didn’t exchange words, but Oh says that you could feel the tension.

Complicating matters Oh says, a third lawsuit filed by an anonymous victim Jane Doe 200 against the Trustees of Epstein’s estate, Darren Indyke and Richard Kahn, could have been potentially problematic for Giuffre. “Jane Doe knew both of us and had first hand knowledge of what happened when we were around Epstein,” Oh says. She claims Jane Doe’s testimony would have knocked down Giuffre’s allegations against her.

Of course there’s no way to corroborate this, at this point.

But for all the people out there who doubt the manner of Virginia’s sad passing: I did find evidence in the Oh litigation that she had tried to commit suicide before…

As one goes through all this material, it’s hard not to marvel at the extraordinary evil of Jeffrey Epstein.

It’s now six years since he died, and yet the harm he caused, tragically, did not die with him. Like a virus it continues to spread, wreaking havoc and destruction in too many lives who do not deserve it.