Amy Wallace writes for The New York Times Oct. 19, 2025:
Since 2011, when Ms. Giuffre publicly accused Mr. Epstein (she was the first of his victims to forgo anonymity), she repeatedly revealed — in depositions, lawsuits and interviews — what was done to her in the hope of preventing others’ suffering. Especially in the years before federal prosecutors indicted Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell, this parade of pain seemed the only way to keep public attention focused on their depravity and that of their associates.
But the constant telling and retelling of her story had consequences for Virginia — a campaign of intimidation that included death threats and at least one break-in at her family home — and took a devastating toll on her family, not to mention her well-being…
Six months later Ms. Giuffre died by suicide. She was 41 years old. The immediate, and ultimately unanswerable, question: Why?
But what also lingered for me, amid my immense sadness, were other questions: Why do we, as a society, ask those who have been weakened by abuse to do the heaviest lifting — not just calling out the predatory schemes of those who abused them, but also testifying and being deposed under oath, as well as sitting for interviews and news conferences?
And why is it that even when survivors do this, so many of us still don’t give them the benefit of the doubt? Instead of requiring the wounded to endlessly recite their worst memories on repeat, why don’t we bear down more forcefully on those they accuse of wrongdoing? Ms. Giuffre pursued justice in civil court and received settlements from Mr. Epstein, Ms. Maxwell and Prince Andrew. But these alone, in Ms. Giuffre’s mind, did not deliver justice.
If you do anything that harms someone (even if you are right and they terribly wrong), if you make a claim (legal or otherwise) that inflicts damage on others (even if the damage is justly deserved), you will face blowback that may include questions. If you don’t want blowback, if you do not want to be challenged, do not make a claim.
Nobody is forcing people to make claims.
The things that Giuffre said publicly hurt people. Jeffrey Epstein deserved this harm. Others, such as Alan Dershowitz did not. But deserving has nothing to do with how the world works.
If you are weak and you hurt someone powerful, you will likely lose. If you do not want to be destroyed this way, don’t pick battles, even if they are righteous battles.
To make a claim that damages a man is to start a contest, and you cannot start the contest and then demand the privileges of the bystander. You wanted the power to wound him with your assertion. The price of that power is that he gets to swing back at the assertion. A claimant who wants to keep the damage and bar the challenge is asking to be the prosecutor and the judge at once, and that is the one seat no honest process hands out.
The true claim invites challenge too, and that is not a flaw, that is the whole point. If your claim is true, the challenge confirms it. If it is false, the challenge exposes it. Either way the challenge is how the world sorts the true wounding claim from the false one, so the claimant who is right has nothing to lose by it and everything to gain. The only claimant who needs immunity from challenge is the one who suspects his claim will not survive it. So the demand do not scrutinize the accuser is not a shield for the wronged. It is a tell. The wronged are vindicated by scrutiny. Only the unsure need sparing from it.
The adversarial system is this rule with a courthouse built around it. You sue, you open yourself to discovery and cross-examination. You plead truth as your defense against libel, which means you accept that you will have to prove the damaging thing you said. The apparatus exists because somebody worked out long ago that the only fair way to let people make wounding claims is to make them defend the claims, and the only fair way to protect the wounded is to let him fight back. Nobody is dragged into the accusation. The man who files chose to file.
The challenge a claimant has to legally accept is challenge to the claim. He started a contest of evidence, not a license for the foul, so when the answer comes back as the threat or the smear or the move to his weakest point, he can still object, because that is no longer a test of what he said, it is punishment for having said it. He owns the risk of being proven wrong. He does not owe anyone the right to ruin him off the merits.
Life, however, usually does not work this way. I wish it did. I want community and society and sanction to protect those who are unjustly hurt. I want to shame bullies. I hate it when I realize that I have been the bully. Sometimes, when I thought I was the good guy, I was really the bad guy.
