Thanks everyone for joining in as we continue to read through Virginia Giuffre’s deposition from her 2016 defamation civil suit against Ghislaine Maxwell. If you would like to read the whole transcript, you can do that here.

A couple of things were mentioned in this section of the deposition, namely Virginia’s parents, who sent her to live with an aunt and uncle in California when she was 11 years old. Virginia doesn’t go into detail here, but the relationship she had with her father, and the story of his friend “Forest Jones,” is very dark, and foreshadows the abuse she would suffer at the hands of Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein. If you would like to read that story, which includes triggers for sexual abuse, you can click the link below.

Virginia also mentioned the first time she was sex-trafficked to a man named Ron Eppinger. He a notorious operator of a South Florida international prostitution ring in the late 1990s, which brought in girls from Eastern Europe with the promise of modeling jobs (sound familiar?). In 2001 he pled guilty to smuggling immigrations into the U.S. for prostitution, money laundering, and other prostitution offenses. He was sentenced to 21 months in jail, was released, and died in 2006. You can read his court case here.

Today’s Donation Opportunity is the Missoula YWCA, which “provides life-saving services to survivors of domestic and sexual violence, stalking and human trafficking. The Pathways program includes a 24-hour crisis hotline and response, pet-friendly emergency shelter for adults and children fleeing abusive situations, transitional housing, support groups, mental health counseling and legal support.”

If you would like to donate to the Missoula YWCA, please click the link below:

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