“Baby” is the opening chapter of Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, a collaborative book with Amy Wallace, published in 2025 by Knopf (Penguin Random House). I have delayed reading this memoir because I knew the impact it would have and the trauma it would resurface for…
OPENINGS by Rae Cline
“Baby” is the opening chapter of Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, a collaborative book with Amy Wallace, published in 2025 by Knopf (Penguin Random House). I have delayed reading this memoir because I knew the impact it would have and the trauma it would resurface for me. I needed time and space in which I could sit with it and cry and scream and just BE. I don’t know if that time will ever come—the crying and screaming and just BEing time—so, here we are.
I won’t mince words. The opening of Nobody’s Girl will crush you. The crush will be necessary. And the rest of the book will continue to crush. That will be necessary, too. But no good will ever come from reading safely. Words and narrative can change lives. Words and narrative can change systems. And we must have the courage to read them and write them. Giuffre gifted us with the courage of her words and experience. Don’t waste it:
How quickly he does that, twisting the father-daughter bond into something sickening. But I already know that trick, and I want to believe it doesn’t work on me anymore. I don’t trust parents—especially fathers. I don’t need a daddy, old or new. I just want a break from fending for myself. When you grow up female, danger is everywhere. I’ve known that for as long as I can remember. Just hours ago, the construction worker in the white van showed me a darker shade of evil. I know I can’t go home again. There’s no safety there. My whole body aches, inside and out. I have no good options….
Giuffre is fifteen and beaten and sitting in a stranger’s limo. This stranger offers to be her “new daddy.” When Giuffre acquiesces to New Daddy, she makes no excuses for the choice because her choice is necessary. Homeless, penniless. Raped and nearly killed that very day by another man offering a ride to somewhere “safe.”
If you’ve never been a throwaway girl, let me share a few realities of life. The traumas—physical, sexual, emotional—are not a once and done Lifetime movie where the beautiful actress gets to have a Point A to Point B then “finds” herself and moves on with a renewed sense of voice and activism and reasonable balance of life in a kinder world. No. Throwaway girls will often survive trauma after trauma after trauma… from men AND women who predate on the vulnerable, the weak, the friendless, the throwaways. Predators can sense desperation in the young and old alike. They can smell it on them. Vulnerability is the blood on which they feed.
Polite society does not like to talk about the ongoing traumas and damages done to the Giuffres of the world. It is much tidier and palatable to discuss one of the traumas, its mangled mass packed into a pretty box with a bow so everyone can say, See! We’ve done something about it. But the reality of sexual abuse of minors is a lifetime of pain and often repeat predations and surviving until they can no longer do it. And this is where Virginia Roberts Giuffre left us. She could no longer do it.
If you are part of the Giuffre and Epstein File conversation on social media or at dinner parties or anywhere else that sexual abuse of minors is politically “en vogue,” right now, read this book, recommend it to everyone you know. If your friend or sister or mother or daughter have not yet read it, buy them a copy. If your daughter is too young to read this book or too young to process the brutal details, buy a copy now and put it in that hope chest you keep for her. Give it to her in high school, before she leaves for college or whatever future she determines for herself. She will need this book more than the china set.
Yeah, this book goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway. Highly recommended. Essential. No excuses. Read it.
About Virginia Roberts Giuffre
Virginia Roberts Giuffre (1983–2025) was an activist and advocate for sex-trafficking survivors. She lived in Australia with her family.
About Penguin Random house
Penguin Random House is the international home to more than 300 editorially and creatively independent publishing imprints. Our mission is to ignite a universal passion for reading by creating books for everyone. We believe that books, and the stories and ideas they hold, have the unique capacity to connect us, change us, and carry us toward a better future for generations to come.
About Openings
Openings is a weekly recommendations column by Rae Cline, published at Eckleburg. Openings features literary musings, culture and book recommendations, focusing on beautiful books with memorable openings, where readers meet intriguing characters, settings and moments in which the mind can explore what is, what might be and how this opens the reader’s imagination. Read more on Instagram @raeclineauthor and at the new raecline.substack, where you can submit recent titles of adult literary fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry for consideration.
