There are many reasons why Amy Wallace wishes Virginia Roberts Giuffre was still alive. Some are personal. Some are practical. But at its heart pulse the reverberations of a child sex trafficking scandal that reaches into palaces and courtrooms across the globe.

Wallace is the now very visible ghostwriter behind the posthumous memoir Nobody’s Girl, by Jeffrey Epstein’s best-known accuser.

“I was supposed to be the invisible ghostwriter, which I was perfectly happy to be and that’s what I signed up to do,” Wallace says.

But Giuffre’s April 2025 suicide at her farm near Perth catapulted her impending memoir, and its San-Francisco-based author, into a spotlight that was already burning brightly.

“Because I stepped forward at the publisher’s request and promoted the book, people got in touch with me to tell me how the book had affected them,” Wallace says.

“If I could show Virginia one email of all the emails that I have gotten, it is actually from a woman in Australia.”

The email came from a 70-year-old woman who said Giuffre’s book helped her understand the impact of having been abused by a neighbour as a five-year-old – a fact she had never disclosed to anyone.

Men too spoke of how the book helped them make sense of past horrors, Wallace says. There were 40,087 victims of sexual assault recorded in Australia in 2024 – an increase of 10% on the previous year, according to the Bureau of Statistics.

“It is moving, and I know that is the reason that Virginia wrote the book. She was very clear about it – she wanted to help other people who had any kind of trauma.”

“I just know that [the emails] would have made her so proud.”

---

This Sunday, at the All About Women 2026 festival in Sydney, Wallace and British journalist Emily Maitlis will examine the institutions that turned a blind eye to Epstein’s dark world. In 2019, Maitlis famously put then prince Andrew, the duke of York, on the record about his relationship with Epstein, and questioned him during a now-notorious BBC Newsnight interview about Giuffre’s allegations that he had sex with her while she was still a teenager.

Once regarded as the late Queen’s favourite son and a decorated war veteran, Mountbatten-Windsor’s reputation went into freefall after the interview and his name became synonymous with the Epstein scandal.

He stepped down from royal duties and in 2022 reportedly paid a £12m out-of-court settlement to Giuffre over the allegations of sexual abuse, which he has consistently denied.

By late 2025, his brother, King Charles, removed Mountbatten-Windsor’s royal titles and he was ordered to leave the Royal Lodge.

Last month, the former prince was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office over allegations he shared confidential information with Epstein. He has denied any wrongdoing in relation to his dealings with Epstein.

Commentators hail this as the biggest scandal in royal modern history and Wallace maintains Giuffre’s tireless campaign played a role.

---

Five years in the making, Nobody’s Girl was published in October 2025 and topped the New York Times bestseller book list for 19 consecutive weeks (it is currently in fifth position), selling millions of copies worldwide.

In stories involving the powerful, Wallace understood that precision was protection.

Interviews were recorded and archived. Drafts were moved offsite. Audio files were secured. The mechanics of ghostwriting merged with contingency planning.

Wallace says those recordings remain hidden in a secret location.

“It was investigative, it was emotional and personal and intimate,” Wallace says. “It was all different kinds of things at once and I haven’t necessarily had a project ever that let me use all those parts of myself as a writer.”

The book makes for harrowing reading.

It details extreme trauma, including childhood sexual assault and predation by very wealthy, very powerful people. From the outset, the project carried risk.

Giuffre spoke often of fears for her life and for her children, Wallace says.

She had warned publicly, on social media, that if she were ever found dead she did not want it presumed to be suicide.

The coroner’s court of Western Australia says it is investigating the circumstances surrounding Giuffre’s death and WA police say that it “is not being treated as suspicious”.

Both Wallace and Giuffre’s Perth-based lawyer, Karrie Louden, believe Giuffre died at age 41 by suicide, dismissing suggestions of foul play.

But there were other risks Giuffre knew that she was undertaking by telling her story. “She also feared the threat – which had been made explicitly in at least one case – of being kept in the courtrooms for the rest of her life,” Wallace says.

“I think when people hear that, obviously it’s expensive to be kept in a court case for the rest of your life, but also for survivors of trauma it is torturous because you’re basically asked over and over again to say ‘where did he put his hand, where did you put your whatever’, over and over again.”

“We ultimately decided the book wasn’t just a list of names. It wasn’t just a list. But man, we talked about it all the time, she wanted to name all of them. I mean they deserve to be named. That’s why the Epstein files are important.”

The US Department of Justice has released a tranche of about 3 million – just over half – of the 6 million pages of documents, images, videos and emails detailing Epstein’s activities, after the US federal government mandated “the Epstein files” be released.

The DOJ stated in January that it had fulfilled its obligation.

Unlike the two previous books Wallace had ghostwritten about company business leaders, this book demanded immersion in trauma and a careful calibration between compassion and clarity.

The emotional toll on both women was immense.

“I have a therapist and a lot of my therapy sessions were talking about either Virginia or how I could be sensitive to Virginia in terms of how to be careful, how to not re-injure her,” Wallace says.

“What I have learned is that victims of trauma, serious serial trauma like Virginia [suffered], her memory was amazing and incredibly accurate, but at times it was cut up into pieces.”

The book’s production was a long road that spanned the globe, from Paris to Perth, and included living in the Giuffre home with their three children.

Even after Giuffre’s death, the journey continues for Wallace and she is calling on the US Department of Justice to investigate the men Giuffre told them she was trafficked to.

“She talked to the FBI two different times and she gave them the names,” Wallace says. “Since 2011 they have known the names and those men have never been interviewed.”

Wallace recalls celebrating historic moments, such as the conviction of Ghislaine Maxwell on sex trafficking charges with the Giuffre family.

“I loved her,” Wallace says. “She was generous, she was funny, she was smart, she was kind, she was brave, so brave, and we were just an inseparable team for a long time, so losing her was terrible.

“It has been a privilege to get her story out. I just wish, obviously, that she was here to see the reaction.”