16 Academics Sign Letter Calling for Public Inquest Into Epstein Accuser’s Suicide

Sixteen academics say there are established links between suicide and victims of domestic violence and that an inquest is appropriate and necessary.

Undated handout file photo issued by the US Department of Justice (left-right) of the Duke of York, Virginia Giuffre, and Ghislaine Maxwell. The Duke of York has been reported to the police by the campaign group Republic after allegations of sexual assault resurfaced in unsealed court documents relating to the scandal surrounding billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Issue date: Thursday January 4, 2024.

The death last year of Jeffrey Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre was ruled a suicide by police, but 16 academics have now penned an open letter to the state coroner calling for a formal public inquest into possible domestic violence links.

Giuffre died on April 25, 2025, aged 41, at her farm in Western Australia, leaving behind three children with her husband, Robert Giuffre.

On March 30, she'd made her last social media post, claiming on Instagram that she had gone into renal failure after a bus accident and that she had been given four days to live.

It is accompanied by a photo in which she is lying on her side in what appears to be a hospital bed, with bruises visible on her face.

The newest letter, published by the Centre for the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEVAW) at Melbourne Law School, is signed by 16 academics who are all researchers and experts in domestic and violence against women.

The group says there is “evidence that makes such an inquest not only appropriate but necessary.”

They rely on statistics that link suicides to the experience of family violence, such as a 2107 investigation by the Ombudsman, which found that 56 percent of women and children who died by suicide in Western Australia that year had been victims of domestic violence.

“This figure is almost certainly an underestimate given the well-documented underreporting of DFV [domestic and family violence] in official systems,” the letter goes on to say.

“Emerging evidence further suggests that deaths by suicide in the context of DFV may be three times greater than the number of women killed by an intimate partner—yet unlike homicide, these deaths rarely receive equivalent scrutiny.

“Coronial processes too frequently treat mental ill health as the primary explanatory lens, obscuring the role of coercive control and systemic failure,” the academics say.

“Research identifies the removal of children as a significant contributor to hopelessness among victim-survivors, and the weaponisation of legal mechanisms, including restraining orders, as a tactic of coercive control is equally well established.”

In an March 2025 post, Giuffre had complained about being estranged from her children, writing, “My beautiful babies have no clue how much I love them, and they’re being poisoned with lies. I miss them so very much.”

The academics wrote: “Virginia Giuffre’s death is unusual only in that it is visible.”

“Her public profile means there is an unusually detailed record of her final months—and what that record shows is deeply consistent with what our research tells us about how these deaths occur, and how they are too often overlooked.

“The reported circumstances of her final months are consistent with the patterns described above, and a public inquest is the appropriate mechanism to examine them thoroughly. Conducted with full attention to the DFV context of her death, such an inquest has the potential to generate findings and recommendations that reach far beyond this one case, and that could prevent future deaths.”

It concludes by urging the coroner to “bring the full weight of the available evidence to bear on this decision.”

Giuffre was one of the most prominent accusers of Epstein.

She claimed that the now-former Prince Andrew had sexually abused her when she was 17 years old, allegedly with the help of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, 62, who was found guilty of assisting Epstein in the abuse of multiple girls.

A civil lawsuit that Giuffre filed against Prince Andrew in 2021 was settled confidentially, with the prince donating money to Giuffre’s charity.

Although the amount has never been revealed, reports widely estimate the out-of-court settlement, reached in 2022, to be worth approximately 12 million pounds (A$22.9 million, US$16.1 million).

The settlement also placed a gagging order on Andrew, meaning he could no longer deny he had raped Giuffre or repeat the claim that he had no memory of meeting her.

When Giuffre’s death became known, she received multiple tributes, including from President Donald Trump, who called her passing “a horrible thing.”