A British PR guru hired to manage the reputation of Jeffrey Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell accused one of Epstein’s victims of “crying rape” and suggested past allegations of abuse would discredit her, unsealed court documents show.
Ross Gow, then a managing partner at Mayfair-based Acuity Reputation, emailed Maxwell with links to media articles about a case from the Epstein accuser Virginia Giuffre’s childhood in which she claimed to have been raped by two older teenagers.
The articles indicate Giuffre, then 14, had told police she was raped in a car in a wooded area near her home in Palm Beach, Florida, by the two acquaintances, who she said had given her alcohol and marijuana. The case was not pursued by prosecutors due to a low likelihood of success at trial and concerns about Giuffre’s credibility. Police records show the suspects, aged 17 and 18, did not deny having sex with the then-underage Giuffre but said the encounter was consensual.
In an email dated 24 February 2015, sent to Maxwell and her then-lawyer, Philip Barden, Gow, a “reputation manager” working as Maxwell’s spokesman, appears to have suggested the information from Giuffre’s childhood could damage her case.
“Ghislaine. Some helpful leakage,” Gow wrote, before pasting the links to the articles, in the Daily Mail and the New York Daily News. In the email’s subject line he wrote: “VR cried rape – prior case dismissed as prosecutors found her ‘not credible’.” VR refers to Virginia Roberts, Giuffre’s maiden name.
Lawyers representing Maxwell later went on to refer to the 1998 case in court, along with other incidents from Giuffre’s childhood, arguing that they showed she was unreliable.
Virginia Giuffre brought a defamation case against Maxwell after she accused Giuffre of being a liar. Photograph: Crime+Investigation/PA
The email from Gow was included in a tranche of more than 195 documents running to thousands of pages that has been unsealed by a US court in recent days. They relate to a 2015 defamation case brought by Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell after she accused Giuffre of being a liar. The case was later settled for an undisclosed amount.
Key aspects of the allegations against Epstein and Maxwell, including that they worked together to identify girls, groom them, and bring them to Epstein’s properties where they were sexually abused, have since been proven.
Epstein was arrested in 2019 on sex trafficking charges. A month later, US justice officials reported that he had taken his own life in prison while awaiting trial. Maxwell was found guilty in 2021 of trafficking women and girls for Epstein to abuse and is serving a 20-year sentence. She is appealing against her conviction, claiming she has been made a scapegoat because Epstein is dead.
The correspondence between Gow and Maxwell gives an insight into the PR and legal strategy pursued by Maxwell and her team.
The email referring to Giuffre “crying rape” was sent by Gow before Maxwell was convicted, following media reports in January 2015 that Giuffre had been used as a “sex slave” by Epstein in abuse that began when she was underage. Giuffre claimed to have been trafficked to famous figures including Prince Andrew and said she and other alleged victims had been procured by Maxwell, a British socialite.
In response to the claims, Gow released a statement to media on behalf of Maxwell in which he said Giuffre’s claims were “obvious lies” and ‘“untrue”, which later became the subject of Giuffre’s defamation suit.
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Other emails released by the US courts show that British lawyer Philip Barden, a partner at law firm Devonshires who was then Maxwell’s lawyer, advised the socialite to issue a strong rebuttal to Giuffre’s claims, telling her: “Saying nothing is reputational suicide.” In another email, also sent in January 2015, Barden advised her to distance herself from Epstein, writing: “Don’t allay [sic] yourself to JE as that is not the way to go.”
An email from Ross Gow to Maxwell about Giuffre’s earlier rape accusation.
Barden later submitted a statement to the US courts saying that he believed that his role in issuing statements characterising Giuffre as a liar, and rebutting her claims about Maxwell, “fully complied” with his ethical obligations as a lawyer. He said the aim had been to get the press to “stop and think” and accused outlets of being “unduly eager” to publish Giuffre’s claims, resulting in a “feeding frenzy”, the unsealed documents show.
In an email to the Observer this weekend, Barden said legal professional privilege and a duty of confidentiality prevented him from commenting on any matter in which he had been engaged without his client’s express authority, and that he could not therefore respond.
Gow, who had been instructed by Barden to help represent Maxwell, did not respond to requests for comment on Friday or Saturday. According to an online profile, the Old Etonian, who went to school with David Cameron and Boris Johnson, has previously represented controversial clients.
“We take arms dealers. But I draw the line at certain characters – Jimmy Savile types, people who are proven predators,” he once told Spear’s, adding: “I believe … until it is proven you are guilty, I think everyone should have a fair shot at reputation enhancement.” The website for Gow’s company, now called Acuity Gulf Partners, states that it helps clients “manage reputation and forge opinion”. “We accentuate the positive and mitigate the negative,” it adds.
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