‘Profound injustice’: 16 experts demand inquest for Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre

Some of Australia’s most prominent domestic violence experts have thrown their weight behind Virginia Giuffre’s family’s plea for a public coronial inquest, warning that the circumstances surrounding her death raise broader questions about family violence, coercive control and expose systemic failures.

In a rare intervention, 16 researchers and practitioners from some of the nation’s most influential universities and domestic violence organisations have written a letter to West Australian Coroner Ros Fogliani.

The signatories include WA Centre for Women’s Safety and Wellbeing chief executive officer Alison Evans, University of Melbourne professors Heather Douglas and Cathy Humphreys, Monash University professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon, University of Western Australia professor Melanie O’Brien, Curtin University professor Donna Chung and University of Technology Sydney associate professor Jane Wangmann, who is also on the state’s domestic violence death review committee.

It comes after this masthead revealed Giuffre’s US-based brothers, Sky Roberts and Danny Wilson formally requested a coronial inquest in May.

Giuffre died by suicide on April 25, 2025, at her property in Neergabby, an hour’s drive north of Perth, in WA’s Wheatbelt region.

The family does not dispute their sister took her own life. But they believe police failed in their responsibility to thoroughly investigate domestic violence reports, to provide adequate support and to properly investigate an alleged assault on January 9 and early morning on January 10, 2025.

In their letter to the coroner, Giuffre’s family claimed she repeatedly sought assistance from police.

Giuffre was involved in divorce proceedings with her husband Robert Giuffre, who she shared three children with.

He was granted a family violence restraining order (FVRO) on January 14 against Giuffre in Perth Magistrates Court, shortly after a 72-hour police order against him was lifted.

The FVRO order included two of her children, who were younger than 18.

The experts’ letter says misidentification of victim-survivors as perpetrators is a “well-documented and dangerous failure. One that can result in loss of access to children, exclusion from the family home, criminalisation, and significantly elevated suicide risk”.

WA CWSW chief executive officer Alison Evans said a victim’s distress and suicidal thoughts should not be treated as individual disorders.

“(Suicidality) must be understood as responses to ongoing violence, coercive control and entrapment and systemic failures,” she said.

“When the impacts of abuse are routine