As a child,Sky Robertsremembers how his big sister Virginia protected him.
The siblings grew up with their parents among the Cypress trees and grassy horse fields in a rural area outside West Palm Beach. She was in kindergarten when he was born.
Virginiacalled him Skydy Bump, or just Skydy. He was named after their father.
Epstein abuse survivor Danielle Bensky holds up a photo of her younger self during a news conference with lawmakers on the Epstein Files Transparency Act outside the U.S. Capitol on November 18, 2025 in Washington, DC. The House is expected to vote today on the legislation, which instructs the U.S. Department of Justice to release all files related to the late accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein." style="max-width:100%; height:auto; border-radius:6px; margin:10px 0;" loading="lazy" /> 
Alleged victims of Jeffrey Epstein rally at Capitol Hill to demand release of files
Epstein abuse survivor Danielle Bensky holds up a photo of her younger self during a news conference with lawmakers onthe Epstein Files Transparency Actoutside the U.S. Capitol on November 18, 2025 in Washington, DC.The House is expected to vote today on the legislation, which instructs the U.S. Department of Justice to release all files related to the late accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
His crib was in her room, and Virginia, who later became a key voice drawing the world's attention to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking allegations, later wrote that "I felt as if he were my baby." When he woke in the night, she comforted him.
They looked out for each other.
When their parents walked around with beer cans in their hands, she carried him.
And when Sky and Virginia were playing in a backyard sandpit one day, her little brother tugged on her T-shirt, pointing toward a snake. She grabbed him and ran to the house.
Her mom said she's saved his life. It was a deadly water moccasin.
Now Sky Roberts is trying his best to stand up for his big sister.Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who later wrote a memoir, said she was trafficked to engage in sex withPrince Andrew, who has since been stripped of that title by the royal family, when she was a teenager. She later became one of the most outspoken people reporting they'd been sexually abused by Epstein and his longtime friend Andrew, the former Duke of York.
More:Jeffrey Epstein victimized 1,000 women and children. His survivors have a message.
A day after Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as he's now known, was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, the pride Sky Roberts holds for his sister is difficult to hide.
"We're seeing her as a truthteller, and I'm happy the world is seeing that, too," Roberts said Feb. 19 in a CBS interview. "It shows we have more work to do."
In her memoir"Nobody's Girl," Roberts Giuffre describes how she was effectively Epstein's sex slave for two years and how the then-prince raped her when she was 17. The book was published in October 2025, six months after she died by suicide. Mountbatten-Windsor has not been charged with a related sex crime and Epstein died awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
But the book also tells the story of a southern Florida childhood – of homemade bike ramps and treehouses, ponds with snapping turtles and a goat named Cordelius, and a love for her little brother who called her "Sissie."
Five years older, she protected him when their parents were fighting, covering his ears, and she shielded him from abuse at the hands of their father.
Sky Roberts later stood by her when she accused Prince Andrew, once second in line to the throne, of abuse. He supported his sister as she told her story over and over, even when people dismissed and disparaged her.
Since her death, he's stood with otherEpstein accusersas they testified before Congress in 2025. Giuffre Roberts became a lightning rod to many people who said they'd been abused or trafficked by Epstein and his associateGhislaine Maxwell.
Andrew, who was stripped of his titles in 2025 and settled a civil suit with Giuffre Roberts in 2022, did not admit to wrongdoing and he hasn't been arrested for sex crimes. The former prince's arrest came after he'd faced intense scrutiny over his friendship with Epstein. Previous reports show Mountbatten-Windsor may haveimproperly shared government documentswith the convicted sex offender.
Taking all this in, Sky Roberts told CBS News,"It shows we have more work to do."
'No one is above the law, not even royalty'
Sky Roberts woke up to a phone call at 3 a.m. on Feb. 19.
His first thought: It's bad news.
"You're always worried when you get a phone call that early in the morning," he told NPR on Feb. 19.
It was Dini von Mueffling, one of his sister's closest friends and her publicist.
Andrew had been arrested.
Sky told his wife, Amanda Roberts, who jumped out of bed.
"It was a huge moment," Amanda Roberts told NPR. "It was a moment of celebratory victory."
By 5 a.m., the couple gave their first TV interview.
Then at breakfast, Roberts broke down.
"I just bawled," he told NPR. "It's very important that we don't forget how hard these survivors and the survivors' sisters have been pushing, that we wouldn't be here today without Virginia."
By 8 a.m., Sky and his wife, and his older brother Danny and Lanette Wilson, released a statement.
"At last. Today, our broken hearts have been lifted at the news that no one is above the law, not even royalty. On behalf of our sister, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, we extend our gratitude to the UK's Thames Valley Police for their investigation and arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. He was never a prince. For survivors everywhere, Virginia did this for you."
More:Epstein pulled strings, paid tuition across world for kids of powerful
Sky and his wife spent the day sharing their thoughts with reporters from CNN and CBS News, the BBC and NBC. They wore blue and silver butterfly pins, a symbol adopted by Epstein accusers to represent hope, resilience and support for victims.
They recounted how they were roused from bed, how they'd gone through a range of emotions.
"A bit of shock hits you at that moment," Amanda Roberts told CBS News. "We celebrated in that moment, and we were just like awestruck. Usually, we (could) call (Roberts Giuffre) on the phone and jump up and down and just tell her how proud we are of her tenacity and courage."
What's important now, Sky Roberts told NPR, is that people "acknowledge the survivors and what they went through."
Pushing back on abuse
Sky Roberts always knew his big sister looked after him.
She carried him, even as his toddler legs dangled alongside hers.
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By 6, she said,their father began abusing her, coming in during the night to her room. In a statement included in her memoir, he denies the abuse.
"He told me I was his special girl, his favorite, and that this was his way of giving me extra love," she wrote in her memoir.
She pushed back. Her father, she wrote, threatened to take away her horse Alice.
Soon her dad was sending her to his friend's house, where the friend abused her, too, she wrote.
Roberts Giuffre wrote about how her mother seemed jealous of her father's closeness with her. When her parents fought, Roberts Giuffre would huddle with her little brother, covering his ears. She was 11. He was 6.
Her mother sent her to live with an aunt in California and later to a facility for troubled teens. When she returned, she wrote, it wasn't her parents she had missed.
"I think of Skydy, running out the back door, the screen slamming shut as he flung himself into my arms," she wrote of her return home.
Book recalls Epstein's threat to harm her brother
At 16, Roberts Giuffre got a job as a locker room attendant at a nearby resort,Mar-a-Lago,where her father was a maintenance man.
Just before she turned 17, she met Epstein andMaxwell. Maxwell was later sentenced to prison for sex trafficking. Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on similar allegations.
She didn't tell her family when Epstein began abusing her, she wrote.
She writes in her memoir that the abuse began when she was interviewing for a job as a masseuse: "My body couldn't escape this room, but my mind couldn't bear to stay, so it put me on kind of autopilot: submissive and determined to survive."
The massages led to sex with Epstein and the men he trafficked her to, she wrote.
She thought about trying to leave. That's when Epstein handed her a grainy photograph, she wrote.
"It was unmistakably my little brother. Skydy."
Virginia Giuffre memoir on alleged abuse by Prince Andrew coming months after her death.
"We know where your brother goes to school," Epstein told her. "You must never tell a soul what goes on in this house."
Her brother was 12.
"I had no choice. I believed, but to accept that and make the best of it – for Skydy's sake, if not my own."
'Don't ever walk away with my kids again'
Roberts didn't know the lengths his sister had gone to protect him until they were adults.
He and his then-girlfriend, who would become his wife, lived with Roberts Giuffre and her husband and three young children in 2013 in Florida.
Even then, he called her "Sissie."
Within a year, she and Roberts and her oldest brother, Danny Wilson, their mother's child from a previous relationship, all lived close.
The siblings all had children, three little girls among them. Roberts Giuffre kept her daughter from spending time alone with her father.
She decided she needed to tell her brothers why.
"My brothers didn't know to take those precautions because I'd never told them what Dad had done to me, she wrote.
At first, she wrote, neither brother wanted to believe her.
"By the end of the night, all of us were in tears," she wrote.
Wilson confronted his stepdad.
Then Roberts confronted his father, who had taken his daughter alone to a Tampa Buccaneers game.
"Don't ever walk away with my kids again," he said, according to Roberts Giuffre's memoir. "And you know why, right?" he told his father.
'There's only one of us telling the truth'
Roberts saw how hard his sister pushed, even when no one seemed to believe her.
Roberts Giuffre often said this: "He knows what he did. I know what he did and there's only one of us telling the truth. And I know that's me."
Her brother holds on to that now.
He remembers how she was able to create a beautiful life with three children, even through her struggles.
Now he says we need to move beyond acknowledging survivors.
"We need to see action from our DOJ," he told NPR. "I think what we're asking for is that this administration needs to stop protecting the predators and the pedophiles."
While Roberts prepares to make comments to the media after President Donald Trump's State of the Union address scheduled for Feb. 24, he wants to remind people it's not about politics. He and his wife will attend as guests of Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin and Suhas Subramanyam, to honor the work Roberts Giuffre did in bringing Epstein's crimes to light.
"This is a human issue. We have to work politics through it because our laws are broken. They are broken for survivors of sexual abuse," Roberts said to CBS. "This generation deserves better."
Laura Trujillo is a national columnist focusing on health and wellness. She is the author of "Stepping Back from the Ledge: A Daughter's Search for Truth and Renewal" and can be reached at ltrujillo@usatoday.com.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Sky Roberts seeks justice for his sister Virginia Roberts Giuffre
