Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, KG, GCVO, CD, ADC, turns 62 next month. It is long past the age at which a man is expected to stop being a cause of concern and embarrassment to his parents. And yet Andrew, who is said to be the Queen’s favourite child, has exposed his mother to the greatest threat to the royal family’s reputation in living memory.
As he awaits the decision of a New York judge, Lewis Kaplan, in the sex assault case brought by Virginia Giuffre, the prince finds himself in the deeply unedifying position of trying to evade court with a secret silencing deal struck by his late friend and convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.
The agreement, signed in 2009, stated that in exchange for being paid $500,000, Giuffre, then using her maiden name of Roberts, would “release … and forever discharge … second parties and any other person or entity who could have been included as a potential defendant … from all, and all manner of, action and actions of Virginia Roberts, including state or federal, cause and causes of action”.
Giuffre maintains that in 2001 when she was 17 she was trafficked by Epstein and his sometime girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell to have sex with the prince on three occasions – once in Maxwell’s house in Belgravia, where the infamous photograph was taken of her with the then 42-year-old prince’s hand around her waist, on the second occasion at Epstein’s mansion in New York and finally on Epstein’s private island, Little St James in the US Virgin Islands, with a group of other girls. The prince denies all allegations and says he has no recollection of ever having met Giuffre. » | Andrew Anthony | Saturday, January 8, 2022
