Miranda Devine: Prince Andrew’s ruinous interview casts a wide ripple
In trying to clear himself of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the Duke of York has made the problem worse for his family and the victims of these horrific crimes, writes Miranda Devine.
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It’s insulting to a noble generation to portray the Queen as an unfeeling sociopath because she doesn’t display her emotions.
But that is what the new season of the once unblemished Netflix series, The Crown, does.
“I have known for some time that there is something wrong with me,” Queen Elizabeth II tells Prime Minister Harold Wilson, after failing to shed tears during a 1966 visit to a Welsh mining town where a slag heap had just collapsed onto a school and killed 116 children. She had been late to visit and then, we are supposed to believe, pretended to cry.
Why attribute such implausible and malign psychopathy to what is simply an expression of the British stiff upper lip, which once was a respected way of dealing with adversity.
RELATED: Prince Andrew reveals all about relationship with Jeffrey Epstein in world-first interview
We are drowning in fake empathy these days. But emotional flatulence is not an improvement on the stiff upper lip.
We have something to learn from a generation that survived two world wars and the Great Depression with a minimum of self-pity.
Instead we get 59-year-old Prince Andrew, the perfect royal embodiment of self-engrossed boomer emotionality.
Not once in his car crash of an interview with the BBC on the weekend did Andrew express any sympathy for the victims of his mate Jeffrey Epstein.
Not once did he express remorse for his 11- year friendship with the paedophile predator.
But he was full of petulant self-pity.
The 93-year-old’s Queen’s favourite son was unconvincing when he denied claims that he had sex on three occasions with Epstein’s then-17-year-old sex slave Virginia Roberts Giuffre
“I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever.”
“How do you explain the photograph”, BBC reporter Emily Maitlis asked, referring to the notorious snapshot taken of Andrew with his arm around the bare midriff of an underage Roberts.
RELATED: Prince Andrew has ‘no recollection’ of accuser
“I can’t”, said the Prince, trying to imply the photo was fake.
Asked if he felt any “guilt, regret or shame” about his relationship with Epstein, Andrew said only: “it was the wrong decision to go and see him in 2010.”
That is his one mistake? Meeting Epstein in New York after the disgraced financier had been convicted of “solicitation of prostitution involving a minor”?
The Prince claimed he had to go to New York to break off the friendship because he was “too honourable” to do it over the phone.
But he stayed at Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion for several days because he said it was “convenient”. He also was guest of honour at a dinner (with Woody Allen) to help Epstein’s reputational rehabilitation.
“Do I regret the fact [Epstein] has quite obviously conducted himself in a manner unbecoming? Yes”, said the prince.
“Unbecoming?” interrupted Maitlis. “He was a sex offender.”
“I’m sorry,” replied Andrew. “I’m being polite. I mean in the sense that he was a sex offender.”
Just in that trifling sense.
No, Andrew had no regrets about the friendship: “it had some seriously beneficial outcomes”.
It was a loathsomely self-pitying performance.
The Prince proved only that he has no shame. Not just because his denials are hollow, and contradicted by photographic evidence and allegations by Roberts and a second woman.
It’s also because, in all the years of finding alibis, he can’t have considered the pain Epstein inflicted on dozens of lost girls, as young as 14, recruited for his sexual pleasure and pimped out to powerful friends.
Andrew should have been in a Manhattan courtroom in August, as I was, and seen the ongoing toll of Epstein’s sexual depravity as 23 victims told their stories.
It was just two weeks after Epstein, 66, died in his jail cell from what the New York City Medical Examiner declared suicide, and Epstein’s family declared homicide.
These brave women or their lawyers spoke of stolen childhoods and a lifetime of self-loathing and suicide attempts.
Many were called Jane Doe in court to maintain privacy.
“In 2004, when I was 15 years old, I flew on Epstein’s plane to Zorro Ranch, where I was sexually molested by him for many hours. I remember feeling so small and powerless, especially after he positioned me … so that I was confronted by all the framed photographs on his dresser of him smiling with wealthy celebrities and politicians”.
And this: “I came from a small Texas town … My mother died when I was 11, after suffering from cancer for many years. My father was devastated [and] saddled with debt” so couldn’t afford the violin lessons her late mother wanted for her.
At 15 she was spotted by one of Epstein’s recruiters in a mall and recruited as a masseuse with the promise of free violin lessons.
“This decision was the beginning of the end of my childhood.”
Another: “I was a 16-year-old virgin when Jeffrey Epstein first raped me. I was naive and gullible. He was a pillar of finance … When I was in his presence, he made an effort to call celebrities and influential people on speakerphone … who always answered his calls. Sadly, I was impressed.”
One of those Jane Does, now 31, launched a lawsuit against Epstein’s estate yesterday, claiming he raped her when she was 15.
“Prince Andrew and any others who were close to Epstein should come forward and give a statement [to the FBI] under oath,” she said.
“It was clear from the time I spent with Epstein that something was very wrong with his lifestyle … We were not hidden.”
The striking similarity between the accounts was how powerless these girls felt because Epstein was protected by his relationships with the richest and most powerful people in the world. Like Prince Andrew.
Imagine being his mother. The Queen will need that stiff upper lip for a while.