Allegations made by Giuffre had circulated in the press since early 2015 and consistently had been denied as untrue by the prince and his close friend Ghislaine Maxwell. Even so, Giuffre’s 15-page-long claims that she submitted to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan’s court were hair-raising. Giuffre accused Andrew of sexually abusing her at convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion in Manhattan and at other locations in 2001 when she was 17. Giuffre stated she “was compelled by express or implied threats by Epstein, Maxwell, and/or Prince Andrew to engage in sexual acts with Prince Andrew, and feared death or physical injury to herself or another and other repercussions for disobeying Epstein, Maxwell, and Prince Andrew due to their powerful connections, wealth and authority”. It further alleged that the prince knew she was a sex-trafficking victim and that she had suffered – and continued to suffer – “significant emotional and psychological distress and harm”.

Normally, Giuffre’s civil claims against the prince would have foundered after the lapse of some 20 years under applicable statutes of limitations. But New York State passed the Child Victims Act in 2019 that gave survivors of sexual abuse a one-year window to file a civil case no matter how long ago they were abused. Following the coronavirus lockdowns, its deadline had been extended and Giuffre’s explosive legal allegations were dramatically lodged only days before the window finally closed on bringing litigation.

‘He knows he’s safer at Balmoral’

Previously, Andrew had “absolutely and categorically” denied having sex with Giuffre from when this was first reported and Buckingham Palace called her statements “false and without foundation”. But their response to the legal case appeared to cause great confusion. The day after the filing, Andrew left his Windsor home to join the queen and her advisers at Balmoral, his mother’s estate in Scotland where she was on holiday.

When Giuffre’s legal team sought to serve papers on the prince at his residence, Royal Lodge in Windsor, the security staff on duty refused to accept them. They had also sent them to his lawyers and posted them to him by royal mail on the assumption that it would have no trouble delivering the papers to the senior royal.

The prince’s refusal to accept the papers created a major standoff between the queen’s second son and the US legal system. It appeared to some observers as if he was above US law. David Boies, the star lawyer representing Giuffre, did not take kindly to the royal’s cat-and-mouse game and warned “ignore the courts at your peril”, adding, “It would be very ill-advised for Prince Andrew to ignore judicial process”.

While multiple attempts were made, Andrew was at the Queen’s 20,200ha Balmoral estate with his ex-wife, the Duchess of York, some 800km away. It was reportedly said that “Andrew was going stir-crazy inside Royal Lodge for the past few weeks. He wasn’t going horse riding and couldn’t step outside because of attempts to serve him with the legal papers. He knows he is far safer up at Balmoral.”

The direct aftermath of the bombshell raised many questions, including ones that were constitutional in nature.

How did Queen Elizabeth II end up as her son’s shield against the US legal system? Was Britain’s head of state prepared to undertake further measures? How and where was the palace’s Epstein affair going to end up?

The first warning sign of a hurricane aiming for Buckingham Palace came on July 6, 2019, when billionaire businessman Epstein was arrested on federal charges related to sex trafficking. Twelve years earlier he had pleaded guilty to Florida state charges of soliciting girls as young as 13 for prostitution and served nearly 13 months in low-security Palm Beach County Jail. The 66-year-old now faced as much as 43 years in a federal jail. Though guards were supposed to check on him every 30 minutes, he was found hanged in his cell on August 10. Verdict: suicide.

Most of Epstein’s influential friends, including Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, distanced themselves from him after his first fall from grace.

However, for another friend – Prince Andrew – it was too late.

The US Appeals Court in New York City released 2000 pages of papers from a defamation suit by Giuffre that included her claim that Epstein had used her as a sex slave while underage and had forced her to have sex with Andrew on three occasions. Even before these allegations, a photograph had surfaced of the prince with his arm around the 17-year-old’s naked midriff.

Also in the picture was Andrew’s close friend, Maxwell, Epstein’s girlfriend and daughter of disgraced media mogul Robert Maxwell, who died under mysterious circumstances after he went missing from his yacht Lady Ghislaine off the Canary Islands in 1991.

The first British royal to be extradited?

In a lawsuit, Giuffre claimed Ghislaine Maxwell had procured her for Epstein when she was 15 and worked at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida for $US9 an hour, and that Maxwell was Epstein’s accomplice in trafficking her to Andrew and others. Maxwell denied the allegations outright when she was deposed under oath and called Giuffre a liar, leading Giuffre to sue for defamation. An attempt to get the prince to testify under oath in the defamation case failed. When Giuffre’s lawsuit was settled in May 2017, its court papers were sealed, only to be released in part by the New York Court of Appeals the day before Epstein died.

The first weeks of August 2019 dramatically changed Andrew’s life and forever changed the light in which these allegations placed the royal family. All of a sudden, the Queen’s favourite son stood at the heart of the Epstein affair and became someone US law enforcement was interested in talking to. The sex crimes the billionaire orchestrated, involving up to 100 victims by now, remained under FBI investigation despite his death. Andrew became the first British royal ever whose extradition to the US was mooted in the press.

But the scandal went well beyond the fate of one man. Ex-New York federal prosecutor and Columbia Law School professor Jennifer Rodgers said, “In theory, if he comes to the US, he could be arrested pursuant to a material witness warrant.” Could Andrew ever return to America under these circumstances? Though strenuously denied, Giuffre’s accusations against Andrew now threatened Britain’s monarchy as a whole – an institution reliant on broad public support for its very existence – in an unprecedented way.

Every time the Epstein allegations bounced back into the ether as a result of new facts, the media storm gathered in potency, and the monarchy looked increasingly at risk of its half-cocked handling of the crisis.

In 2011, it had first been reported that the prince had partied with Epstein at the pedophile’s New York mansion – three months after the financier had been released from Florida state custody and house arrest at his New York home.

‘Going to class... will be out in 45 min’

Alongside the news, the press had published handwritten telephone messages from high school girls for Epstein that had been retrieved in 2005 as material evidence from the billionaire’s Palm Beach home. It included one that said, “She is wondering if 2.30 ok cuz she needs to stay in school”. Another girl, “Colleen”, phoned to tell Epstein, “Going into class – will be out in 45 min”. “Sarah”, a further message read, “doesn’t know at what time she must come this night for the massage”.

Epstein threw the intimate dinner party in December 2009 for 15 at his $80m Manhattan townhouse. Located on 71st Street, just off Central Park, it was considered the largest private residence in Manhattan. The prince was guest of honour and stayed at the mansion for a few days. Also present at the bash were Woody Allen, the subject of sexual misconduct allegations against his seven-year old daughter since the 1990s, and Charlie Rose, the CBS anchor who would later lose his job after numerous allegations of being a sexual predator. The prince was then photographed strolling with Epstein in Central Park during his stay. Both were deep in conversation.

‘Andrew groped my breast’

In 2019, Prince Andrew again strenuously denied Giuffre’s allegations and those of Johanna Sjoberg, whose unsealed evidence first became public the day before Epstein died. Sjoberg claimed the prince had groped her at Epstein’s New York house in 2001. “I just remember someone suggesting a photo, and they told us to go get on the couch. And so Andrew and Virginia sat on the couch,” Sjoberg had testified. As she herself reluctantly sat on Andrew’s lap, someone touched Virginia’s breast and then Andrew groped hers, Sjoberg stated under oath.

She, too, said Andrew’s close friend Maxwell “lured her from her school to have sex with Epstein under the guise of hiring her for a job answering phones”. At Epstein’s mansion, she found out that her duties included being a masseuse. He then induced her “to perform demeaning sexual services”, she said.

Despite these allegations, the queen made a show of support for Prince Andrew by sitting alongside him in a Rolls-Royce as she headed for Sunday morning worship in Balmoral the day after Epstein died.

The following week the Mail on Sunday released a video showing Andrew waving goodbye from the mansion’s tall oak doors to a young brunette as she left Epstein’s Manhattan home. Buckingham Palace promptly issued a statement saying: “The Duke of York has been appalled by the recent reports of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged crimes. His Royal Highness deplores the exploitation of any human being and the suggestion he would condone, participate in or encourage any such behaviour is abhorrent.”

The mystery brunette was later named as Katherine Keating, the then 28-year-old daughter of Paul Keating, former prime minister of Australia. Katherine Keating, a friend of Andrew’s daughters, had struck up a friendship with Andrew the previous year while attending a lavish party in Dubai celebrating the 2010 opening of the Meydan Racecourse.

Giuffre repeated her claim first made in 2015 that, from the age of 17, she had had sex with Andrew three times – in London, at Epstein’s New York home and at an orgy on his private island in the Caribbean. Given the popular outcry in Britain, the palace unequivocally stated the allegations were “false and without any foundation”, adding: “Any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue.”

At the end of a torrid week of more battering by the media, the palace took the unprecedented step of issuing a second statement. This one – even more unique – was from the prince himself, who must have felt cornered by the negative headlines. In it Andrew expressed “tremendous sympathy for Epstein’s alleged victims”. The prince added: “I met Mr Epstein in 1999. During the time I knew him, I saw him infrequently and probably no more than only once or twice a year. I have stayed in a number of his residences. At no stage during the limited time I spent with him did I see, witness or suspect any behaviour of the sort that subsequently led to his arrest and conviction.”

‘Naked pictures everywhere’

However, the prince’s words merely intensified the cloud of questions that engulfed him. It seemed that Andrew had known Epstein for a lot longer than he would admit. In March 2011, the prince’s private secretary Alastair Watson wrote to The Times in response to the “widespread comment” about his employer’s relationship with the pedophile, saying the prince had known Epstein “since being introduced to him in the early 1990s”.

It was not easy to see how Andrew did not suspect Epstein. When the police raided Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion in 2005, the walls were plastered with photographs of naked and scantily clad young girls. As these even decorated the hallway, they would be hard to miss and Andrew had stayed there. The police identified at least 40 victims, one as young as 14, though the total would double over the years.

He had also stayed on Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands, Little St James or “Little St Jeff”. After the lawsuits it had become popularly known as “Orgy Island”, “Pedophile Island” or the “Island of Sin”. Epstein’s home there was decorated like his place in Palm Beach.

“There were topless photos of women everywhere,” said Steve Scully, a former phone and internet contractor for Epstein from 1999 to 2005. “They were on his desk, in his office, in his bedroom.” Guests at Epstein’s home in Manhattan said it was impossible not to notice the number of young girls going in and out. Visitors were often offered a massage on arrival.

Somehow Andrew had missed all of this. The palace’s second statement acknowledged that Andrew met Epstein again in 2010 after he had been released from jail.

“I have said previously that it was a mistake and an error to see him after his release in 2010 and I can only reiterate my regret that I was mistaken to think that what I thought I knew of him was evidently not the real person, given what we now know,” the prince said. “This is a difficult time for everyone involved and I am at a loss to be able to understand or explain Mr Epstein’s lifestyle.”

Former palace press secretary Dickie Arbiter said: “It is unusual for Buckingham Palace to put out not just one statement, but two statements. But the palace felt that they had to do it.” Four statements were made in all.

Giuffre asked the prince to own up. She told the press, “He knows exactly what he’s done and I hope he comes clean about it.”

Things got more doom-laden for Buckingham Palace on September 5 when The Times reported that more documents from the Giuffre-Maxwell lawsuit could be unsealed.

The Prince and the Paedophile

Then, on October 21, Channel Four’s Dispatches aired The Prince and the Paedophile, in which it was revealed that Epstein had no fewer than 13 phone numbers for Prince Andrew, including, interestingly, the direct line to his computer’s modem – then the way to connect to the internet – and a direct line to Buckingham Palace. In fact, they turned out to be numbers from Maxwell’s address book, which state police had taken in evidence during their raid of Epstein’s Palm Beach home in 2005. The prince’s friend was the pedophile’s walking Rolodex.

In June 2000, the billionaire was close enough to Prince Andrew to get an invitation to the Dance of the Decades, marking Andrew’s 40th birthday, the queen mother’s 100th, Princess Margaret’s 70th and Princess Anne’s 50th. It was hosted by the queen herself at Windsor Castle. Epstein attended with Maxwell.

Andrew’s relationship with Epstein appeared to be very friendly. Over their long acquaintance, Andrew stayed with Epstein at his various residences, sometimes spending days on end with him. Epstein was also in contact with Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York – aka Fergie – speaking regularly on the phone. Dispatches had obtained the flight log for Epstein’s private jet that showed on April 16, 1998, Epstein met “Princess Sarah Ferguson and kids” at Nassau in the Bahamas. In February 1999, “Prince Andrew” himself appeared in the log for the first time, flying into the Virgin Islands. A few days later, he flew out again with “JE”, Jeffrey Epstein; “GM”, Ghislaine Maxwell; and a number of other people. And Andrew flew on Epstein’s private jet from Luton to Edinburgh with Maxwell on September 1, 2006, six weeks after Epstein had been arrested on charges of soliciting prostitution.

The program pointed out that, even before he met Epstein, Prince Andrew’s reputation had already been called into question. Once praised for his service in the Falklands War, he became known as “Randy Andy”, the “Playboy Prince” with a series of high-profile girlfriends. He was mocked on the satirical television program Spitting Image as the “prince who can’t say no”.

‘I performed a sex act on them – Jeffrey first and then Andrew’

The documentary then re-examined the court papers, which claimed that Epstein and Andrew had group sex on Little St James. In evidence given to a Florida court in January 2015, Giuffre said: “The third time I had sex with Andy was in an orgy on Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands. I was around 18 at the time. Epstein, Andy, approximately eight other young girls and I had sex together. The other girls all seemed and appeared to be under the age of 18 and didn’t really speak English. Epstein laughed about the fact they couldn’t really communicate, saying that they are the ‘easiest’ girls to get along with.”

In her deposition, she continued, “A group of Russian girls who didn’t speak a word of English turned up with a modelling agent who was a friend of Jeffrey’s. That night there was a dinner and Andrew was there. He said ‘Hi’ to me. Jeffrey directed us with hand gestures because the Russian girls didn’t speak English.

“We were told to start kissing and touching and to use sex toys on each other. The girls obviously had been trained. Jeffrey and the prince were laughing … and then they undressed and then I performed a sex act on them – Jeffrey first and then Andrew. It was disgusting. There was no pleasure in it.”

Prince Andrew did not testify as he had left the US the previous night and the judge ordered Giuffre’s remarks to be struck from court records. Nevertheless, her allegations under oath hit the news pages.

Palace in denial

On the backfoot, Buckingham Palace had issued its first-ever public Epstein denial in January 2015 and, at a press conference in Davos, Andrew himself said: “I think I must, (and) want, for the record, to refer to the events that have taken place in the last few weeks, and I just wish to reiterate and to reaffirm the statements which have already been made on my behalf by Buckingham Palace.”

Buckingham Palace realised that they looked ragged. It was decided that the way to stop all speculation about the duke’s connections to Epstein was for him to go in front of the TV cameras with BBC Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis and give his testimony on Giuffre’s accusations to her. This lost the prince the services of Jason Stein, the spin doctor he hired in September 2019 to restore his reputation. Stein had advised against going on air, favouring instead a drip-drip strategy that included a great deal of charity work and interviews with print outlets to mark the duke’s upcoming 60th birthday. Courtiers took no notice of this caustic vote of confidence by a media professional and pressed on with preparations for the BBC interview.

Andrew’s ex-wife, Ferguson, also urged Andrew to go on television. She thought it would be his chance to address the negative headlines head-on and present his version of events rather than leave the allegations unanswered.

Fatefully, Buckingham Palace signed off on the plan and that it was to be held in the queen’s part of the palace, lending the prince the gravitas and weight of the British head of state. The Newsnight team would be taken to her private South Drawing Room, through the Queen’s Entrance, surrounding the BBC crew and the prince with the paraphernalia and high symbols of Britain’s monarch. It would be an unmitigated disaster.

Perhaps the palace thought it could ride out the connection between a prince and a pedophile by merely impressing the people with pomp and circumstance.

Buckingham Palace and the prince were adamant, however, the allegations were untrue and the palace was preparing to bet The Firm.

This is an edited extract from Prince Andrew: Epstein, Maxwell and the Palace by Nigel Cawthorne, first published in 2020.