US Judge unseals files in case of girl, 17, ‘forced to have sex with Andrew’
Prince Andrew faces further embarrassment from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal.
Britain’s Prince Andrew faces further embarrassment from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal after a judge ordered thousands of secret documents relating to an alleged “sex slave” of the tycoon to be released.
About 2000 files from a defamation case involving Virginia Roberts, an alleged trafficking victim, are due to be unsealed following a ruling by the US court of appeal this month.
Ms Roberts, now 35, claims she was forced by Epstein to have sex with the Duke of York in London, New York and the Caribbean. Prince Andrew has strongly denied the claims.
In 2015 Ms Roberts, a mother of three, claimed she had been recruited as a “sex slave” by Epstein, a billionaire financier who was charged last week with trafficking girls as young as 14. Ms Roberts alleged that she had been “procured for sexual activities” by Ghislaine Maxwell, who worked as a personal aide to Epstein and had been a friend of the duke.
In 2001, Ms Roberts, then aged 17, was photographed in Maxwell’s London flat with Andrew’s arm around her waist. A judge later threw out her allegations against Andrew because they were “immaterial and impertinent to the central claim” against Epstein.
Ms Maxwell gave an interview in 2015 calling Ms Roberts a “liar”. Ms Roberts then sued Ms Maxwell for defamation in the US and the case was settled. Most of the court documents remained under seal following legal representations from Ms Maxwell, who is a daughter of the late disgraced media tycoon Robert Maxwell.
In a ruling this month, Jose Cabranes, a US appeals judge, said the public’s right to know outweighed the privacy rights of people who wanted to keep secrets.
Days later Epstein, 66, was charged in New York with trafficking a “vast network of underage victims” between his homes in Manhattan and Palm Beach, Florida. Epstein denies the charges.
Last weekend FBI agents found thousands of graphic photos, many of underage girls, and a safe filled with CDs labelled “nude girls” during a raid on Epstein’s $110 million Manhattan house.
The charges have raised questions about how Epstein avoided prosecution before. In 2008 he negotiated a secret plea on similar accusations in a separate case in Florida. The deal, which allowed Epstein to avoid sex-trafficking charges, also handed his associates immunity from prosecution.
Alexander Acosta, a former federal prosecutor in Florida, negotiated the deal. On Friday he resigned as Donald Trump’s labour secretary amid criticism of his handling of the case.
Mr Trump described Epstein as a friend in 2002, adding: “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”
Bill and Hillary Clinton are also known to have been associates.
However, none of the investment banker’s friendships has raised more eyebrows than his relationship with Prince Andrew. Epstein attended the Queen’s birthday party in 2000 and visited Sandringham, Balmoral and Windsor Castle.
Prince Andrew’s ex-wife, the Duchess of York, accepted £15,000 from Epstein in 2010 to help her pay off debts. She later apologised. By that time, Epstein was a convicted sex offender. Yet the same year, Epstein and Andrew were photographed walking through New York’s Central Park together. The duke was later dropped as British trade ambassador.
When Ms Roberts made her claims in 2015, the duke issued a strong denial, with Buckingham Palace saying “any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue”.
Ms Roberts claimed that she had been “forced” by Epstein to have sex with the duke in London, in Epstein’s New York mansion and on Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands.
Public records and flight logs for the black Gulfstream jet owned by Epstein, obtained by The Sunday Times, suggest Andrew was in the same place as Ms Roberts on the three occasions she claims they had sex. Ms Roberts went on a six-day tour of Europe before reaching London on March 9, 2001. The photograph of Ms Roberts with the duke is dated March 2001.
One month later, on April 9, the court circular records that Andrew began an official visit to the US. The same day Ms Roberts flew from Palm Beach to New Jersey. According to Ms Roberts, it was around this time that she was ordered to Epstein’s mansion in New York where she allegedly had sex with Andrew on a massage table. Flight logs show that Ms Roberts and Epstein left New York on April 11 for St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.
Ms Roberts alleges that she had sex with Andrew on Epstein’s island. Gwendolyn Beck, a financial adviser who knew Epstein and Andrew, said the duke spent two nights on the island at that time.
“He was in the bungalow next to me,” she said. Andrew arrived in the Bahamas on April 15 to join a holiday with his ex-wife and their daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, then aged 12 and 11.
The palace said on Saturday: “It is emphatically denied that (Andrew) had any form of sexual contact or relationship with Virginia Roberts. Any claim to the contrary is false.”
Sunday Times