London: There are many ways to measure the fall of Andrew Mountbatten Windsor from prince to private citizen, and most of them are about money and status. He loses his home, his titles and his ability to monetise his royal rank.

But another loss is harder to measure – and it is about to be tested. The former prince has lost the royal protections that used to shield him from the American and British justice systems. He is more exposed than ever to questions about his long friendship with the late Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

The women who fell victim to the two convicted criminals want him to reveal more about those who helped Epstein and Maxwell traffic teenage girls for sex. They want Mountbatten Windsor to talk about what he saw – or even face charges.

One of the survivors, Anouska De Georgiou, summed this up on the weekend when she said the former prince had lost the privilege that came with royal status.

“The accountability should be the same as it would be for any other normal person,” she told the BBC. “It’s a position of service to be in the royal family, and with that service there goes great privilege and there also goes great responsibility.

“And once you do not act in a responsible way, and you don’t act in a graceful way, and you don’t act in a way becoming a member of the royal family, you should lose all your privilege. And as a regular person, you should be held accountable as such.”

Mountbatten Windsor says he regrets his association with Epstein and Maxwell but denies knowing what they were doing when they surrounded themselves with young girls. He has denied meeting Virginia Roberts Giuffre, denied having sex with her and rejected her claims of sexual assault. She died by suicide in April.

De Georgiou has not made a claim against the former prince. She knew Epstein and Maxwell in the late 1990s when she was a teenage model who had moved from London to America. She said Epstein raped her.

Another survivor, Elizabeth Stein, said the humbling of the former prince should be followed by more disclosure and greater action by authorities in the United States.

“I think that the accountability that we’re seeing, that the British people are holding Andrew to, is really encouraging to us,” she told the BBC.

Stein has not made any claim against the former prince, either. She said she was abused by Epstein after she was recruited by Maxwell as a fashion student in New York in 1994.

Nobody can be sure about the number of victims, but there should be no doubt about the damage Epstein and Maxwell did to the girls and women they lured into their world. Maxwell was called a monster for the way she searched for teens to service Epstein on the massage table. She is serving 20 years in prison.

The reaction from the survivors is a reminder that the fate of the former prince is only part of a broader story. The impact on the royal family is dramatic, but King Charles is being praised for acting: he has defended the monarchy by casting out his brother.

Only the hyperbolic would frame this as the undoing of the royal family. A YouGov poll in the United Kingdom on the weekend found that 79 per cent thought the King had made the right decision, although 58 per cent also said he had acted too slowly.

So the bigger quandary for Mountbatten Windsor is not whether he can find a home on the Sandringham estate, but whether he is called to give evidence about what he saw during his friendship with Epstein and Maxwell over more than a decade.

Four Democrat members of the US Congress want him to appear before their inquiry into Epstein at the House oversight committee.

“If he wants to clear his name, if he wants to do right by the victims, he will come forward,” said one of them, Suhas Subramanyam, on the BBC on the weekend.

In the UK, meanwhile, The Telegraph reported former prosecutor Nazir Afzal calling for Mountbatten Windsor to face a police inquiry into the claims made by Roberts Giuffre about sex with the prince in London in 2001.

There is more to be discovered about what happened. On the weekend, for instance, The Wall Street Journal revealed that bankers at JPMorgan queried large cash withdrawals by Epstein as far back as 2002. Many of his victims said in their depositions to lawyers that he would hand out cash. Epstein was a valuable client, so nobody stopped his suspicious conduct.

For all the focus on the royal family, the Epstein scandal is about the network of wealthy enablers who turned a blind eye to what was happening. Or, in some cases, took part.

Being a prince shielded Mountbatten Windsor in the past. The gates of Buckingham Palace and the security barrier at Royal Lodge protected him four years ago, for instance, when lawyers for Roberts Giuffre tried to serve papers on him in her civil lawsuit against him. One of those lawyers, Sigrid McCawley, was incensed at these barriers to the claim, although she found a way around them.

Now, as a private citizen, Mountbatten Windsor may have a harder time dodging the questions about what he did and what he knew.

Could he land in America without being summoned? How will law firms try to get him to give evidence in any future claims? The King can give him a home in Sandringham, but he cannot save him from questions about Epstein and Maxwell.

Another survivor, Annie Farmer, wants the former prince to testify. She also wants American authorities to release the Epstein files. With her sister, Maria, she made the earliest known report of abuse by Epstein to police and the FBI. That was in 1996 – and there has never been a proper explanation of why nothing was done.

Imagine what the Farmer sisters and others have gone through for three decades, knowing Epstein could have been stopped.

Farmer spoke about the need for accountability on October 21 when Mountbatten Windsor was still a prince. “If he wants to do right by Virginia and the rest of us, he could do something different and say: ‘I have information I want to share because I believe it could be helpful’,” she told the BBC.

Twice, in the past, Mountbatten Windsor said he would help the survivors of sexual abuse.

In November 2019, when he stepped back from royal duties after his calamitous Newsnight interview on the BBC, he said in a statement: “Of course, I am willing to help any appropriate law enforcement agency with their investigations, if required.”

He said it again in early 2022 when he settled – at incredible cost to the royal finances – the civil case with Giuffre.

“Prince Andrew regrets his association with Epstein, and commends the bravery of Ms Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others,” said the statement concluding that case. “He pledges to demonstrate his regret for his association with Epstein by supporting the fight against the evils of sex trafficking, and by supporting its victims.”

The next phase in this drama will be the attempt to get Mountbatten Windsor to confront the questions about the past – or at least help the survivors in some way. The legal pursuit will be the story even if we never hear his answers.

The pledge of a prince is meant to be worth something, of course. But that applies only in fairytales.

Lifeline 13 11 14; Beyond Blue 1800 512 348; Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800; National Domestic Family and Sexual Violence Counselling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).

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