Giuffre: Epstein pal raped me 50 times
Prince Andrew accuser gave evidence on ‘underage sex ring’ model boss
PRINCE Andrew’s former sex accuser Virginia Giuffre told a court that a French model agency boss she was introduced to by Jeffrey Epstein raped her at least 50 times.
Her claim has emerged as an investigation into the death in February this year of Jean-luc Brunel in a Paris jail tries to disprove conspiracy theories that he was murdered.
Ms Giuffre, 38, told French magistrates in November 2020 that Brunel had committed “no less than 50 non-consensual sex acts”, according to evidence outlined in the French newspaper Le Parisien yesterday.
She told of one alleged attack in St Tropez in May 2001 after model Naomi Campbell’s 31st birthday party.
Recalling how Brunel would often rape her at the time, when she was aged 17, Ms Giuffre told the hearing: “The attacks did not stop on the pretext that we were on vacation. After the party, I think I had
had a few glasses of champagne and it got sexual.”
However, visa details in Brunel’s passport showed he was between Australia and the US at the time.
Ms Giuffre then admitted having made an error and claimed it was another businessman who had raped her, adding: “I was confused about the date and the people involved.”
Ms Cambpell had no knowledge of any wrongdoing. Ms Giuffre repeated claims that Brunel regularly had sex with her and procured girls for Epstein and his friends.
She was giving evidence via video link from her home in Perth, Australia, as Brunel was accused of supplying underage girls to Epstein. Brunel was arrested the following month and committed suicide in jail this year, at 76, as he awaited trial.
He left two letters and an 18-page notebook containing a personal testament. In it he wrote: “The feeling of injustice becomes unbearable for me. I’m a prisoner of a system that presumes my guilt and it is up to me to provide proof of my innocence.”
Brunel was particularly upset by what he considered Ms Giuffre’s false recollection of the night in St Tropez, in the South of France.
She had told investigators Brunel “was there at the yacht party”, along with Ghislaine Maxwell, 60, and her former boyfriend Epstein.
But he said: “For France, I bring irrefutable proof that I was not in Saint-tropez, neither in France nor in Europe, for Naomi Campbell’s birthday. I was in the United States.”
Brunel was suspected of having been part of a global underage sex ring led by Epstein, who also committed suicide while awaiting trial on child sex trafficking charges in 2019. Others involved in the ring included Maxwell, now in prison in the US after being found guilty of sex trafficking.
Previously Ms Giuffre had claimed Brunel, Epstein and Prince Andrew took part in a nine-girl orgy with her on Epstein’s private Caribbean island of Little St James. However, through interviews and court testimony, she has provided different versions of those claims, including two that make no mention of Andrew being there.
The Duke of York, 62, was a visitor to the worldwide properties of billionaire financier Epstein where the worst crimes against girls are alleged to have taken place. He has repeatedly and vehemently denied Ms Giuffre’s allegations.
This year he agreed a civil settlement with Ms Giuffre, thought to be worth some £12million, after she launched a civil proceeding against him in the US. He denies any wrongdoing.