Ghislaine’s email search for ‘sex toy’ and ‘Andrew’
Sex abuse mansion full of photos of Epstein and the prince royal has now locked himself away in a room
THE UK’s Prince Andrew was last night facing more humiliation after it was revealed that sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell was ordered to search her phone, computer and thousands of emails for his name along with the words ‘sex toy’ and ‘erotic’.
Explosive court documents reveal how, following an order from a US court, Maxwell’s lawyers were instructed to scour all her electronic devices for any mention of the prince, other acquaintances of paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and a string of sordid words. These included ‘Prince’, ‘Andrew’, ‘Duke’, York’, ‘Royal’, ‘underage’, ‘massage’, ‘slave’, ‘sex’, ‘nipple’ and ‘dildo’, according to the devastating legal papers.
Details of the hugely embarrassing search – part of a 2015 defamation case brought by Andrew’s accuser Virginia Giuffre, née Roberts, against Maxwell – are revealed in a trove of 130 documents, totalling more than 1,300 pages, which were released this weekend. It is not known what the search uncovered, with Maxwell’s lawyers claiming it was a ‘wild goose chase’. The case was settled before it came
‘Prince took part in an underage orgy’
to court. Last night, a source close to the duke told the MoS how Andrew had been left reeling by the lurid new claims.
‘He doesn’t have the emotional bandwidth to deal with this,’ the source said. ‘He has locked himself away in a room and has no idea how to respond. He’s devastated.’
In another day of astonishing revelations:
Scotland Yard was urged by a former chief superintendent to interview the personal protection officers who accompanied Prince Andrew on trips to meet Epstein;
Epstein’s ‘house manager’, Alfredo Rodriguez, was questioned under oath about whether Andrew and Maxwell had ‘a romantic relationship’, legal files reveal;
Mr Rodriguez claimed that ‘many’ pictures of Epstein and Andrew posing together were displayed at Epstein’s Florida mansion, where the financier abused hundreds of young girls;
Maxwell swam naked at Epstein’s Caribbean island where his recruits were made to massage her while she was undressed, documents claim.
The furore surrounding Andrew shows no sign of abating after hundreds of documents were made public over three days.
The court files were sealed in 2017 but published after requests from media firms.
They included claims the prince knew of Epstein’s sex trafficking, committed ‘acts of sexual abuse’, enjoyed daily massages and took part in an ‘underage orgy’. Andrew has vehemently and repeatedly denied all the allegations made against him.
Scotland Yard last week said it would not rule out investigating sexual assault claims about Andrew, while the release of the court documents are believed to have strengthened King Charles III’s resolve that his brother will never be allowed to resume royal duties.
A string of documents released in the early hours of yesterday disclosed a bitter legal battle between Giuffre and Maxwell’s lawyers over a 2016 court order that a search should be carried out of Maxwell’s ‘electronic media’.
In a letter to Maxwell’s legal team, Meredith Schultz, one of Ms Giuffre’s
lawyers, demanded that Maxwell’s email and iCloud accounts be combed over, along with her computers, phones and tablets.
Ms Schultz then listed 368 words to search for, including Prince Andrew, his initials ‘PA’ and ‘Clinton’ – a reference to former US President Bill Clinton. There is no indication of any wrongdoing by Mr Clinton.
The list also includes words that
are either sexually explicit or suggestive of abuse, including ‘erotic’, ‘masturbate’, ‘servitude’, ‘juvenile’, ‘schoolgirl’, and ‘paedophile’.
Maxwell’s lawyer Laura Menninger later objected to ‘the vast number’ of search terms, complaining that ‘running a search on Ms Maxwell’s devices of all 368 terms will take more than a week’.
She highlighted the difficulty of searching for common words like ‘bed’, ‘lingerie’ and ‘bath’ and the names of lawyers.
Ms Giuffre alleged she was forced to have sex with the prince on three occasions when she was 17, including in a bath in Maxwell’s townhouse in London in 2001. The claims have been repeatedly and strenuously denied by Andrew.
Ms Menninger complains in one letter that Giuffre had sent Maxwell ‘on a costly, time-consuming and burdensome wild goose chase that has yielded not so much as a single goose feather. It is time to call off the hunt.’ The legal documents, however, do show that, to comply with the court order, 110 words were searched for – including Andrew’s name and the sexually explicit words.
Prince Andrew did not respond to a request for comment.