Prince Andrew’s accuser speaks out: ‘This is a story of being trafficked’
A U.S. woman who says she was forced to have sex with Britain’s Prince Andrew, Duke of York, has appealed to Britons to take her side, saying that only she was telling the truth about a scandal that has engulfed the Royal Family.
Virginia Giuffre says she was trafficked by the disgraced late U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein and forced to have sex with his friends, including Andrew when she was 17 years old. He categorically denies the allegations.
In an interview broadcast on Monday, Ms. Giuffre said she was brought to London in 2001 by Mr. Epstein and taken to meet the Prince, one of three occasions when she says she had sex with Andrew.
“He knows what happened. I know what happened, and there’s only one of us telling the truth, and I know that’s me,” Ms.
Giuffre told BBC Panorama. “I implore the citizens in the U.K. to stand up beside me, to help me fight this fight, to not accept this as being okay. This is not some sordid sex story.”
Andrew, 59, the Queen’s second son, has said he has no recollection of ever meeting Ms. Giuffre, who was previously named Virginia Roberts.
Last month, the Prince gave an interview himself to the BBC that he hoped would draw a line under the scandal.
He said he regretted his “ill-judged” association with Mr. Epstein and that he had never seen anything suspicious during the time he spent with the financier. However, he said the media blowback it had generated had become “a major disruption to my family’s work.”
Panorama said lawyers for five of Mr. Epstein’s victims, who are suing his estate, want Andrew to give evidence in their court cases and that pretrial subpoenas had been readied to serve on the Prince if he visited the United States.
Andrew has said he would speak to law-enforcement agencies if required.
In her interview, which was recorded before the Prince spoke to the BBC, Ms. Giuffre said she was taken to the Tramp nightclub in London by Mr. Epstein and his former associate, Ghislaine Maxwell. Andrew asked her to dance, she said.
Andrew, the eighth in line to the throne, said he could not have had sex with Ms. Giuffre at Ms. Maxwell’s home on the night she alleges because he had been to a pizza restaurant in the commuter town of Woking for a children’s party.
Andrew has said he would speak to law-enforcement agencies if required.