Stop hiding, Andrew, and fight off U.S. sex charges

HOW deeply unedifying it has been to see Prince Andrew skulking in the bushes at his mother’s Balmoral Estate and before that at Royal Lodge in the shadow of Windsor Castle.

The helicopter hero who flew so bravely in the Falklands is reduced to ‘playing hide and seek behind palace walls’ according to U.S. lawyers.

He’s doing so, they claim, to avoid being served with legal papers in the civil case in America where he is accused of sexually abusing Virginia Roberts. Yesterday those lawyers upped the ante, releasing a photo of the papers being posted to the Prince. This, after the High Court in London ruled he can be served with them.

What on Earth is Andrew playing at? Rather than take up the gauntlet, he is lying low and his legal team are trying to overturn that High Court decision on a technicality.

None of us are in a position to judge Roberts’ claims that Andrew had sex with her when she was just 17. A Mail investigation showed her story is full of holes and his protestations of innocence may be true.

But we do know he is guilty of monumental misjudgments — not least in his friendship with the monstrous Jeffrey Epstein, who Andrew visited in New York after he had been convicted as a paedophile. It was Epstein, of course, who groomed Roberts; Epstein who took that photograph of Andrew with his arm round her — a photograph, incidentally, the Prince implausibly suggested had been doctored to frame him.

The Queen’s favourite son is in serious trouble. But until he co-operates with the law, he will not be able to clear his name. I can understand his reluctance. American law is a jungle. Any attempt to prove his innocence in the courts would turn into a TV show trial.

But the alternative is worse. By failing to act, he is sinking — and dragging the monarchy down with him.

This is the last thing it needs. With Megs and Harry’s self-serving interventions, and Charles’s cash-for-access scandals, the royal brand is taking a beating.

So I beg you Andrew, be the man you were born to be, the devoted son and fearless war veteran. Do your duty to Queen and country, take up the fight to clear your name — and stop hiding in the bushes.