ANDREW GUARDS ‘TURNED BLIND EYE’
Yard officers watched as Duke partied with young girls, says Epstein’s butler
Prince Andrew’s bodyguards were accused yesterday of turning a blind eye during his visits to a paedophile friend’s ‘house of sin’.
Protection officers accompanied the royal to Jeffrey Epstein’s Florida mansion where he allegedly partied with naked young women. Juan Alessi, who was Epstein’s butler for 11 years, said: ‘Andrew was with security. He had his two bodyguards from Scotland Yard. I can remember their names.
‘The bodyguards were off duty and they slept in one of the guest bedrooms.’ Hundreds of under-age girls are said to have been abused at Epstein’s mansion and one woman says she was forced by the shamed financier to have sex with Andrew when she was 17, which is below the age of consent in Florida.
The prince fiercely denies having any sexual contact or relationship with Virginia Roberts, now 30.
But there were calls yesterday for Scotland Yard to investigate whether Andrew’s protection
officers suspected or witnessed any criminal activity at Epstein’s homes.
A royalty protection source said: ‘Epstein’s Florida mansion appears to have resembled a five- star brothel. And Epstein behaved like a pimp.
‘I would have expected protection officers to have advised the duke to leave immediately.
‘If they did not, the big question is why? The problem is that protection officers are very well paid – some get up to £80,000 a year which is double their basic pay – because of overtime and special allowances.
‘They can sometimes forget they are working for the police, not the royal household. Challenging a royal about their conduct, or the people they are mixing with, can result in a loss of trust and their removal from a very lucrative job.’
Dai Davies, a former head of the protection unit, said the prince’s bodyguards might be able to corroborate his account that he never had sexual relations with his accuser in 2001.
But he added: ‘I would have expected Prince Andrew to have been severely warned on the dangers of liaising with Epstein. This is an extraordinary case. I would have expected officers in royalty protection to bring matters to senior officers’ attention far earlier.’
Caroline Pidgeon, Lib Dem deputy chairman of the London Assembly police and crime committee, said: ‘If royal protection security staff ever suspect that criminal activity is taking place at a venue they are present at, they have an obligation to take action. Turning a blind eye should never be an option.’
Jenny Jones, the Green deputy chairman of the same committee, said: ‘The Met Commissioner should look into this as a matter of urgency.
‘These are under-age sex allegations and I do have a problem with officers – that we, as taxpayers, fund – going to events like these alleged parties.
‘The Commissioner needs to start asking questions about what these officers saw and what Prince Andrew did or didn’t get up to.’
A spokesman for the Labour group on the London Assembly said Scotland Yard had ‘serious questions to answer’.
He added: ‘Those being protected at public expense have a responsibility to consider the situations they are placing those public servants in and a duty to ensure their actions do not bring their protection officers into disrepute. If what you’ve been told is true there are serious questions to be asked as it would appear to be an inappropriate position to put these protection officers in.’
But Peter Prentice, who headed the royalty protection squad at the time of the Epstein parties, has defended the ‘laissez faire’ approach, saying it was ‘not an offence for a man or woman to be naked in a private house’.
He also suggested he would ‘ not expect a protection officer to question ages’ of young girls because of the difficulties involved.
‘Every day of the week, clubs or bars are being fooled and duped,’ added the retired chief superintendent.
‘Protection officers are there purely to ensure their [the royals’] safety. Their role does not include questions of morality. The only compromise to this is, of course, if there is a question of legality. Then I would expect the protection officer to take advice from a senior officer or supervisor.’
Mr Prentice said no officer approached him with concerns about Andrew’s conduct when he led the protection squad from 1998 to 2005.
‘If a protection officer comes to a supervisor [about a royal’s behaviour] we would advise them and not turn a blind eye,’ he added. ‘But if you never hear of anything you don’t know if a blind eye has been turned [by the pro- tection officer].’ Andrew was pictured with Epstein in February 2011 after the billionaire was released from jail after serving time for paedophile offences.
The ensuing scandal forced the prince to cut his ties with the American.
But the controversy was reignited last week by the release of US court papers on the Epstein case.
In the files, Miss Roberts claims Epstein forced her to have sex with Andrew three times in 2001 – in London, New York and on the billionaire’s Caribbean island.
She and other alleged victims want to overturn a deal that Epstein struck with federal prosecutors that saw him jailed for 18 months in 2008 for underage sex offences.
Buckingham Palace has repeatedly insisted that for Andrew ‘any suggestion of impropriety with under-age minors is categorically untrue’.
Mr Alessi confirmed that Miss Roberts, who is a mother of three, was a visitor to Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion. His comments come from unpublished extracts of an interview with the Daily Mail in 2011.
Security sources suggest that Andrew’s gallivanting around the world with Epstein, 61, cost taxpayers well over half a million pounds of public money.
The duke allegedly spent several
‘Serious questions
to answer’ ‘Brought into
disrepute’
weeks at Epstein’s Florida mansion and also visited his sumptuous property in New York and shared holidays with him in Thailand, New Mexico and the Caribbean.
Sources confirmed the total bill in the decade up to 2011 is conservatively estimated to be £500,000.
The figure is made up of business class air fares, hotel bills, salaries and overtime. Epstein has branded all his accusers liars and gold diggers.
Scotland Yard declined to comment when asked whether royalty protection officers had raised concerns about Prince Andrew’s conduct with Epstein or about his visits to the paedophile’s Palm Beach mansion.
It said: ‘We do not discuss matters of security and protection.’
Mr Prentice insisted it was not true that the generous pay protection officers receive would make them reluctant to jeopardise their position by challenging the behaviour of a royal or reporting it to a senior officer.
‘That’s high risk. When the truth comes out – and it always comes out - their days are numbered,’ he said.
Additional reporting: Andrew Levy and rebeccA cAmber