London (AFP) – Britain’s Prince Andrew behaved as if having sex with the then 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre was his “birthright,” according to allegations in her posthumous memoir. In “Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice,” Giuffre — the woman at the centre of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal — said she had sex with Andrew on three separate occasions including when she was under 18.
Giuffre rose to public prominence after alleging that the disgraced US financier Epstein used her as a sex slave and that Andrew had assaulted her. Andrew, 65, has repeatedly denied Giuffre’s accusations and avoided trial by paying a multimillion-dollar settlement.
In extracts published by The Guardian, Giuffre describes meeting the prince, a younger brother of King Charles III, in London in March 2001. Andrew was allegedly challenged to guess her age, which he did correctly, adding by way of explanation: “My daughters are just a little younger than you.” Giuffre and Andrew later went to the Tramp nightclub in central London where she said he was “sort of a bumbling dancer, and I remember he sweated profusely.” They later returned to the London house of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate and former girlfriend, where they had sex, Giuffre alleged in the book due out next week.
“He was friendly enough, but still entitled -– as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright,” she wrote. The following morning, Maxwell allegedly told her: “You did well. The prince had fun.” She said Epstein paid her $15,000 dollars for “servicing the man the tabloids called Randy Andy.” Epstein took his own life in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial for trafficking underage girls for sex. Maxwell, 63, was sentenced in the US in 2022 to 20 years in prison for recruiting underage girls for Epstein.
Giuffre, a US and Australian citizen, died at her farm in Western Australia on April 25. Andrew’s association with Epstein has left his reputation in tatters and made him a source of embarrassment to the king. In a devastating 2019 TV interview, Andrew — once feted as a handsome war hero who served as a helicopter pilot in the Falklands War — denied ever meeting Giuffre and defended his friendship with Epstein. He now makes increasingly rare appearances and his popularity rating has plummeted to an all-time low, an ignominious fall for the prince, thought to have been the late Queen Elizabeth II’s favourite child. The book is due to be published by Knopf on October 21.
© 2024 AFP
