Virginia Roberts Giuffre during an interview on the BBC Panorama program on Dec. 2, 2019. (Photo: BBC Panorama via AP)
The woman Prince Andrew has said he doesn’t remember meeting told her story during an interview with the BBC,, reiterating her allegations that he had sex with her three times two decades ago when she was 17.
In the process, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, 36, an American who now lives in Australia, appealed to the British public to believe her accusations and not Andrew’s denials.
“I implore the people in the U.K. to stand up beside me and help me fight this fight, to not accept this as being OK,” she said in a clip released by the BBC Monday. “This is not some sordid sex story, this is a story of being trafficked…”
Giuffre was interviewed for a program, “The Prince and the Epstein Scandal,” that is to air Monday evening in Britain, two weeks after Andrew’s interview with the BBC aired. Giuffre’s sit-down will air in the U.S. on Saturday at 3 p.m. ET and on Sunday at 9 p.m. on BBC World News, the global 24-hour news channel.
The interview with Giuffre, which was taped in October before Andrew’s November interview, was produced by the BBC’s Panorama show. It comes five days after Andrew’s sit-down led to the Duke of York stepping away from the royal spotlight due to his poorly received attempts to explain his long relationship with convicted American sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Prince Andrew delivers a speech in ASEAN Business and Investment Summit in Nonthaburi, Thailand, Nov. 3, 2019. (Photo: Sakchai Lalit, AP)
In another clip released by the BBC, Giuffre described Andrew’s heavy sweating while dancing as “gross.”
“He asked me to dance; he is the most hideous dancer I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said. “This guy is sweating all over me like it was raining, basically everywhere, and I was just like grossed out by that. But I knew I had to keep him happy because that’s what … Jeffrey would expect from me. “
Giuffre has described Andrew’s alleged sweating in the past, and in his interview Andrew rejected her allegation. He claimed that he suffered at the time from a peculiar medical condition that prevented him from sweating – an assertion greeted by widespread derision in the British media.
Because her interview was taped earlier, Giuffre did not respond directly to anything Andrew said in his interview. Through her lawyers, she told the BBC she stands by everything she said in her October interview.
Giuffre’s BBC interview is part of a longer investigation by Panorama into the Epstein scandal and the prince’s friendship with him, which dates back to 1999. The program also examined British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s girlfriend and a pal of Andrew who introduced him to Epstein. (Maxwell, 57, is the daughter of a late British media baron-turned-fraudster, Robert Maxwell, who died in 1991 under mysterious circumstances in the sea near the Canary Islands while sailing his yacht.)
Even before his BBC interview, Andrew and Buckingham Palace emphatically denied knowing anything about Epstein’s alleged crimes and to having any sexual contact with Giuffre. He continues to deny it now that he’s stepped back from all royal duties “for the foreseeable future.”
But after eight years, Giuffre is not going away now. She has made it plain she thinks he should “go to jail,” and that he’s not telling the truth, although she’s been careful to avoid the word “liar.”
Virginia Roberts Giuffre outside a Manhattan court in New York on Aug. 27, 2019. (Photo: Bebeto Matthews, AP)
“He knows what happened, I know what happened. There’s only one of us telling the truth – and I know it’s me,” Giuffre said in another clip, which was released last week.
Giuffre sued Epstein’s alleged “recruiter,” Maxwell, for defamation after she said Giuffre was lying; the case was settled for an undisclosed sum in 2017. Guiffre is currently suing former Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz for defamation for calling her a liar after she said she was compelled by Epstein to have sex with him, too.
Giuffre began publicly accusing Andrew, 59, of sexual misconduct in 2011, in the British media and in court documents from various civil suits arising from Epstein and his 2008 plea deal to sex crimes in Florida.
In March 2011, the British tabloid The Mail on Sunday published a picture, allegedly taken by Epstein, of Giuffre as a teen with Andrew in Maxwell’s London home in 2001 on the night she says she had sex with him. In the picture, Giuffre has a bare midriff and Andrew has his arm around her waist, and both are smiling. The picture has been floating around the internet ever since.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre (C) leaves federal court in New York with other accusers of Jeffrey Epstein on Aug. 27, 2019. (Photo: ALBA VIGARAY, EPA-EFE)
Then known as Virginia Roberts, her allegations were briefly headline news again in 2015, until a Florida judge wiped them from a court record. But they surged back into the news when Epstein was arrested this summer on federal sex trafficking charges and later was found dead in a federal jail in New York, a suicide.
After his death, the FBI and federal prosecutors announced they would pursue potential suspects in Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking activities. Giuffre, other Epstein accusers and their lawyers who are suing the Epstein estate for damages are demanding that Andrew speak to FBI agents – voluntarily or under subpoena – to tell all he knows about Epstein’s alleged crimes and Maxwell’s alleged role in them.
Andrew, who says he doesn’t know anything about those crimes, suggested in vague terms in his statement about stepping back from royal duties that he is “willing to help any appropriate law enforcement agency with their investigations, if required.”
It is not clear exactly whether U.S. authorities are pursuing Andrew, or if they are pursuing him as a potential witness to crimes or a potential suspect in crimes. Nor are they talking about what federal crime he could be charged with.
But American authorities would be unlikely to have jurisdiction over an alleged crime committed in London, for instance.
Meanwhile, London police defended their 2016 decision not to pursue a full investigation of Giuffre’s allegations against Andrew.
Metropolitan Police Commander Alex Murray acknowledged Thursday police received a complaint in 2015 from a woman – Giuffre – alleging she was the victim of trafficking for sexual exploitation. But after looking into the matter and consulting prosecutors, police concluded the following year that the Met was the the wrong agency to investigate.
“Following the legal advice, it was clear that any investigation into human trafficking would be largely focused on activities and relationships outside the U.K.” he said. That being the case, the London police, he said, would not be the “appropriate authority” to investigate.
Murray also said that London police have not received a formal request for assistance from other law enforcement agencies investigating the case.
According to The Guardian, Andrew met Epstein in the 1990s through Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of British media mogul Robert Maxwell.
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