Prince Andrew considered it his “birthright” to sleep with 17-year-old Virginia Roberts Giuffre, she has claimed in her memoir.
Giuffre, who took her own life in April, wrote a book before her death in which she detailed her account of the night Andrew allegedly sexually abused her in March 2001. Andrew has always denied the allegations.
In the memoir, Nobody’s Girl, Giuffre claimed that Andrew, then 41, “believed having sex with me was his birthright” and alleged that during intercourse he was “particularly attentive to my feet, caressing my toes and licking my arches”.
She recalls how excited she had been when Ghislaine Maxwell, who was jailed for trafficking young girls to Jeffrey Epstein, told her she would be dining that evening with Andrew. She describes feeling “like Cinderella” about to meet a “handsome prince”.
Guiffre’s book, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, will be released on October 21
KNOPF/AP
When Andrew arrived at Maxwell’s London townhouse they played “a game” that Maxwell enjoyed, Giuffre claimed; asking guests to guess Giuffre’s age. Giuffre alleged that Andrew “guessed correctly” and remarked: “My daughters [Eugenie and Beatrice] are just a little younger than you.” She claimed she slept with the duke that night, which he has denied.
Reflecting on the encounter, Giuffre wrote: “In the years since, I’ve thought a lot about how he behaved. He was friendly enough, but still entitled — as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright.” She said she was paid $15,000 by Epstein for “servicing the man the tabloids called ‘Randy Andy’”.
The prince has always denied the allegations. In court papers filed in New York in 2021, his lawyers said that although Giuffre may well be a victim of abuse by Epstein, “Prince Andrew never sexually abused or assaulted Giuffre.”
After settling a civil lawsuit and signing a one-year non-disclosure agreement with Andrew in 2022, in which he admitted no liability, Giuffre never again spoke publicly about the alleged abuse.
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Although the prince denied the allegations, controversy surrounding his association with Epstein led to him being stripped of his military affiliations and patronages in one of the biggest royal scandals in modern history.
The claims in Giuffre’s book come as Andrew faces renewed pressure over his relationship with Epstein. Last week it emerged that Andrew told Epstein “we are in this together” the day after a picture of the royal embracing Giuffre was published in 2011.
Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein in New York
JAE DONNELLY
Giuffre died by suicide at her home in Perth, Australia, on April 25 aged 41. Before her death she signed off on a 400-page memoir, her first comment on the prince since the estimated $12 million agreement.
In the book, Giuffre described the first time she said she was introduced to Andrew. On March 10, 2001, she had been staying at Maxwell’s pied-à-terre — a white mews house a short walk from Hyde Park.
“Maxwell woke me up that morning by announcing in a singsongy voice: ‘Get out of bed, sleepyhead!’” Giuffre wrote. “It was going to be ‘a special day’.”
Giuffre was told she needed to dress smartly. She wrote that Maxwell had picked out an outfit for the evening, a “sophisticated dress” and a Burberry bag.
But Giuffre decided to wear “a pink V-necked, sleeveless mini-T-shirt and a sparkly, multicoloured pair of jeans embroidered with a pattern of interlocking horses”, she wrote.
“Maxwell wasn’t thrilled, but like most teenage girls then, I idolised Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, and the third outfit was something I imagined the two of them might wear.”
Andrew was 41 at the time and separated for some years from his wife, Sarah Ferguson, who was last month stripped of her charity positions after damaging emails to Epstein came to light. “In contrast to his appearance today — stout, white-haired, and jowly — Prince Andrew then was still relatively fit, with short-cropped brown hair and youthful eyes,” Giuffre wrote.
“My mom would never forgive me if I met someone as famous as Prince Andrew and didn’t pose for a picture. I ran to get a Kodak FunSaver from my room, then returned and handed it to Epstein. I remember the prince putting his arm around my waist as Maxwell grinned beside me. Epstein snapped the photo.”
The resulting photograph of Giuffre standing in between Maxwell and the duke — his hand clutching Virginia’s bare midriff — is now infamous.
Both the duke and Maxwell claimed, in television interviews and lawsuits, that the picture had been doctored. However, Michael Thomas, a Mail on Sunday photographer, claimed that the picture was not a fake and that he handled a genuine physical Kodak print during an interview with Giuffre at her home in Australia in 2011.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre, with a photo of herself as a teen
EMILY MICHOT/MIAMI HERALD/TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE/GETTY IMAGES
After dinner, she, Maxwell, Epstein, and Andrew went on to the nightclub Tramp. Giuffre described Andrew as “a bumbling dancer” — “I remember he sweated profusely,” she wrote.
Andrew claimed in a 2019 interview with Newsnight that her memory of the evening could not have been accurate as he suffered from a condition that left him unable to sweat.
“On the way back, Maxwell told me, ‘When we get home, you are to do for him what you do for Jeffrey’,” Giuffre wrote.
She took the duke upstairs and ran a bath. “We disrobed and got in the tub, but didn’t stay there long because the prince was eager to get to the bed. He was particularly attentive to my feet, caressing my toes and licking my arches, ” she alleged in the book.
Giuffre’s second meeting with Andrew was at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion. She wrote in her memoir that Epstein and Maxwell presented Andrew with a caricature puppet of himself from the satirical Eighties’ television show Spitting Image and that he used the puppet to touch her and another woman — Johanna Sjoberg — inappropriately.
“The prince and I sat down next to each other on the couch, and Maxwell put the puppet in my lap, positioning one of its hands on one of my breasts,” she writes. “Then she put Sjoberg on the prince’s lap, and the prince put his hand on Sjoberg’s breast. The symbolism was impossible to ignore. Johanna and I were Maxwell and Epstein’s puppets, and they were pulling the strings.”
The third incident took place on Epstein’s private island Little Saint James. She does not go into much detail beyond what she testified to in a sworn deposition as part of a civil suit in 2015.
“Epstein, Andy, and approximately eight other young girls, and I had sex together,” she wrote. “The other girls all appeared to be under the age of 18 and didn’t really speak English. Epstein laughed about how they couldn’t really communicate, saying they are the easiest girls to get along with.”
She alleged she was trafficked to “more men than I can put into words”, yet very few have faced any consequences.
“The way [Epstein] viewed women and girls — as playthings to be used and discarded — is not uncommon among certain powerful men who believe they are above the law,” she wrote.
“And many of those men are still going about their daily lives, enjoying the benefits of their power.”
The Duke of York was contacted for comment.