{"id":226069,"date":"2025-10-19T22:26:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T22:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/226069\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T22:26:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T22:26:09","slug":"police-probing-claims-prince-andrew-tried-to-smear-sexual-assault-accuser-virginia-giuffre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/226069\/","title":{"rendered":"Police probing claims Prince Andrew tried to smear sexual assault accuser Virginia Giuffre"},"content":{"rendered":"

British police say they are probing claims that Prince Andrew asked an officer to dig up dirt for a smear campaign against his sexual assault accuser Virginia Giuffre.<\/p>\n

It comes after Prince Andrew renounced his royal titles on Friday under pressure from King Charles<\/a> following further revelations about his ties to late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n

London’s Metropolitan Police said it was looking into allegations in the Mail on Sunday that Prince Andrew tried to smear Giuffre who accused the prince of sexually assaulting her when she was 17.<\/p>\n

Is Prince Andrew’s decision enough to stem damage to the monarchy?<\/a><\/p>\n

With the swirl of news around Prince Andrew this week, something had to be done; the question was whether he would do it himself or if his brother would be forced to show him the door.<\/p>\n

Prince Andrew, 65, has long denied the assault accusations, which have caused considerable embarrassment to the British monarchy and seen the prince virtually banished from royal life in recent years.<\/p>\n

The Mail on Sunday reported that Prince Andrew passed on Giuffre’s date of birth and social security number to his state-funded police protection in 2011 and asked him to investigate.<\/p>\n

“We are aware of media reporting and are actively looking into the claims made,” a police spokesperson said in a statement to AFP.<\/p>\n

Prince Andrew’s request came shortly before the publication of a now-infamous photo taken in London appearing to show the prince with his arm around Giuffre’s waist, the paper said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Prince Andrew, Virginia Giuffre, and Ghislaine Maxwell pictured in 2001 when\u00a0Ms\u00a0Giuffre was 17. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Prince Andrew reportedly emailed the late queen Elizabeth II’s then-deputy press secretary and told him of his request to his bodyguard, which the officer is not said to have acted upon.<\/p>\n

The newspaper said it obtained the email from documents held by a US congressional committee.<\/p>\n

Giuffre, who accused Epstein of using her as a sex slave, said she had sex with Prince Andrew on three separate occasions, including when she was under 18.<\/p>\n

Prince Andrew has repeatedly denied Giuffre’s accusations and avoided a trial in a civil lawsuit by paying a multimillion-dollar settlement.<\/p>\n

The allegations have received renewed focus ahead of the publication next week of Giuffre’s posthumous memoirs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Giuffre, a US and Australian citizen, took her own life in April.<\/p>\n

Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking underage girls for sex.<\/p>\n

Prince Andrew has also given up membership of the prestigious Order of the Garter, the most senior knighthood in the British honours system, which dates to the 1300s.<\/p>\n

Giuffre’s brother Sky Roberts has urged King Charles to go further and strip his brother of his right to be a prince.<\/p>\n

“I think there’s more that he could do,” Roberts said of the king on ITV News.<\/p>\n

AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British police say they are probing claims that Prince Andrew asked an officer to dig up dirt for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[136795,64,63,5794,134,80163,1158,33183,38930,6671,84996,83230],"class_list":{"0":"post-226069","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-accuser","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-claims","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-metropolitan","14":"tag-police","15":"tag-prince-andrew","16":"tag-royal","17":"tag-sexual-assault","18":"tag-titles","19":"tag-virginia-giuffre"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}