04 January 2024 , 22:49
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Prince Andrew still has questions to answer about his time with his paedophile pal Jeffrey Epstein, according to a leading lawyer.
US attorney Spencer Kuvin, who has represented some of Epstein’s victims, says British detectives now have a duty to investigate the Prince. Mr Kuvin made the demand after sex assault allegations against Andrew, 63, resurfaced in documents newly unsealed by a civil court in America.
In 2021, Scotland Yard announced it was taking no action after a review prompted by Virginia Giuffre, who had filed a separate US civil lawsuit against the Prince claiming he sexually assaulted her, which he vehemently denied.
After the release of the previously unseen legal papers on Wednesday night by a New York judge, calls have been made for the Prince to be grilled.
Mr Kuvin said: “Andrew still refuses to fully account for his time with Epstein and has failed to speak with US investigators about what he knows. British police need to do their duty and reopen their investigation into his conduct.”
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Convicted paedophile Epstein (Corbis via Getty Images)The Florida-based lawyer said those, such as Andrew, who associated with wealthy US financier Epstein after his conviction for soliciting a minor in 2008, warrant higher scrutiny. He added that Epstein is probably “one of the worst sexual predators of the century”.
The unsealed documents are part of a 2015 defamation case brought by Ms Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell. American Johanna Sjoberg, 43, testified in the long-settled defamation case between Ms Giuffre, now 40, and Epstein madam Maxwell.
In 2016, Ms Sjoberg said that in 2001 when she was a 20-year-old student in Florida, Maxwell offered her a job as a personal assistant. Ms Sjoberg then began working for Epstein and was immediately forced to perform sex acts.
She detailed how she was flown from Florida with Ms Giuffre, 17 at the time, to entertain Epstein at his New York mansion. Ms Sjoberg said she met Andrew at the Manhattan home. She claimed the Duke of York groped her breast after his hosts presented him with a Spitting Image puppet of himself.
Johanna Sjoberg the Epstein victim is seen for the first time in more than ten years (Breedo/Daily Mirror)In her testimony, Ms Sjoberg said: “I sat on Andrew’s lap, and they took the puppet’s hands and put it on Virginia’s breast, and so Andrew put his on mine.” Maxwell, 62, serving 20 years’ jail for trafficking girls for Epstein, said she did not recall any wrongdoing involving the puppet.
Other mentions of the Duke in the newly released papers include previous allegations that Epstein “forced Jane Doe #3 to have sexual relations with Andrew” at three locations – “in London (at Ghislaine Maxwell’s apartment), in New York, and on Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands (in an orgy with numerous other under-aged girls)”. The accuser is not named in the papers.
Ms Giuffre has claimed she had sex three times with Andrew in about 2001 when she was 17 and 18. The age of consent in the US Virgin Islands is 18. It is 17 in New York and 16 in the UK.
In the papers is Maxwell’s deposition, in which she claims her friend Andrew visited Epstein’s private Caribbean island – Little St James – only once. She said no females were there at the time other than those who worked as house staff.
Prince Andrew's disastrous BBC Newsnight interview (BBC)The British socialite said she “did not recall” being in London with Ms Giuffre and Andrew, despite a photo said to show the trio together. And she denied ever asking Ms Giuffre to have sex with anybody.
Sigrid McCawley, the lawyer representing Ms Giuffre, said the documents being unsealed are a step closer to “shutting down sex trafficking and holding more to account”, adding the public has spent years demanding to know how Epstein operated his “vast, sex-trafficking enterprise... for decades”.
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Last night, a spokesperson for the prince did not return calls for comment. Andrew has always denied any wrongdoing. Epstein was 66 when he died by suicide in jail in 2019 as he awaited trial for underage sex trafficking.