Epstein Case: What were Virginia Giuffre’s accusations against Prince Andrew

Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse, passed away at 41. According to her family, Giuffre died by suicide. The 41-year-old died in Neergabby, Australia, where she had been living for several years.
Giuffre was one of the earliest and loudest voices calling for criminal charges against Epstein and his enablers. Giuffre also provided critical information to law enforcement that contributed to the investigation into and later the conviction of Epstein’s associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, and other investigations by the US attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Giuffre had accused Prince Andrew of the British Royal Family of sexual abuse, claiming that the senior member of the British Royal Family had sex with her three times.

What happened?

In mid-2000, Giuffre met Ghislaine Maxwell (a British socialite and daughter of the late media tycoon Robert Maxwell) when working as a spa attendant at Donald Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club, who offered her a potential job working for Epstein as a traveling masseuse with the assurance that no experience was necessary.

Giuffre has stated that after Maxwell introduced her to Jeffrey Epstein, the two quickly began grooming her to provide sexual services under the guise that she was to be trained as a professional massage therapist.
Between 2000 and 2002, Giuffre was closely associated with Epstein and Maxwell, traveling between Epstein’s residences in Palm Beach and Manhattan (at the Herbert N. Straus House), with additional trips to Epstein’s Zorro ranch in New Mexico and private island Little Saint James.

Allegations against Prince Andrew:

In March 2001, Giuffre was allegedly trafficked to Prince Andrew, she stated in an interview that it was a “wicked” and “really scary time” in her life and that she “couldn’t comprehend how in the highest level of the government powerful people were allowing this to happen. Not just allowing but participating in it”.
Prince Andrew was friends with Jeffrey Epstein – a relationship, as per Prince Andrew’s claims, was initially put together by his old friend, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Prince Andrew reportedly met Virginia Giuffre at the Tramp nightclub in London. According to Giuffre’s claims, she was taken to the club by Maxwell, where she met and danced with Andrew. Giuffre revealed that after visiting a nightclub, Giuffre revealed that Maxwell told her that she, “had to do for Andrew what I do for Jeffrey”.
Giuffre claimed that she had sex with Andrew on three occasions, including a trip to London in 2001 when she was 17, and later in New York and on Little Saint James in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
She alleged Epstein paid her $15,000 after she had sex with Andrew in London.
Flight logs showed that Andrew and Giuffre were in the places where she alleged their meetings took place.

Prince Andrew and Giuffre were also photographed together with his arm around her waist, with an Epstein associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, in the background. Giuffre stated that she was pressured to have sex with Andrew and “wouldn’t have dared object” as Epstein, through contacts, could have had her “killed or abducted”.
The court filing read, “During each of the aforementioned incidents, [Giuffre] was compelled by express or implied threats by Epstein, Maxwell, and/or Prince Andrew to engage in sexual acts with Prince Andrew, and feared death or physical injury to herself or another and other repercussions for disobeying Epstein, Maxwell, and Prince Andrew due to their powerful connections, wealth, and authority.”
Giuffre had claimed that on the first night, she allegedly had sex with Andrew, they got into the bath where “he started licking my toes, between my toes, the arches of my feet” before they went into the bedroom and had sex. She repeated these claims in a 2019 BBC interview.
Buckingham Palace’s initial statement on Prince Andrew, issued in August 2019, expressed his “appalled” state regarding the allegations against Jeffrey Epstein, while also emphasizing that any suggestion of his involvement with Epstein’s crimes was “abhorrent” and “categorically untrue”. The statement also clarified that the Duke of York was not a party to the ongoing legal proceedings in the United States.
However, Juan “John” Alessi, who was Epstein’s butler, stated in a deposition he filed for Giuffre’s 2016 defamation case against Maxwell that Andrew’s hitherto unremarked visits to the Epstein house in Palm Beach were more frequent than previously thought. He maintained that Andrew “spent weeks with us” and received “daily massages”.
In August 2019, court documents associated with a defamation case between Giuffre and Maxwell revealed that a second girl, Johanna Sjoberg, gave evidence alleging that Andrew had placed his hand on her breast while in Epstein’s mansion, posing for a photo with his Spitting Image puppet.

Later that month, Andrew released a statement that said, “At no stage during the limited time I spent with [Epstein] did I see, witness or suspect any behavior of the sort that subsequently led to his arrest and conviction”, though he expressed regret for meeting him in 2010 after Epstein had already pleaded guilty to sex crimes for the first time.
In July 2020, Caroline Kaufman, an alleged victim of Epstein, said in a federal lawsuit that she had seen Andrew at Epstein’s New York mansion in December 2010. In November 2021, Lawrence Visoski, Epstein’s pilot, testified in court during Ghislaine Maxwell’s trial that Prince Andrew flew in Epstein’s private plane along with other prominent individuals, including Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and John Glenn.
Prince Andrew’s name was recorded on 12 May 2001 by Epstein’s pilot David Rodgers in his logbook, and he testified that Andrew flew three times with Epstein and Giuffre in 2001.

The aftermath:

In November 2019, in BBC’s Newsnight interview, Prince Andrew recounted his friendship with Epstein for the first time. In the interview, Prince Andrew says he met Epstein in 1999 through Maxwell; this contradicts comments made by Andrew’s private secretary in 2011, who said the two met in “the early 1990s.”
In the interview, Andrew denied having sex with Giuffre on 10 March 2001, as she had accused, because he had been at home with his daughters after attending a party at PizzaExpress in Woking with his elder daughter, Princess Beatrice.

Prince Andrew also added that Giuffre’s claims about dancing with him at Tramp while he was sweaty were false due to him temporarily losing the ability to sweat after an “adrenaline overdose” during the Falklands War. He also said that he does not drink, despite Giuffre’s account of him providing alcohol for them both.
Prince Andrew admitted that he had stayed in Epstein’s mansion for three days in 2010, after Epstein’s conviction for sex offenses against a minor, describing the location as “a convenient place to stay”. The Duke said that he met Epstein for the sole purpose of breaking off any future relationship with him. He also said that he would be willing to testify under oath regarding his associations with Epstein.
The interview, although, was believed by Maitlis and Newsnight to have been approved by the Queen, received negative reactions from both the media and the public, both in and outside of the UK. It was described as a “car crash”, “nuclear explosion level bad”, and the worst public relations crisis for the royal family since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

On 20 November 2019, a statement from Buckingham Palace announced that Prince Andrew was suspending his public duties “for the foreseeable future”.
The decision, made with the consent of the Queen, was accompanied by the insistence that Andrew sympathized with Epstein’s victims. Other working royals took over his commitments in the short term. On 24 November, the palace confirmed that Prince Andrew was to step down from all 230 of his patronages, although he expressed a wish to have some sort of public role at some future time.
Later, Prince Andrew’s social media accounts were deleted, his page on the royal family’s website was rewritten in the past tense, and his military affiliations and patronages were removed to put an emphasis on his departure from public life.
He also stopped using the style of His Royal Highness (HRH).
Prince Andrew settled with Giuffre in 2022 for an undisclosed sum, agreeing to make a “substantial donation” to her survivors’ organization.

In a previous statement to PEOPLE, Giuffre said, “I am holding Prince Andrew accountable for what he did to me. The powerful and rich are not exempt from being held responsible for their actions. I hope that other victims will see that it is possible not to live in silence and fear, but to reclaim one’s life by speaking out and demanding justice.”
A statement filed in court said that the prince acknowledged Epstein was a sex trafficker and Giuffre “an established victim of abuse.”