Royals

Prince Andrew’s Accuser Speaks Out: “Only One of Us Telling the Truth”

The BBC interview with Virginia Roberts Giuffre was filmed before Andrew’s disastrous outing last month, but she discusses many of the same topics.

By Erin Vanderhoof

December 2, 2019

On Monday night, the BBC aired an hour-long episode of the newsmagazine show Panorama that attempted to tell the story of Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein from the beginning. The centerpiece was an in-depth interview with Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the woman who accused Epstein of sexual abuse and claimed that she was forced to have sex with Andrew. In the interview—the first major one to air in the U.K.—she told the story of how she met Epstein and repeated her allegations against Andrew. “He knows what happened. I know what happened,” she said. “And there’s only one of us telling the truth, and I know that’s me.”

The new interview with Giuffre occurred before Andrew’s now-notorious appearance on Newsnight on November 16, where he was questioned by host Emily Maitlis. On that show, he said he has no recollection of ever meeting Giuffre and denied having sex with her. However, Monday’s episode of Panorama does examine some of the claims that Andrew made to Maitlis in detail, like his suggestion that the photograph that shows him with Giuffre might be fake, and his claim that he could not sweat.

According to Giuffre, she was working at Mar-a-Lago, the club owned by Donald Trump, when she met Epstein’s girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, and was offered a job as a massage therapist. In the interview, she claims that Epstein abused her after Maxwell gave her a massage lesson. “They seemed like nice people so I trusted them, and I told them that I had a really hard time in my life up until then,” she said. “That was the worst thing I could have told them because they knew how vulnerable I was.”

Through photographs and interviews with other victims, the episode also provides some insight into what it was like for the young women in Epstein’s presence. “I was sitting there, like I was always told to do. Sit there, be quiet, be polite, laugh if someone says something funny,” Giuffre said. “I wasn’t chained to a sink, but these powerful people were my chains. I didn’t know what would happen.”

Giuffre described the night she claims she was forced to have sex with Andrew after a night of clubbing. “But I knew I had to keep him happy because that’s what Jeffrey and Ghislaine would expect from me…. In the car, Ghislaine tells me that I have to do for Andrew what I do for Jeffrey—and that just made me sick,” she said. “I just didn’t expect that from royalty. I just didn’t expect that from someone people look up to and admire.”

The episode also examined Maxwell’s alleged role in Epstein’s crimes. Court filings first name Maxwell as a potential accomplice of Epstein’s in 2009, but in subsequent filings, she denies abusing or trafficking any women. Andrew reportedly saw her in person as recently as June 2019. In his Newsnight interview, Andrew claimed that the two did not discuss Epstein because “he wasn’t in the news.”

In a statement to Panorama, Buckingham Palace said that Andrew “unequivocally regrets his ill-judged association with Jeffrey Epstein” and “deeply sympathizes with those affected who want some form of closure.” They added, “It is emphatically denied that he had any relationship or contact with Virginia Roberts.”

Erin Vanderhoof

Staff Writer