Prince Andrew with the then Virginia Roberts in 2001. Photo / US District Court, Southern District of New York
Prince Andrew with the then Virginia Roberts in 2001. Photo / US District Court, Southern District of New York
From 'Randy Andy' to 'Airmiles Andy', then 'Andy & the Paedo', the Duke of York has been a controversial figure for decades. By Victoria Ward and Gordon Rayner.
The Duke of York was sitting in his study when he was first confronted with the allegation that would ruin his reputation beyond repair.
"What? Who?" he spluttered. "What was the name again? Never heard of her."
It was February 2011 and Virginia Roberts, now using her married name Giuffre, had just given an interview to a Sunday newspaper in which she claimed to have been trafficked across the world to be forced into sex with the Duke when she was 17.
A small circle of close advisers had arranged a conference call to discuss the allegation which had been put to Buckingham Palace ahead of publication, and the Duke's denial was so outright that the most serious allegations did not, at that stage, make it into print.
But the courtiers, already deeply concerned about his friendship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, feared that would not be the end of the matter.
Giuffre was not about to go quietly, and over the 11 years that followed, she and her legal team relentlessly pursued Prince Andrew until he was forced to throw in the towel.
Prince Andrew with the then Virginia Roberts in 2001. Photo / US District Court, Southern District of New York
The substantial out-of-court settlement reached with Giuffre means that while the Duke has avoided any public admission of guilt, his name will forever be stained by the biggest royal scandal in generations.
In truth, the "Andrew problem" had been brewing for decades.
Once regarded as the world's most eligible bachelor, a Falklands war hero said to be the Queen's favourite son, Andrew earned a reputation as something of a womaniser, dubbed "Randy Andy" by the tabloids either side of his doomed marriage to Sarah Ferguson.
His career in the Royal Navy had given him purpose and discipline, but after he retired from active service in 2001, he began to drift, filling his time on endless golfing breaks, morphing into "Airmiles Andy" and building up a collection of unsavoury acquaintances.
Among his long-time friends was Ghislaine Maxwell, a woman he had first met in the mid-1980s during her student days at Oxford University, into whose orbit he was increasingly drawn in 2000, four years after his divorce.
On February 9 that year, 10 days before his 40th birthday, he was by Maxwell's side in the front row at a Ralph Lauren fashion show in New York. It was described as a "startling social coup" for Maxwell after her family name had been dragged through the mud by her father Robert's pension scandal.
Maxwell, as the world now knows, was a constant companion of Epstein, and it was three days later that the Duke was photographed alongside the financier for the first time, at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club in Florida.
The Duke has said he met Epstein through Maxwell in 1999.
Melania Trump, Prince Andrew, Gwendolyn Beck and Jeffrey Epstein at a party at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida, on February 12, 2000. Photo / Getty Images
On May 12 2000, the day after the Duke had attended a charity reception, his name appeared on a flight log for Epstein's private jet, nicknamed the "Lolita Express", flying from New Jersey to Palm Beach, Florida. Also on board was Maxwell. Epstein, Maxwell and the Duke got on so famously that they were invited to Royal Ascot, to Windsor Castle, Sandringham and Balmoral.
Epstein revelled in his newfound prize, his "number one trophy" as one former business associate put it. The Duke became a regular visitor to Epstein's many homes.
"He had the most extraordinary ability to bring extraordinary people together," the Duke would later tell the BBC, without irony.
Giuffre later claimed that Epstein "debriefed her" after she was forced to have sex with his friends, providing him with "intimate and potentially embarrassing information".
For Andrew, who relished the company of the super-rich, the free travel and networking opportunities offered by Epstein were irresistible. Epstein helped pay off the Duchess of York's debts as she sought to avoid bankruptcy and opened doors for Andrew, introducing him to his contacts.
By May 2006, a warrant had been issued for Epstein's arrest after allegations involving underage girls first came to light, yet Epstein popped up three months later at Princess Beatrice's 18th birthday party at Windsor Castle, the Duke apparently unaware of his friend's legal predicament.
On June 30 2008, Epstein was jailed for 18 months, with house arrest for a year, and he was registered as a sex offender. Newspaper reports of the Duke's friendship with Epstein caused alarm in the palace, but it was not until 2011, when the News of the World published a photograph of the Duke strolling with Epstein in New York's Central Park, that it became a full-blown crisis.
Prince Andrew speaks during an interview at the Royal Chapel of All Saints at Royal Lodge, Windsor, on April 11, 2021. Photo / AP
It spawned the headline "Prince Andy & The Paedo" and led to the UK government dropping him as its roving trade ambassador. One week after the Epstein photo was published came another bombshell; the hitherto unknown Virginia Roberts sold her story to The Mail on Sunday, alleging that she had been trafficked by Epstein to London to meet Andrew, complete with a picture of the Duke with his arm around her waist.
The location for this mysterious 2001 rendezvous? Maxwell's London home.
The first hint of her allegations concerning Andrew had come in an anonymised civil lawsuit lodged against Epstein in 2009, in which she alleged that she had been sexually exploited by his "adult male peers, including royalty". The case was settled out of court for US$500,000.
The explosive claim that she had repeatedly been forced to have sex with Andrew first came to light in January 2015, in legal papers lodged with a Florida court. "Jane Doe #3 was forced to have sexual relations with this Prince when she was a minor in three separate geographical locations: in London (at Ghislaine Maxwell's apartment), in New York, and on Epstein's private island in the US Virgin Islands," the documents said.
"Epstein instructed Jane Doe #3 that she was to give the Prince whatever he demanded and required Jane Doe #3 to report back to him on the details of the sexual abuse."
Buckingham Palace was forced to issue its first denial, stating that any suggestion the Duke was involved in "impropriety with under-age minors is categorically untrue". The Queen was said to be horrified.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre holds a news conference outside a Manhattan court on August 27, 2019, in New York. Photo / AP
Royal sources also denied the claim - made in court documents - that when Epstein was arrested, the Duke had lobbied on his behalf to avoid prosecution and obtain a lesser sentence. In the event, a federal judge ruled in April 2015 that Giuffre could not join the joint criminal lawsuit and her allegations against the Duke were described as "immaterial and impertinent" to the case.
Epstein was found dead in a New York jail cell in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
But prosecutors vowed to continue to investigate the "conspiracy" of sex trafficking minors, and said their attention would now turn to living associates of Epstein.
The Duke decided it was time to get on the front foot and in November of that year, he sat down to be interviewed by Emily Maitlis for a Newsnight special. It was a disaster.
Asked whether he now regretted his friendship with Epstein, the Duke's response spoke volumes.
"Now, still not," he said, with a sincere shake of the head. "And the reason being is that the people that I met and the opportunities that I was given to learn either by him or because of him were actually very useful."
Empathy for Epstein's victims was absent, and there was no expression of regret over his friendship.
Within days, as charities deserted him, the Duke, who had not sought the Queen's permission for the interview, issued an apologetic statement announcing that he would be stepping back from public life. For the first time, he said he would fully cooperate with US law enforcement agencies.
Queen Elizabeth II is followed by Prince Andrew as she walks in the paddock the first day of Royal Ascot horse racing meet at Ascot, England, on June 16, 2015. Photo / AP
In January 2020, Geoffrey Berman, a US attorney for the Southern District of New York, revealed that the FBI and US prosecutors had asked to interview the Duke about Epstein but had received "zero co-operation".
The Duke was said to be "angry and bewildered" by the claims and insisted he had received no such request. Berman returned to the theme two months later, insisting again that contrary to Andrew's "very public offer to co-operate" he had completely shut the door, raising the prospect that he could be subpoenaed to give evidence.
As the pressure mounted, the Duke assembled a legal team that could operate independently from palace lawyers.
In July 2020, the pressure cranked up another notch with the arrest (and eventual conviction) of Maxwell, but it was not until August 2021, when Giuffre lodged a civil lawsuit, that the endgame began.
An attempt to have the case dismissed, based on a 2009 settlement Giuffre had made with Epstein, failed, leaving the Duke facing a humiliating jury trial, scheduled for the autumn.
In the end, he had no option but to settle. Stripped of his military titles and patronages, unable to use the HRH title, cut adrift by his own family, Andrew, who will be 62 on Saturday, now faces living the rest of his life in the shadows.
