After Prince Andrew denied ever having sexual relations with one of Jeffrey Epstein’s traffic victims, Virginia Roberts Giuffre has publicly called him a liar.
“He knows what happened; I know what happened, and there’s only one of us telling the truth,” Virginia told the BBC in an interview, as reported by Fox News.
The full interview will air on December 2nd. A brief 20-second clip of a noticeably distraught Virginia was released online:
“He knows what happened, I know what happened and there’s only one of us telling the truth.”
The Prince and the Epstein Scandal | @BBCOne | Monday 2nd December, 9pm#BBCPanorama pic.twitter.com/tMIwWBztRR
— Panorama 🌐 (@BBCPanorama) November 28, 2019
Virginia claimed in a 2015 lawsuit that Epstein recruited her to have sex with his powerful friends when she was just 15 years old, alleging that one of her sexual encounters with Prince Andrew occurred when she was just 17. Though a photograph she provided shows the British royal with his arm around her waist at the time, it’s not clear if the meeting was a brief encounter. Prince Andrew has denied all the charges against him.
“I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady, none whatsoever,” said Andrew in a public interview that media experts agree was disastrous. “I stayed with him and that’s [something] I kick myself for on a daily basis because it was not something that was becoming of a member of the royal family and we try and uphold the highest standards and practices and I let the side down, simple as that.”
“I have absolutely no memory of that photograph,” the prince insisted. “I’m afraid to say that I don’t believe that photograph was taken in the way that has been suggested.”
During the interview on the BBC, Prince Andrew did himself no favors when he blamed his friendship with Epstein on his “honor.”
“The problem was the fact that once he had been convicted I stayed with him,” the Duke of York said. “That’s the bit I kick myself for on a daily basis because it was not something that was becoming of a member of the Royal Family and we try and uphold the highest standards and practices and I let the side down, simple as that.”
Prince Andrew went on to describe Epstein’s home as a “convenient place to stay” despite Epstein being a convicted sex offender.
“There is … I mean I’ve gone through this in my mind so many times,” Andrew said. “At the end of the day, with a benefit of all the hindsight that one could have, it was definitely the wrong thing to do. But at the time I felt it was the honorable and right thing to do and I admit fully that my judgement was probably colored by my tendency to be too honorable, but that’s just the way it is.”
In the interview’s aftermath, the prince’s place in the royal family has been all-but-destroyed, with the cancelation of his 60th birthday and Queen Elizabeth booting him from the Buckingham Palace entirely.
“Just days after the British royal announced he was ‘stepping away’ from public duties for the ‘foreseeable future,’ Andrew was forced to pull out of a trip to Bahrain for an international meeting of his Pitch@Palace organization, which promotes entrepreneurs and new ideas in tech,” reported Fox News. “Andrew’s office is also set to be moved out of Buckingham Palace and center around Pitch rather than his own official royal work.”