The family of Virginia Roberts Giuffre has hailed the decision to strip British royal Prince Andrew of his title as a “victory”.
“Today, an ordinary American girl from an ordinary American family brought down a British prince with her truth and extraordinary courage,” Giuffre’s family said in a statement.
Her brother, Sky Roberts, praised King Charles’s decision but said Andrew should face further investigation.
“We need to take it one more step further: he needs to be behind bars, period,” Roberts told the BBC.
On Thursday, the king stripped his younger brother of his titles and honours and forced him out of his Windsor mansion. He will now be known as plain Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, and will live on a property on the king’s Sandringham estate in Norfolk.
The dramatic move came a week after the publication of Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, which details how she had sex with Andrew when she was just 17, set up by disgraced paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein and his partner and co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
The sanction follows months of pressure over Andrew’s private life, as his ties to Epstein continued to dog the royals. Andrew, dubbed “Randy Andy” by the British tabloids when he was younger, has denied any wrongdoing.
It is almost unprecedented for a British prince or princess to be stripped of that title. It last happened in 1919, when Prince Ernest Augustus, who was a British royal and also a prince of Hanover, had his title removed for siding with Germany during World War I.
Giuffre’s memoir Nobody’s Girl includes an inside account of the two years she spent as a “sex slave” working for Epstein and Maxwell. Giuffre died by suicide in April this year, aged 41, on her farm in Western Australia.
Three weeks before she died, she e-mailed her co-author, journalist Amy Wallace, and long-time publicist Dini von Mueffling: “In the event of my passing, I would like to ensure that Nobody’s Girl is still released.”
Four days before the memoir was published, Andrew announced he would no longer use the titles conferred upon him, including Duke of York.
Told in four chronological parts — Daughter, Prisoner, Survivor and Warrior — the memoir meticulously records the “sexual assaulting, battering, exploiting and abusing” Giuffre endured throughout her life, most notably at the hands of Epstein and Maxwell.
Giuffre tells how she was trafficked to “a multitude of powerful men”, including Andrew, French modelling agent Jean-Luc Brunel, a prominent psychology professor and a respected US senator.
Giuffre writes that in March 2001, at Maxwell’s upscale townhouse in London’s Belgravia — where Andrew was famously pictured with his arm around the teenager — Maxwell invited Andrew to guess her age. When the prince correctly guessed 17, he reportedly told her, “My daughters are just a little younger than you.”
Later that night, she writes, Andrew bought the teenager cocktails at Tramp, an exclusive London nightclub, where she and the prince danced awkwardly and the prince “sweated profusely”. In the car on the way home Maxwell instructed Giuffre “to do for [Andrew] what you do for Jeffrey”.
In November 2019, in his calamitous interview with the BBC’s Newsnight, Andrew denied any wrongdoing, claiming he had “no recollection of ever meeting this lady”. He told presenter Emily Maitlis he could not have danced sweatily at Tramp because he had “a peculiar medical condition” that prevented perspiration, caused by what he described as “an overdose of adrenaline” in the Falklands War.
Giuffre describes Andrew as “friendly enough but entitled” — “as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright”. She alleges she had sex with the prince on two other occasions.
The Guardian reports that Andrew is in line to receive a large one-off payment and an annual stipend designed to prevent him overspending in his new life as a commoner.
One option for a relocation settlement, as the king strives for a “once and for all” solution, includes an initial six-figure sum to cover his move from Royal Lodge in Windsor to Sandringham.
This would be followed by an annuity paid from Charles’s private funds, sources close to the matter said.
A palace statement on Thursday said: “Their majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.”
— The Conversation
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.