Prince Andrew has been distancing himself from longtime friend and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who hanged himself in a cell last month.
Queen Elizabeth II’s second son, 59, who enjoys the title of Duke of York, has insisted he first met Epstein, who was 66, in 1999. But flight logs show that the prince’s ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, with whom he has remained close, and their two daughters were with Epstein in the Bahamas in April 1998.
Virginia Giuffre, who alleges Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell exploited her when she was underage, has accused the prince of forcing her to have sex with him when she was 17, publicly took him to task last week. “He knows exactly what he’s done,” Giuffre said on the from the steps of a Manhattan courthouse. “And I hope he comes clean about it.”
Days earlier, the prince had said he was “at a loss to be able to understand or explain” his dead friend’s “lifestyle.” The royal downplayed his closeness with Epstein, referring to their relationship as a “former association or friendship.” He claimed to be in the dark about any of Epstein’s alleged sex crimes involving underage girls, despite a friendship spanning well over a decade, repeated visits to and stays at Epstein’s various homes, and flights on Epstein’s planes.
The prince said he met Epstein in 1999 and claimed he saw Epstein infrequently, “probably no more than only once or twice a year.” It was, he added, “a mistake and an error” to visit him in 2010 after his sex conviction.
But the claims of short and infrequent visits are belied by Andrew’s lengthy stays at Epstein’s homes. Andrew spent multiple days on Epstein’s private island in February 1999, and in 2000 the two saw each other nearly a half a dozen times or more in the United Kingdom and the United States, with Andrew reportedly staying at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion multiple times, apparently followed by a New Year’s excursion to Thailand in early 2001. – READ MORE