Prince Andrew and the under-age 'sex slave': Duke of York is named in underage 'sex slave' lawsuit over claims of forced sexual relations

 

Prince Andrew abused an underage girl at an orgy where she was being used as a sex slave, it was sensationally claimed last night.

In an extraordinary legal allegation, a woman said she was ‘forced’ to have sex with him at parties in London, New York and the Caribbean.

Last night the prince issued a strongly-worded denial, with Buckingham Palace saying ‘any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue’. But his alleged victim immediately hit back by saying she would not be ‘bullied into silence by aggressive attacks’.

     

Prince Andrew pictured with his arm around Virginia Roberts  in 2001. 
Smiling Ghislaine is just behind them

The woman – named only as Jane Doe #3 but said to be 30-year-old Virginia Roberts – says in court documents she was told to ‘give the prince whatever he demanded’ by his friend Jeffrey Epstein, the US billionaire paedophile who hosted the sordid parties.

She claimed she and other underage girls were ‘procured for sexual activities’ by Ghislaine Maxwell, the socialite daughter of crooked tycoon Robert Maxwell.

Miss Maxwell is alleged to have facilitated the prince’s ‘abuse’ of the girl, after helping Epstein to convert her ‘into what is commonly referred to as a sex slave’.

     

 Miss Roberts claims that she met the Prince at the 

London home of Ghislaine Maxwell, pictured

Miss Maxwell is described as a madam and ‘a primary co-conspirator in [Epstein’s] sexual abuse and sex trafficking scheme’.

Legal documents lodged with a court in Florida name Andrew, 54, as one of three men allegedly involved in abusing the woman 13 years ago when she was 17 – which is underage in Florida state law.

The bombshell papers state: ‘One such powerful individual Epstein forced [her] to have sexual relations with was a member of the British Royal Family, Prince Andrew, aka Duke of York.’ The claim names three locations, saying one involved an orgy with numerous underaged girls. It alleges: ‘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.’

Epstein, a long-term friend of Prince Andrew, was one of the best-connected men in America until he was jailed for 13 months in 2008 for soliciting girls for underage prostitution.

      

The prince stayed friends with him despite his conviction and they were seen together in 2011 after Epstein’s release from jail.

Last night a Buckingham Palace spokesman said: ‘This relates to long-standing and ongoing civil proceedings in the United States, to which the Duke of York is not a party. As such we would not comment on the detail.

‘However, for the avoidance of doubt, any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue.’ Until now Buckingham Palace has refused to comment on stories around the case, but last night lawyers for the prince advised his private office to release a statement, given the high-profile nature of the latest legal salvo, which made headlines around the world.

      

 Miss Roberts, Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein

His accuser countered with a statement issued through her lawyers that said: ‘I am looking forward to vindicating my rights as an innocent victim and pursuing all available recourse. It appears that I am now being unjustly victimised again.

‘These types of aggressive attacks on me are exactly the reason why sexual abuse victims typically remain silent and the reason why I did for a long time. That trend should change. I’m not going to be bullied back into silence.’

    

 Friends: Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein

Although she was not named in court documents, she was being linked in America to Miss Roberts, who as a teenager was photographed standing next to Andrew.

Jane Doe #3 has made similar allegations against Harvard Law School expert Alan Dershowitz and a French model scout. Professor Dershowitz strenuously denies the claims, telling the Politico website: ‘It’s totally, unequivocally and completely false’.

Epstein was suspected nearly a decade ago of paying for sex with dozens of underage girls. The FBI ultimately dropped its investigation and, in a ‘plea bargain’, he admitted a single offence and served 13 months of an 18-month jail sentence.

      

 Ghislaine Maxwell pictured with Jeffrey Epstein

The documents, filed at West Palm Beach Federal Courthouse in Florida, are part of an ongoing civil dispute between Epstein and four of his alleged victims. The latest issue refers to his plea-bargain which two unnamed victims, Jane Doe #1 and Jane Doe #2, say prosecutors should not have agreed.

Jane Doe #3 and Jane Doe #4 have joined their legal action. Last night there was no response to requests for comment from Miss Maxwell. Epstein’s lawyer, Jack Goldberger, said the allegations were ‘old and salacious and ‘been consistently proven to have no merit’.

BILL CLINTON FINGERED IN CHILD SEX RING: Teenager claims she was picked to provide erotic services for Epstein and friends

The anonymous woman who yesterday made sensational sex claims about Prince Andrew was identified in court papers only as Jane Doe #3.

But sources in the US last night linked her allegations to an account given by blonde mother-of-three Virginia Roberts five years ago. Miss Roberts made a series of sensational claims which drew Prince Andrew into the heart of the scandal over paedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.

Jane Doe #3 claims she ‘was forced to have sexual relations’ with the prince when she was under the age of consent.

Miss Roberts’s story – which is chronicled both in legal documents and in a detailed newspaper interview – offers a fascinating, often chilling insight into Epstein’s debauchery. She claimed the shamed American tycoon introduced her to the jetset world of the powerful, the fabulously rich and the famous – from the Duke of York to former US President Bill Clinton, former Vice-President Al Gore, Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey, Donald Trump and former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

It was also a sordid world of abuse where she is said to have been treated as a ‘sex slave’, passed around at the behest of Epstein and first abused as a minor. Epstein is also accused in the court papers of loaning out girls so he could later blackmail their abusers. A settlement was reached by Miss Roberts with Epstein five years ago, but some of the claims in the new documents lodged in the Florida courts mirror those of the earlier case.

Miss Roberts had claimed she had not only been abused by Epstein but had jetted around the world with him and was ‘sexually exploited by [his] adult male peers, including royalty, politicians, academicians, businessmen and/or professional and personal acquaintances’.

Now 30 and living in California, Miss Roberts was 15 and working as a changing room assistant at a club in Palm Beach, Florida, owned by Mr Trump, when she met Epstein.

Epstein’s close friend Ghislaine Maxwell, the glamorous and well-connected daughter of disgraced tycoon Robert Maxwell, allegedly approached the pretty, blue-eyed teenager and offered her the chance to work for a wealthy ‘gentleman’ who needed a travelling masseuse.

They visited Epstein’s mansion nearby where she was said to have been ordered to strip and straddle his naked body. ‘My face was red with embarrassment but I felt under immense pressure to please them,’ she said.

‘The whole time it was going on, they were promising me the world, that I’d travel with Jeffrey on his private jet and have a well-paid profession.’

Epstein paid her $200 for what he called the ‘erotic massage’ and told her to return the next day.

She spent the next four years with Epstein. For three of those years, she was under Florida’s age of consent – 18.

‘Basically, I was training to be a prostitute for him and his friends who shared his interest in young girls,’ she says.

 

Miss Roberts final encounter with the prince was on  Epstein's Caribbean island

That stage of his alleged abuse started after two years when he asked Miss Roberts to fly to his Caribbean island and make a friend of his ‘feel how you make me feel’.

She says she was given to men, aged from their 40s to their 60s, either on the island or on Epstein’s New Mexico ranch.  

Miss Roberts claims she met Prince Andrew three times.

She claims she accompanied Epstein on a six-week trip to Europe and North Africa in 2001, and they went to Miss Maxwell’s London house.

The following day, Andrew arrived and Miss Maxwell served tea and biscuits to the four of them.

It is alleged Miss Maxwell invited the prince to guess Virginia’s age and he correctly said ‘17’, at which Miss Maxwell joked that Jeffrey would ‘soon have to trade her in’.

After dinner and a trip to Tramp nightclub, where she danced with the prince, they returned to Miss Maxwell’s house. 

They all went upstairs and Virginia asked Epstein to take a picture of her with Andrew to ‘show my mom’. She adds: ‘Ghislaine and Jeffrey left us after that, and later Andrew left.’

The following morning, Miss Maxwell allegedly told her: ‘You did well. He had fun.’ At the time of that interview, there were no claims that the prince had been involved with Miss Roberts.

 

 Jeffrey Epstein's apartment in New York, where Prince Andrew is said to have stayed

She says she met Andrew a second time at Easter 2001, finding him sitting in a leather armchair at Epstein’s Manhattan home.

Her final encounter with the prince was on Epstein’s Caribbean island, by which time she was 18.

Miss Roberts also told of meetings Mr Clinton but says she was never ‘lent out’ to him.

      

She said: ‘I only ever met Bill twice but Jeffrey had told me that they were good friends.

‘I asked, “How come?” and he laughed and said, “He owes me some favours.” Maybe he was just joking but it constantly surprised me that people with as much to lose as Bill and [Prince] Andrew weren’t more careful.’

On one occasion, Miss Roberts claimed, Epstein invited two young brunettes to a dinner which he gave on his Caribbean island for Mr Clinton shortly after he left office. But, as far as she knows, the ex-President did not take the bait.

‘I’d have been about 17 at the time,’ she says. ‘I flew to the Caribbean with Jeffrey and then Ghislaine Maxwell went to pick up Bill in a huge black helicopter that Jeffrey had bought her. Bill must have known about Jeffrey’s girls. There were three desks in the living area of the villa on the island.

‘They were covered with pictures of Jeffrey shaking hands with famous people and photos of naked girls, including one of me that Jeffrey had at all his houses, lying in a hammock.

‘We all dined together that night. Jeffrey was at the head of the table. Bill was at his left. I sat across from him. Ghislaine was at Bill’s left and at the left of Ghislaine there were two olive-skinned brunettes who’d flown in with us from New York.

‘I’d never met them before. I’d say they were no older than 17, very innocent-looking.

‘They weren’t there for me. They weren’t there for Jeffrey or Ghislaine because I was there to have sex with Jeffrey on the trip. Maybe Jeffrey thought they would entertain Bill, but I saw no evidence that he was interested in them. He and Jeffrey and Ghislaine seemed to have a very good relationship. Bill was very funny.

‘After dinner I gave Jeffrey an erotic massage. I don’t remember seeing Bill again on the trip but I assume Ghislaine flew him back.’

Miss Roberts also remembered meeting Naomi Campbell at a birthday party on a yacht in the South of France. ‘She is a friend of Ghislaine’s but she was a real bitch to me,’ she said.

Within a few months, she recalled, Epstein was hinting she was ‘too old’ for him although he and Miss Maxwell once disgusted her, she claimed, by suggesting she had a child by him. ‘They said I would have to sign a contract relinquishing rights to the child and consenting to Jeffrey having as many relationships as he liked,’ she says. ‘It was a smack in the face.’

For her 19th birthday, Epstein flew Miss Roberts to Thailand to take a massage course. She met an Australian martial arts expert there and married him ten days later.

She had three children and lived in Australia but last night she was said to living in her home state of California – she had run away from home as an 11 year-old.

After his arrest in 2008, Epstein was jailed for 18 months on two charges of soliciting a minor for sex. He was released after 13 months and placed on the sex offender register for life. He mostly lives at his home on the Virgin Islands.

Lawyers for the women, including Jane Doe #3, are seeking a motion to expose a secret deal Epstein struck with prosecutors to avoid a lengthy sentence and a charge of statutory rape.

Miss Maxwell could not be reached for comment last night, but lawyers acting on her behalf have previously told the Mail that Epstein’s crimes were committed long after their client ceased to have dealings with him.