Britain's Prince Andrew has said on August 18, 2019 he was "appalled" by allegations of sexual abuse surrounding Jeffrey Epstein after a video was released purporting to show him at the home of the convicted paedophile in 2010.LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images
The video, dark and grainy, shows a man identified as Prince Andrew of Britain standing in a doorway and waving goodbye to a young woman, then giving a look around before quickly shutting the door.
The footage was published on Sunday by The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, which says it was taken in December 2010 at a mansion in New York City owned by Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted pedophile who hanged himself in his jail cell this month. At the time, Epstein was a registered sex offender.
In response, Buckingham Palace issued a statement Monday saying that the prince was “appalled” by the allegations against Epstein and rejecting any suggestion that the prince would take part in the “exploitation of any human being.” The statement did not challenge the authenticity of the video.
“His Royal Highness deplores the exploitation of any human being and the suggestion he would condone, participate in or encourage any such behavior is abhorrent,” the statement said.
The palace does not usually comment on sex scandals, but this was the second statement it issued this month amid repeated scrutiny of Andrew and other global figures who socialized with the disgraced billionaire.
It is not the prince’s first brush with scandal.
Over the years, the second-born son of Queen Elizabeth II has come under criticism for his associations with Epstein. In 2011, he resigned under pressure from his post as Britain’s trade envoy after a photograph was published showing the two men walking together in Central Park. Andrew later acknowledged that their friendship had been a mistake.
That same year, Stephen Day, the former head of the British Foreign Office’s Middle East section, wrote a letter to the heads of three government departments questioning the prince’s performance as trade envoy. He cited a number of troubling relationships the prince maintained, such as one with family members of the corruption-riddled government of the ousted Tunisian president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
In the letter, published in The Daily Telegraph, Day complained that the prince’s activities made it seem as if the British government “is content to work closely with dodgy fixers and politicians.”
Several days before Epstein’s death, new allegations against Andrew spilled out in a cache of court documents unsealed by a court in Manhattan. These included the accusation that he touched a young woman’s breast while sitting on a couch inside Epstein’s Manhattan mansion in 2001.
The documents also include a photograph of Andrew with his arm around the waist of Virginia Giuffre, who claims that Epstein paid her to have sexual encounters with the prince when she was 17 years old.
Buckingham Palace has repeatedly denied the claims, which were first made by Giuffre in 2015.
“This relates to proceedings in the United States, to which the Duke of York is not a party,” a spokeswoman for the palace said in a statement last week. “Any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue.”
Andrew and Epstein became friends in the late 1990s after being introduced by Ghislaine Maxwell, a British socialite, who was Epstein’s girlfriend at the time. Through the years, Epstein hosted the prince at his New York mansion and several of his holiday homes including in Palm Beach, Florida, The Guardian has reported. Andrew has also hosted Epstein at various royal residences, including Windsor Castle.
Since coming back into the spotlight over the Epstein scandal, the prince has kept a low profile at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, where the queen spends her summer holidays. Last week he was photographed smiling with his mother as they traveled to church together.
On the weekend the prince was spotted at a resort in Spain with his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported. In 2011, the duchess was criticized for accepting $18,000 from Epstein to pay off her debts. She apologized and said accepting the money was a “gigantic error of judgment.”
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