Prince Andrew has been accused of taking part in a 10-in-a-bed Caribbean orgy by the woman who claims she was kept as a sex slave by Jeffrey Epstein.
Buckingham Palace has long feared that rumors of Prince Andrew’s adventurous love life and multiple affairs could explode into public view. That alarming prospect moved one step closer to reality Thursday morning with a front page Sun newspaper splash based on the latest allegations filed in a Florida court.
Anxiety at the palace will be fueled by the prominence and tone of the new story, which indicates that, for Andrew at least, the kid gloves with which the royals have been treated since Britain’s Leveson Inquiry into phone hacking have now been discarded. Should the papers decide to pursue the gossip about sexual shenanigans swirling around Andrew, they would have enough material for dozens of front pages.
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The prince has been largely excluded from the royal inner circle for several years now, and the latest allegations will only serve to increase the sense that he is the outlier of the herd who can, perhaps, be picked off.
Despite the allegations, the prince attended a long-scheduled event at the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland on Thursday, and denied the claims publicly for the first time. "I wish to reiterate and reaffirm the statements already made on my behalf by Buckingham Palace,” he said. “My focus is my work."
He was at the summit to represent British business, although his decision to go ahead with the trip amid renewed scandal has attracted much criticism.
The Sun story is based on fresh court documents filed this week by the Epstein case’s Jane Doe 3, who has been named by other media outlets. The woman claims Prince Andrew’s denials that he had sex with her are “false and hurtful to me.”
“I did have sexual contact with him as I have described here—under oath,” she wrote. “Since I filed my motion in this case my credibility has been attacked. I am telling the truth,” she said. “They seem to think they don’t have to follow the same rules as everyone else. That is wrong.”
The woman says she was 17 and 18 at the time of the three alleged sexual encounters, allegedly undertaken at the behest of Epstein, who has been convicted of soliciting underage women for sex.
In her affidavit, Jane Doe 3 says she referred to the prince as “Andy” and was told by Epstein “to exceed” in her efforts to satisfy him: “He emphasised that whatever Prince Andrew wanted, I was to make sure he got.”
During a trip to Epstein’s private island amid the U.S. Virgin Islands, she claims that included a mass orgy with Andrew, Epstein, and nine girls.
“I knew he was a member of the British royal family, but I just called him Andy. The third time I had sex with Andy was in an orgy on Epstein’s private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. I was around 18 at the time. Epstein, Andy, approximately eight other young girls, and I had sex together. The other girls all seemed and appeared to be under 18 and didn’t really speak English.
“Afterwards we all had dinner by the cabanas. The other girls were chatting away among themselves, and Epstein and the Prince chatted together.
“I felt disgusted, and quickly went to sleep.”
Jane Doe 3 said she hoped that Andrew would accept what she was saying now that it has become public. “Given what he knows and has seen, I was hoping he would simply voluntarily tell the truth about everything. I hope my attorneys can interview Prince Andrew under oath about the contacts and that he will tell the truth,” she wrote.
Her lawyer, Jack Scarola, has written to Prince Andrew asking him to submit to questioning but court documents show that Federal Express was unable to deliver the letter to Buckingham Palace as it was “refused by the recipient” when it arrived this month.
