Daily Telegraph launches hatchet into Prince Andrew accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre
Look out! Prince Andrew is back. But he’s not the main thrust of Daily Telegraph‘s story. That honour befalls Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the American who says she was brought to the UK from the US aged 17 by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in 2001 to have sex with his friend Prince Andrew. She told BBC Panorama Prince Andrew was “the most hideous dancer I’ve ever seen in my life” and “his sweat was like it was raining basically everywhere”.
She says she had sex with Andrew three times: “I knew I had to keep him happy, because it’s what Jeffrey and Ghislaine (Maxwell, Epstein’s then girlfriend) would expect from me.”
Andrew then went on the telly and said that he didn’t remember meeting Virginia Guiffre, that photo of him with his arm around her bare midriff taken by Epstein at Ms Maxwell’s London flat might be fake. Oh, and he had a medical condition at the time that meant he did not sweat.
And so the story about an alleged teenaged victim of a very entitled and wealthy middle-aged man being “on the game”. Camilla Tominey raises the hatchet and starts to chip away at the accuser’s image. She is billed as Andrew’s “chief accuser”. Is she really the head of a posse? Aren’t all his accusers of equal weight? But you lop off the head and kill the body, maybe?
Prince Andrew’s chief accuser was a prostitute who lied about her age and was paid “half a million” by Jeffrey Epstein, new court papers allege.
How old was she when she allegedly turned to sex work? She claims she was 17 when Andrew had sex with her. So that would be 16? Or was she 15 when she entered sex work?
Virginia Roberts Giuffre (37), who claims to have had sex with Andrew three times when she was 17, was allegedly “on the game for about a year” before she met Ghislaine Maxwell, who is accused of sex trafficking her and a number of other young women in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
You might at this point feel some sympathy for Virginia Roberts Giuffre. You might consider sex work a sound career chose for a 15/16-year-old. But the story is presented to shape your thinking:
Ms Giuffre has always insisted she is a victim and was never a willing participant. She claims the men who abused her have been using their wealth and influence to keep her quiet.
Can’t an alleged sex worker be a victim of a sex crime, especially one so young? And then we read a list of accusations against the accuser.
Allegations contained in newly filed legal documents claim that Ms Giuffre was 16, not 15, when she first met Ms Maxwell in Florida. She is also accused of changing a story about meeting Donald Trump and that she confused one of the men accused of being involved in sex trafficking, allegedly a Harvard professor, with another professor. The Harvard professor vehemently denies the allegations.
Teenagers, eh. Some get to plan huge weddings with desirable bachelors, like Andrew’s daughter Beatrice, who for her wedding was plated in the Queen’s Greville Emerald Kokoshnik Tiara, made by Boucheron in 1919, featuring brilliant and rose-cut diamonds, pave set in platinum, with six emeralds on either side. They get horses, palaces and maids.
In 2011, Edward Klein wrote in Vanity Fair:
Among other things, Andrew has been accused of hosting a lunch at Buckingham Palace for Mohamed Sakher El Materi, the billionaire son-in-law of the now deposed Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and of accepting a gift of a $30,000 gold necklace for his daughter Beatrice from a convicted Libyan gun smuggler. (A spokesman for the Palace says it doesn’t comment on private gifts to members of the royal family.)
Some teens get the lot. Other teens get to be labelled “prostitutes” in the Press, a word that stings with accusation.
The claims emerged in a transcript of a conversation between Sharon Churcher, the journalist who first revealed Ms Giuffre to be an Epstein victim in a 2011 newspaper interview, and Tony Lyons, a New York publisher.
So she was a victim of Epstein’s. That was “revealed”. Epstein died in mysterious circumstances whilst awaiting trial in New York prison cell. We can’t ask him. So what do we know?
Ms Churcher admits that Ms Giuffre “got paid” for the interview, in which she says she was recruited by Ms Maxwell to become Epstein’s masseuse.
Referring to Ms Giuffre, Ms Churcher said: “She took a year off (her age). Apparently she was 16, not 15, when she was recruited (by Epstein). But she’d be on the game for about a year then.”
…
“Because you see, Epstein paid her off. She had settled with Epstein. She’d taken half a million, I think,” Ms Churcher said.
So much for what she “admits”. Do we know anything more of Ms Churcher? Do we get to see the entire conversation between her and Mr Lyons, whose “Skyhorse group has published books by Alan Dershowitz, Epstein’s former lawyer who Ms Giuffre claimed she was trafficked to six times as a minor.” The lawyer denies any wrongdoing.
Chuck Cooper, representing Ms Giuffre, said: “We look forward to taking Ms Churcher’s deposition under oath.”
Representatives for Mr Dershowitz declined to comment. Representatives for Ms Churcher did not respond to a request for comment.
The good things about the writer’s take on the case is that we realise it matters how the story is presented – and we all get to be reminded of a story Andrew would like dead and buried. You know, like Epstein is.
Posted: 9th, December 2020 | In: Broadsheets, News, Royal Family Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
