COMMENTARY BY DR JOHN WORLDPEACE FOR PRESIDENT 2016
We all know that all kinds of sex acts go on in the world human society. But you just have to wonder about the super rich who get caught up in these sex scandals.
All I am pointing out is that Prince Andrew is not going to be the standard bearer for women's rights.
You have to wonder what he is thinking when he shakes hands with young girls in his public appearances.
Dr John WorldPeace
150104 1400
SOURCE: The Telegraph
Prince Andrew prepares for grim year ahead as 'sex abuse' claims refuse to go away
Virginia Roberts claims she was paid £10,000 as a reward for having sex with the Duke of York and is now writing a memoir about her experiences
Gordon Rayner
By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter
8:01PM GMT 04 Jan 2015
The Duke of York knows he could spend months and perhaps years fighting off allegations that he had sex with a 17-year-old girl who was being kept as a “sex slave” by his former friend Jeffrey Epstein.
The Duke, 54, thought he had put the matter behind him three years ago when he stood down as the UK’s trade ambassador in 2011 following Virginia Roberts’s descriptions of her encounters with him in Epstein’s company.
But on Friday it emerged that an unnamed woman had alleged in court papers that she had been “sexually abused” by the Duke. That woman is now known to be Miss Roberts, who has now claimed that she was paid £10,000 by convicted sex offender Epstein as a reward for having sex with the Duke at the London home of Ghislaine Maxwell in 2001.
Buckingham Palace was forced over the weekend to issue an outright denial that the Prince had ever had “any form of sexual contact” with Miss Roberts.
That he met her, however, is not in doubt, as evidenced by a photograph of him with his arm around Miss Roberts at Miss Maxwell’s home.
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Miss Roberts is writing a memoir but could be tempted to speak out in the coming days after receiving large financial offers from newspapers and TV stations. If she does not, royal aides are resigned to the fact that an ongoing court case in the US will mean the story will not go away any time soon.
“He was grabbing my hips, pouring with perspiration”
Miss Roberts says that having been recruited as a “sex slave” by Epstein when she was just 15, she visited London in 2001, when she was 17, and was told by Miss Maxwell: “You’ve got a big day. We’ve gotta go shopping. You need a dress because you’re going to dance with a Prince tonight.”
Later that day the Duke arrived at Miss Maxwell’s flat, she says, with his police protection officers, and she was introduced to him. Miss Maxwell is alleged to have asked the Duke how old he though Miss Roberts was, and he correctly guessed 17. Miss Maxwell joked that Epstein “would soon have to trade her in” because she was getting too old for him, she claims.
The four went out to dinner, Miss Roberts sitting between Epstein and the Duke. “Andrew was making eye contact with me at every chance and concentrating on my plunging V-neck top,” she told the Mail on Sunday. “He didn’t ask me anything about myself. I just sat there with a smile frozen on my lips. Ghislaine had whispered ‘The Prince seems really interested in you’.
Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein were guests of the Duke of York at a Sandringham shoot
“We went on to [the nightclub] Tramp. We were led into a VIP area and Andrew got me a cocktail from the bar then he asked me to dance. He was the most hideous dancer I had ever seen. He was grabbing my hips and he was pouring with perspiration and he had this cheesy smile.”
“I was used to being used for sex by men but it was not behaviour that I was used to in public, and not from a Prince who had daughters. I felt everyone was watching us.”
Miss Maxwell has always denied Miss Roberts's claims and described them as "obvious lies".
“Sex with Andrew, then £10,000 payment”
After the four returned to Miss Maxwell’s townhouse, Miss Roberts said that: “All of us went upstairs and I asked Jeffrey to snap a picture of me with the Prince (below). I wanted something to show my Mom. Ghislaine and Jeffrey left us after that.”
In a separate interview with a US journalist in 2011, Miss Roberts said they got into a bath together where “he started licking my toes, between my toes, the arches of my feet. And then we went into the bedroom and he proceeded to make love to me, so to speak.
“He wasn’t rude, but it wasn’t like love either. It was more like, ‘I’m getting my business done’.
She told the Mail on Sunday: “In the morning, Ghislaine said: ‘You did well. He had fun.’ We flew straight back to the States. I suspected that the only reason we went to London was that I was a ‘gift’ to Andrew.
“It was made clear to me that my job was to do whatever pleased him.”
She now claims she was paid $15,000 (around £10,000) by Epstein as a reward for sleeping with the then 41-year-old Duke. She does not suggest the Duke knew about the payment, adding: “The Prince didn’t give me any money with his own hands. Jeffrey always took care of paying me after I ‘entertained’ his friends.”
The Duke denies any sexual encounter took place.
An “erotic massage”
Miss Roberts claimed the next time she met the Duke was in Easter 2001, when she was called in Florida and told she was needed at Epstein’s New York mansion. When she arrived, she says, she was told “get ready, you are meeting someone in the library”.
She said: “Andrew was sitting there in a big leather armchair behind which there was a desk covered with photos of girls and young women, including one of me. I was almost nude in the picture. I don’t think Andrew could have missed seeing it when he walked in. Ghislaine had just given him a present, some kind of big blow-up toy that was his Spitting Image puppet. He was smiling ear to ear. He looked like a kid whose parents were taking him to Disney World.”
She said a 21-year-old called Johanna Sjoberg, who worked for Epstein, was sitting on the Duke’s knee and Miss Maxwell told Miss Roberts to sit on his other knee.
She said Miss Maxwell told her to take the Duke upstairs for a massage. “I took him upstairs to the Dungeon. He undressed and lay face down on the table. I started with his feet, then his calves the way Jeffrey liked it.”
She says she had sex with the Duke on the massage table, but received no extra payment, “just my usual hourly rate, which at that time was $200”.
Again, Buckingham Palace denies her claims outright.
The island “orgy”
Miss Roberts claims her third and final sexual encounter with the Duke came on Little St James, Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands.
She said she flew to the island with Epstein and Miss Maxwell and that “seven Russian girls who didn’t speak a word of English” arrived with a modelling agent. The girls were told to pose topless in provocative positions for photographs, “then we were told to assemble in a big cabana [a thatched hut].
Jeffrey Epstein's private island, Little St James
“When I walked in, Andrew and Jeffrey were seated in chairs. Jeffrey directed us with hand gestures to start undressing and then we were instructed to start kissing and touching each other.
“Jeffrey and the Prince was laughing and then I stripped and I performed a sex act on Andrew. There was a dinner the next day and then Andrew was gone.”
Buckingham Palace denies any suggestion there was a sexual encounter between the Duke and Miss Roberts.
The hidden cameras
Miss Roberts claims she was ordered by Epstein to have sex with rich and powerful friends so he could blackmail them or exert pressure on them afterwards.
Court documents filed in Florida also state that photographs of Miss Roberts and other victims of Epstein “were taken with hidden cameras set up in his home in Palm Beach.
“On the day of his arrest, police found two hidden cameras and photographs of underage girls on a computer in the defendant’s home.”
The Duke of York is said to have visited the Palm Beach residence and enjoyed daily massages from young women when he was a guest of Epstein.
The “lobbying for a favourable plea deal”
Four of Epstein’s victims are taking legal action against the US authorities, claiming their victims’ rights were violated when Florida prosecutors cut a plea deal with Epstein without any consultation with his victims.
As part of that legal action, which has already rumbled on for seven years, the women have demanded access to documents which, they claim, will show that Epstein’s powerful friends, including the Duke of York, lobbied the US Government on his behalf.
Court papers seen by The Daily Telegraph state: “These documents…might bear on the way in which Epstein used his powerful political and social connections to secure a favourable plea deal…
“One clear example is Request for Production No. 8, which seeks documents regarding Epstein’s lobbying efforts to persuade the Government to give him a more favourable plea arrangement and/or non-prosecution agreement, including efforts on his behalf by Prince Andrew.”
Buckingham Palace has responded to the claim by saying that members of the Royal family would never intervene in an ongoing court case.
Immunity from prosecution?
Even if Virginia Roberts made a formal complaint to the US police about the Duke of York, Epstein’s 2008 plea deal would appear to give him immunity from prosecution.
Court papers filed in Florida state that: “Part of the Non-Prosecution Agreement that Epstein negotiated was a provision in which the federal government agreed not to prosecute Epstein’s co-conspirators.”
The US Attorney who agreed the plea deal with Epstein – which also included compensation payments to 34 victims - now appears to believe it was too lenient.
Alexander Acosta wrote a letter in 2011 in which he said that: “Some may feel that the prosecution should have been tougher. Evidence has come to light since 2007 which may encourage that view.
“Many victims have since spoken out, filing detailed statements in civil cases seeking damages. Physical evidence has since been discovered. Had these additional statements and evidence been known, the outcome may have been different.”
Miss Roberts’s father Sky, 58, said of the Duke: “I don’t care if he is prince or pauper. If what Virginia said is true he has to pay the consequences.
“If the Prince had sex with my daughter when she was underage, he has to be prosecuted.”
A memoir in the making
Virginia Roberts, now aged 30 and a mother of three, is working on a memoir which is likely to contain yet more details of her meetings with the Duke of York if it is ever published.
She is also understood to be listening to offers from newspapers and television stations to break her three-year silence, having previously spoken out in 2011, without on that occasion making any direct claims of sex with the Duke.
Speaking from Colorado, where she is staying with her mother Lynn, Miss Roberts said: “There will be a time when we explain stuff, just not this time.”
Her husband, Robert Giuffre, politely declined to speak, saying only: “I know there is so much interest.”