The woman who says she was an underage trafficking victim forced into sex with Prince Andrew when she was 17 has appealed to the British public to support her quest for justice.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre told BBC Panorama that people “should not accept this as being OK.”
“This is not some sordid sex story. This is a story of being trafficked, this is a story of abuse and this is a story of your guys' royalty,” Giuffre told the program, aired on Monday.
Appearing in her first UK television interview on the scandalous topic, Giuffre opens up on how she claims to have been trafficked by notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein since 2001.
The televised documentary offered a glimpse into how the convicted sex predator Epstein, now dead, reportedly abused dozens of young women at his luxury properties in the Caribbean and New York. It also quoted Giuffre's account of being ordered to have sex with Andrew on three occasions, including once in London.
Giuffre, now 35, described how she was reportedly recruited by Ghislaine Maxwell to give Epstein massages when she was working as a locker room attendant at Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, FL., and later taken to London to meet Prince Andrew.
In the interview Giuffre is shown close to tears as she describes the humiliation she felt when forced to have sex with the Duke of York at a townhouse in London after a night out at the exclusive Tramp nightclub. She claimed she was told to dance with him by Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein's alleged girlfriend at the time.
“It was horrible and this guy was sweating all over me,'' she said, and continued:
“His sweat was like it was raining basically everywhere, I was just like grossed out from it, but I knew I had to keep him happy because that's what Jeffrey and Ghislaine (Maxwell) would have expected from me."
The alleged sex trafficking victim said that Maxwell told her she would have to do for Prince Andrew what she had done for Epstein, meaning she would have to have sex with him.
“That just made me sick,'' Giuffre said.
“There was a bath… It started there, then went into the bedroom. It didn't last very long, the whole procedure. It was disgusting,'' described Giuffre.
Afterwards, according to her, “He got up and he said “Thanks”. I sat there in bed, just horrified and ashamed and felt dirty.””
Referring to that period of her life, the mother-of-three revealed she felt trapped:
“It was a wicked time in my life. It was a really scary time in my life. I had just been abused by a member of the royal family ... Yeah, I didn't have chains, but these powerful people were my chains.''
She also admitted that while she might have some dates and places confused, she was certain of the key facts.
The Disgraced Prince
The royal family and Prince Andrew have strongly denied involvement in any crime or of having had knowledge of the crimes committed by Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison in August.
The Duke of York also categorically denied having sex with Giuffre, as he recently appeared in a BBC Newsnight interview to defended his friendship with Epstein and dismiss all allegations.
Since then, the Prince is reported to have stepped down from public duties over the Epstein scandal, as having “caused a major disruption for the royal family.”
He says he is willing to cooperate with appropriate law enforcement inquiries if required to do so, amidst a scandal perceived as one of the worst to have gripped the royal household in recent decades.
US law enforcement agencies have not commented publicly on whether the Prince’s actions are being investigated.
Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex abuser, had been under investigation for nearly two decades at the time of his suspicious death in custody earlier this year.
His death in jail was ruled a suicide by a coroner but generated suspicion as the influential American pedophile was reportedly linked to many famous and powerful people, including US Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.
Epstein had pleaded not guilty to all charges but would have faced up to 45 years in prison had he been convicted.