Virginia Giuffre, the most prominent accuser in the Jeffrey Epstein case says Netflix's soon-to-come-out The Crown is "so not right" over an apparent reference to her allegations against Prince Andrew.
"Is sexual abuse now entertaining?", Giuffre queried on Twitter tagging the new show due to be released next month.
Its upcoming fourth season depicts the now embattled Duke of York opening up on his relationship with American actress Koo Stark, who he dated in 1981, according to The Times of London. The newspaper remarks that the episode at one point makes reference to one of the characters from Stark's acting biography who has to entertain several "old predators seducing the vulnerable, helpless young Emily". The reference is reportedly to the 1976 movie "The Awakening of Emily", depicted by The New Zealand Herald as a perfectly selling soft core porn film.
The heroine is only 17, the same age as Giuffre at the time she says she was forced into having sex with Prince Andrew by the notorious Ghislaine Maxwell-Epstein couple, and is accosted by grown-up men.
Although no direct reference is made to the late paedophile and the scene takes place decades before Giuffre's allegation, a number of lines from the episode were interpreted by The Times, which was given an ahead-of-release look at the new fourth season, as an obvious reference to the allegations Andrew would face years later.
Amid the pressure unleashed by the Duke of York's bombshell interview with the BBC in late 2019, in which he notoriously failed to condemn Epstein and ties with the disgraced financier, the British Queen's second son had to step down from senior royal duties and quit public life. The controversy had another twist months earlier, as the Duke was embroiled in a legal debacle over his expected testimony to the US attorney general's office, with Andrew's lawyers complaining that the latter treated their client as a suspect, rather than a witness.
Allegations against Prince Andrew, namely that he engaged in sex with a minor, which he has been denying, gained fresh momentum after the arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell on sex trafficking and abuse charges, almost a year after the death of her notorious pal Jeffrey Epstein in his Manhattan prison cell last August.
Maxwell is currently awaiting trial, preliminarily slated for next summer, which may ultimately put her behind bars for up to 35 years, if she's proven guilty on all six of the federal charges brought against her. The indictment includes perjury in earlier proceedings, direct involvement in sexual abuse, and grooming of underage victims for Epstein.