In short
Podcast Summary: The News Agents - Prince Andrew and the Epstein Scandal
Episode Overview Title: Prince Andrew and the Epstein scandal - Virginia Giuffre in her own words Hosts: Emily Maitlis, Jon Sopel, and Lewis Goodall Description: This episode explores the memoir of Virginia Giuffre, detailing her experiences of abuse by Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew, who continues to deny these allegations. The discussion delves into the implications of her story for justice, complicity, and power dynamics.
Key Themes and Discussions
Virginia Giuffre's Memoir
- Title: *Nobody's Girl*
- Content: A harrowing account of abuse, pain, and control, written in the belief that her story could help others.
- Impact: The memoir seeks to shed light on the systemic issues surrounding abuse and complicity, particularly highlighting the roles of powerful men.
Prince Andrew's Position
- Andrew's recent statement suggests he is distancing himself from royal duties due to ongoing accusations, claiming they distract from the royal family's work.
- Despite this, he retains his title and residence, raising questions about the adequacy of his accountability.
The Role of Ghislaine Maxwell
- Maxwell is portrayed as a critical figure in the abuse network, described as an "apex predator."
- Virginia’s relationship with Maxwell is discussed, illustrating how Maxwell aided in the grooming and control of young women.
Virginia's Personal Experiences
- Virginia recounts early abuse from family and subsequent exploitation by various individuals, ultimately leading her into the orbit of Epstein and Maxwell.
- Her experiences highlight the complex dynamics of control, manipulation, and victimhood.
Complicity and Agency
- Virginia describes feelings of complicity in the abuse, having procured other girls for Epstein and Andrew.
- The episode discusses how manipulation and threats can render victims feeling culpable and powerless.
Allegations Against Prince Andrew
- Virginia claims Andrew had sex with her multiple times, including during an alleged orgy with other women.
- Andrew's continuous denials contrast sharply with the detailed accounts provided by Virginia, creating skepticism about his claims of innocence.
Broader Implications
- The discussion extends beyond Prince Andrew to encompass the systemic failures that allow powerful individuals to escape justice.
- The hosts emphasize the importance of understanding the collective complicity of societal structures and individuals in the perpetuation of abuse.
Key Takeaways
- Justice for Victims: The episode raises critical questions about the accessibility of justice for survivors of abuse, especially when facing powerful figures.
- Cultural Complicity: There is an exploration of how societal norms and powerful networks facilitate the evasion of accountability for abusers.
- Call to Action: Virginia's narrative serves as a reminder of the importance of amplifying survivor voices and advocating for systemic change.
Conclusion This episode is a poignant reminder of the ongoing implications of the Epstein scandal and the need for accountability in cases of abuse. It highlights the struggles of victims like Virginia Giuffre and the societal structures that often protect the powerful at the expense of justice. The podcast ends on a contemplative note, acknowledging the difficult truths that surface in conversations about such painful subjects.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:02Virginia Giuffre:This is a Global Player original podcast.
0:06Prince Andrew:A warning, this episode will contain details of disturbing sexual abuse throughout.
0:12Virginia Giuffre:I was recruited at a very young age from Mar-a-Lago and entrapped in a world that I didn't understand and I've been fighting that very world to this day and I won't stop fighting. I will never be silenced until these people are brought to justice.
0:26The News Agents Hosts:That is Virginia Dufresne, outside a New York court in 2019. Geoffrey Epstein has just died. The victims have been robbed of justice. But the judge has nevertheless let them have their day in court, let their voices be heard.
0:42Prince Andrew:From beyond the grave, Virginia Dufresne has not been silenced. Her voice is being heard. But so many people who were responsible have not faced justice. Prince Andrew has been humbled, but not tried. But is that enough? What needs to happen now? Welcome to the News Agents.
1:07Virginia Giuffre:The News Agents. It's John.
1:10Prince Andrew:It's Emily. And on Friday evening, with a thud, a brief statement was issued by the palace, well, by Prince Andrew, where he says, in discussion with the king and my immediate and wider family, we have concluded the continued accusations about me distract from the work of his majesty and the royal family. I have decided, as I always have, to put my duty to my family and country first. He is no longer the Duke of York. He is no longer a member of the Order of Garter. He is still living in Windsor Lodge, the 30 bedroom palace on the Windsor estate. He is still Prince Andrew. But undoubtedly, this statement came, this mega statement came because of the impending publication of the new book by Virginia Dufresne, which is coming out this week.
2:04The News Agents Hosts:Yeah, by the time many of you are listening to this, you will know about this memoir. It's called Nobody's Girl. And it was finished by Virginia Dufresne, the woman who accused Prince Andrew of raping her, essentially, three times. It was finished in October of last year and less than six months later, Virginia Dufresne had taken her own life. And in the book, you will find a harrowing, devastating account of that life of abuse. And one of the things that we will come to learn is that she wrote believing that she was fighting this, fighting this abuse, making it known to help other victims. It's what she said her whole life.
2:54The News Agents Hosts:I want to make these stories known because I want to overcome it. I want to be a warrior. I want to be the person who takes on predatory men who always seem to escape justice. and she's now dead. So she was clearly unable to continue with that life of unbearable pain. And what we have in this memoir, what we will soon all be able to read about, is the very specific details of how she was drawn into that web of abuse, how she, in her own description over time, we've heard, became complicit. and the role that Ghislaine Maxwell also played alongside Epstein in procuring, pulling in to this horrendous web, underage girls for Epstein's consumption.
3:50Virginia Giuffre:Well, let's dig into all of that. And we're kind of going to take you through this sort of as we can, because I think that one of the things, and you use the word harrowing, and it is harrowing and I'm sure people will find it harrowing, is that this didn't start with Epstein and Prince Andrew. It goes back a lot further.
4:10The News Agents Hosts:Yeah, she's going to tell us that she was first abused at the hands of her own father. And these are claims that she makes in the book that her father denies. And that her father's friend was also an abuser. And there was even the idea of a swap that two paedophiles would swap their own children with each other. So, I mean, why am I going into this kind of detail? Because I think it prepares the ground for what happens later, that she claims to have been abused by her father, claims to have been abused by her father's friend. And it becomes totally understandable that she will then run away. She then gets picked up by another paedophile who runs a modelling agency.
4:57The News Agents Hosts:She becomes his kind of sex slave for six months until he turfs her out. And it is only when she then goes back home and starts a job at Mar-a-Lago, working sort of, you know, basically folding towels. She wants to train to be a masseuse. She thinks it's a proper professional job. And she will describe how important it was to sort of work in a rules-based order. So Mar-a-Lago actually comes across very well here as a place where there were rules, There was a uniform. There was a sort of hygiene code of conduct. She even meets Donald Trump. Who she speaks glowingly of. She does. And she says that it was Trump who then said, oh, you know, if you want to come and babysit, there are lots of families here, sort of high end elite families who'd love to have a babysitter in the evening.
5:41The News Agents Hosts:Would you like to do that? And so she really, really wants to have a job. She really wants to be something other than a sex slave. She wants to train as a masseuse. She goes to babysit, you know, kids of the family staying at Mar-a-Lago. and one day a car pulls up behind her and it is the moment that she will meet Ghislaine Maxwell.
6:03Virginia Giuffre:Yeah, and we played that clip at the top of the podcast of Virginia Dufresne outside the court where she wants to see people brought to justice. The only person that has been brought to justice for what happened was Ghislaine Maxwell, who is still in prison, having been moved to a less high secure prison as a result of goodness knows what was going on.
6:24Prince Andrew:But anyway, she is in a less secure prison, but she has been convicted. And what I think people will find striking is this phrase apex predator, but not being used about a man, but being used about Ghislaine Maxwell.
6:40The News Agents Hosts:Yeah, I mean, this idea that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell were less boyfriend and girlfriend, but more, in Virginia's words, two wicked halves of the same whole. And what she describes is the really invaluable role that Ghislaine Maxwell played in creating this web of paedophilia. The idea that there was a woman involved, with a posh voice, with a friendly manner, with beautifully manicured hands, made it all seem normal. And so every time she or the other women started to doubt themselves, there is this very vivid description of the first time she goes to massage Jeffrey Epstein. And it's Maxwell who says, oh, you know, put a dab of cream on your arm there when you're massaging so that when you run out of cream, you don't need to stop the massage.
7:40The News Agents Hosts:You just take it off your arm and go and start with his feet and push the blood up. and she shows Virginia how to do this massage on the feet and then the calves. And Virginia says, I didn't want to touch his buttocks. He's naked on the table. And Maxwell goes, oh, don't be silly. You can't be squeamish about this. Otherwise, the whole rhythm is lost. And you just get the sense of how Virginia was carried along with this. You know, she keeps looking at the woman, the Maxwell, and going, oh, I'm just, I'm being silly, aren't I? It's all fine. It's all fine. And it's Maxwell who says, oh, just take your clothes off.
8:11The News Agents Hosts:You know, you'll be much more comfortable taking your clothes off. And so she plays an absolutely pivotal part in breaking down the defences that Virginia Dufresne would have naturally had as a young woman. It is Maxwell and Epstein that abuse her. It is Maxwell and Epstein that want to play sex games. I mean, they're not sex games. It's abuse and it's rape. Let's not call them that. But that's, you know, how it's described, you know, as it were in the book. it is Maxwell that makes Virginia feel that if she says no, she's somehow, you know, overthinking these things. I thought you want to be a masseuse.
8:49The News Agents Hosts:Don't you want to be professional? Don't you want to learn? Don't you want to study? You know this. I'm helping you. And she will describe how Jeffrey Epstein himself wants to be seen as a mentor, not a predator. After sex, he will start to describe to her, you know, how the markets work or all the Greek gods. or he'll tell her about the sort of the ways of the world. He'll tell her about art. And it's almost like he wants to be in this position of teaching rather than, you know, he doesn't want to think of himself as a predator. He wants to think of himself as somebody who's sort of elevating her, giving her these great chances, right?
9:24The News Agents Hosts:I mean, this is all stuff that we know, but it is frightening to suddenly understand just how powerful it was to have that extra woman in the room.
9:35Virginia Giuffre:Yeah, I think I mean, I think what she will say is that, you know, she there were no bars on the windows. There was no prison, but she was absolutely trapped by the sort of coercive control exerted by both Ghislaine Maxwell and by Epstein himself. Now, Ghislaine Maxwell, of course, has been moved to this lower security prison because, I mean, there's talk that it's possible that Donald Trump will pardon her.
10:03Prince Andrew:because Donald Trump has got his own problems as well with Jeffrey Epstein, that there are all these people in Congress who want the Epstein files to be released so that the public can see what has gone on. And you can see how much this is in the public interest. If there were all these rich and powerful men who were going to Epstein's island or being flown around by Jeffrey Epstein to get the favours of young women who are there kind of almost being trafficked, then sure the public need to know this stuff but of course Donald Trump thinks that anything that comes out might reflect badly on him and so doesn't want it to come out.
10:40The News Agents Hosts:Yeah and I think there are a lot of people who up to this point sort of fell into the sort of school of thought which is you know it's men's crimes and one woman is paying the price for it and in Virginia Dufresne's account what becomes much clearer is just how culpable Ghislaine Maxwell was. So this idea that Trump would somehow find a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell because, you know, she'd said nice things about her to Todd Blanchard, the testimony, I think will become a lot harder once people digest Virginia G. Frey's words this week. and I think what you say what you raise is a really good point and it's something that I guess a lot of people think and feel you know maybe uncomfortable asking well she was free to go wasn't she there were no bars on the window she was getting paid why didn't she leave and I guess that is the hardest thing to understand and I wouldn't be able to answer that myself but I have heard I've talked to a lot of abuse victims and I think there were two things going on with Virginia.
11:54One was that, as I said at the beginning, she came from this incredibly
11:58The News Agents Hosts:broken home. But the other thing was that Epstein made very clear. He has a photo of her brother on his desk. He says, I know where he goes to school. He says, I control the Palm Beach police. In other words, they send out signals which are threats. If you leave, you are putting your brother in danger. If you leave, you cannot go to anyone because I control the police. I mean, all these things to a vulnerable 17 year old, I think start to explain why someone feels more trapped than maybe the physical sense of whether they are or not. But I think there's also in her own words, this idea that she is made to be complicit.
12:42The News Agents Hosts:You know, she does feel complicit in this. She even describes how she procured other girls for them, something that she says she will, it was the worst thing she did in her life. She will never forgive herself for. She told the girls what would be expected. You know, they would get paid for sexual favours. But she becomes complicit in their web, which is, she says, the worst thing of all.
13:02Prince Andrew:And that's so interesting, because the, I suppose, the flip side of the coin of Epstein's subtle threats of I know where your brother is or whatever is exactly the reassurance that the men who are abusing these young girls want oh i can do this and no one's no one's ever going to find out of it and into the you know and
13:23Virginia Giuffre:into that world enters prince andrew feeling safe that none of this will ever come to light because
13:28The News Agents Hosts:everyone is going to keep quiet about it yeah i mean the first time she meets epstein he asks her when she first lost her virginity he asks her about her relationship with her parents he asks her if she's on birth control. In other words, he knows he's got somebody absolutely at their most vulnerable, at their most broken. The girls in other interviews, victims of Epstein, I am calling them girls because they were girls at the time, have described a life being snapped into at the moment they met Epstein. A childhood suddenly ending at the point where he took over because he had an absolutely brilliant sense of finding the most vulnerable women, the most vulnerable girls and knowing that he could get away with whatever he wanted and she describes in great detail being taken to London and Ghislaine pulls her aside and says you will do for Prince Andrew my friend Prince Andrew what you do for Geoffrey and a lot of this will be very familiar to our listeners because I guess they will have watched the Newsnight interview that we did in 2019 and she describes going out in London, tramp nightclub, going back to the flat in Belgravia, this tiny little Kodak camera that she carried around with her everywhere, the disposables, you know, and she hands it to Jeffrey Epstein and says, will you take a picture of me?
14:48The News Agents Hosts:And the prince has his arm around her. Ghislaine is just in the background. The banisters of the stairs in Belgravia are just in shot. And this is the moment where, you know, in terms of evidence, everything hinges on that because Prince Andrew is photographed with his arm around Virginia Dufresne with Ghislaine Maxwell in the background and it is there then that Virginia Dufresne makes those claims that Prince Andrew then takes her off and has sex with her. She is told to please him and she gets paid money by Epstein for doing that. This is something that Prince Andrew has continuously denied.
15:27Virginia Giuffre:And another revelation that's going to be made in the book that there was an orgy and that Prince Andrew was part of this orgy where there were eight women and two men.
15:37The News Agents Hosts:Him and Epstein. Yeah. And that happened. It was the third time in her claims that she had sex with him on the island, Little St. James, that Epstein owned. She describes it as Little St. Jeff's. That's what he wanted to call it. St. Jeff's. I mean, you know, where do you start? But there has been another account from somebody who worked on the island of seeing prince andrew and in their words sort of frolicking by the pool with a number of young women and i think it is that scene that virginia then goes on to describe she calls it an orgy between eight young women many of whom didn't speak english with epstein she remembers this line joking that you know women that you couldn't communicate with were the easiest ones to deal with in other words they didn't have english So you just sort of, you know, you did what you wanted.
16:27The News Agents Hosts:And that then opens the door to so many more claims. Which is not just that Prince Andrew had sex with Virginia Dufresne three times, but possibly with other women whose names we don't even know.
16:47Prince Andrew:yeah and if you read andrew lowney's book yeah maybe not that many more people have come forward from what happened on epstein's island but if you read andrew lowney's book which is a pretty unsparing biography of prince andrew and sarah ferguson as we now call them that this was happening around the world wherever andrew went there were young women who were being served up to him. There's another story in the book and you know that people I'm sure will find distressing as well and this concerns a pregnancy.
17:24The News Agents Hosts:So Virginia Dufresne will tell us that she lost a baby just four days after she flew back from that orgy with Andrew and the eight other girls. Epstein's baby we assume and she describes how they landed at Teterborough airport and says she wasn't in great shape and later she woke up in a pool of blood and that Epstein took her to a hospital and she was heavily drugged at this time I mean not just after the medical procedure but because she'd been on a lot of Xanax and a lot of sort of painkillers, frankly. She describes herself as sort of going in and out of consciousness this whole time because presumably, you know, she was living a fairly unbearable life at that stage.
18:17The News Agents Hosts:So she wakes up to find him whispering to the medical professionals about her own care. And what she will describe is that she had this tiny incursion, sort of cut near her tummy button, which was consistent with keyhole surgeries. somebody else kind of explains to her what this means. Epstein had told her she'd had a miscarriage, something altogether different, and a doctor had come up to her and said, you might never be able to have children. So you're left trying to piece together what this means, that she had been taken to hospital in a pool of blood, she'd lost a baby, she wasn't even made aware of it because it was a conversation between her abuser and the doctors, and she finds this tiny scar which is suggestive of an ectopic pregnancy and is just landed with the news that she'll probably never be able to have children.
19:08It is difficult to listen to some of this stuff,
19:12Virginia Giuffre:but when we come back we're going to talk about where this leaves Prince Andrew and the rest of the royal family about what they do about this troublesome prince.
19:26Virginia Giuffre:news you can trust and the conversations that matter with award-winning journalists at the
19:31The News Agents Hosts:heart of the stories from the uk and around the world breaking news here in edinburgh i'm simon my american week is next reporting from the heart of card discover how today's story affects your life listen on our free global player app or the new lbc app lbc leading britain's conversation
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19:55Virginia Giuffre:The News Agents. So we talked about the Prince Andrew's statement of him stepping back from his royal duties and the fact that he was no longer going to be the Duke of York and the membership of the Garter. But there was also a whole pile of other stuff that he said in this very brief statement
20:15Prince Andrew:that I've always been a person of honour. I deny every allegation against me. Well, one of the allegations against him now is that he bloody well lied to you. And that is absolutely clear. Now, either he didn't send the email after the interview in which he said, let's carry on playing in his email to Jeffrey Epstein. Or he didn't say to you in the interview, I cut off all contact with him. You can't have it both. And so I'm kind of left with this frustration of people saying he denies all allegations against him. It's palpably clear that some of what he's saying is not true. And it makes you question everything else that he said.
20:54Prince Andrew:And I still wonder, you know, look, he stood back from his royal duties. It's probably the best that the royal family can hope for. There are still an awful lot of things where I don't think there is satisfaction. That Prince Andrew, he's still going on in a cloud of disbelief saying everything's fine. I've done nothing wrong.
21:10The News Agents Hosts:By the time Virginia Dufresne finished writing her memoirs, six months before she took her own life, she had faced consistent denials about her story from Prince Andrew, even though he'd settled to a figure of around 12 million, we understand, but without guilt. She'd also been gagged from actually talking about that in the Queen's Platinum Jubilee year. In other words, you're back to this place once again of powerful men silencing vulnerable women. And no one, no one serves justice. Ghislaine Maxwell is behind bars. Epstein is dead. I mean, she even raises the spectre of whether or not he was killed in jail.
22:03The News Agents Hosts:I know that's something that a lot of people have considered, including her own father in the past. Prince Andrew is still, as you said, Prince Andrew. Whatever he chooses to use by way of title, whatever notepaper he writes on, He is still Prince Andrew and lives in a 30-bedroom house on the royal estate. And Virginia Dufresne describes in a way what it would have been like to live a life that didn't pursue justice. She could have had a much simpler life. She ran off to Australia. the reason she ran off to Australia actually was that Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein turned around to her and say we've decided we'd like you to have our baby like a modern day handmaiden I mean can you imagine any greater sense of ownership than forcing a young woman to have your baby and then explaining that she won't really be the mother you'll be the mother you're going to have the baby you'll have our baby we're going to take your baby and it's going going to be our baby from then on.
23:16The News Agents Hosts:And this is the point at which Virginia Dufresne breaks. She just snaps and she finds a very clever way of getting out of their grasp without alerting their suspicion. She says, send me off to Chiang Mai in Thailand, a wonderful spa where I'm going to learn to be a masseuse. You promised me that I would always be a professional masseuse. Just give me the chance to go and do my lessons, my instruction. And so they go, fine, you can have, you know, a couple of months there, go off and do that. She lands in Chiang Mai. She's in Thailand. She's on her own for the first time in two and a half years.
23:47The News Agents Hosts:And she falls in love with a man there and they marry within a week. You know, if that doesn't spell PTSD, I don't know what does. But this is the man who she will then leave Thailand married to to start a new life in Australia. And she will make a phone call to Maxwell and Epstein and say, you can't touch me now. I'm married. And Epstein will say, have a nice life. To get to that point, we will learn about all the other abusive men in her life as well. There is, she quotes, a former prime minister who repeatedly choked her until she lost consciousness and took pleasure in seeing her fear for her life.
24:28The News Agents Hosts:We don't know who that is. And we don't know what country. We do not know. And obviously they haven't come forward. For days it hurt to breathe and swallow. He raped me more savagely than anyone had before. We will hear about the kind of sadomasochistic sex that Epstein has. We will hear about the number of times that she had infections, you know, urinary tract infections, because she'd slept with so many men in such violent and extreme kind of conditions that she was constantly in and out of hospital on painkillers the whole time. And so I think that takes you to the place where she then tries to escape.
25:09The News Agents Hosts:She then runs away and she goes to Australia. And at that point, she tries to live a normal life. She doesn't want to start pursuing justice. And it's only when Epstein gets back in touch with her in 2006-7 when the FBI are on his case. And even then she says, I want to make it all go away. But she finally ends up realising when she has her baby girl that this is something she wants to do for other women. And this is where the story with Prince Andrew essentially starts when she comes forward. She gives an interview to American broadcasters and says, it is time I spoke out.
25:43Virginia Giuffre:And this is where you're absolutely right, Emily, to talk about how this is not just about Prince Andrew and Virginia Dufresne. This is about powerful men, plural, and vulnerable women, plural, and how powerful men.
26:00Prince Andrew:But the Prince Andrew is almost like a paradigm example of what powerful people can do. You talked about a figure of, I think, 12 million to settle a court case. The FBI wanted to interview him. He wouldn't be interviewed. He could have had his day in court. He could have explained why this is absolutely monstrous that he has been charged with these things. He chose not to have his day in court. He chose to cough up 12 million instead. That is making a problem go away. That is using your power to kind of ensure that justice is not done. that there are NDAs, that there are gagging clauses, that there are things that will keep people quiet.
26:41Prince Andrew:And so, yeah, this story is about much more than Prince Andrew, but he's sort of emblematic of the story in what he has done to ensure that nothing gets out. And so when you still see every news organisation in the world doing as it has to do, Prince Andrew has categorically denied all the allegations. Yeah, we've all got to do it, But it is somehow unsatisfactory, given the opportunities that the prince has had to come out and say, well, what do you know?
27:12The News Agents Hosts:This weekend, we heard the Met Police were opening an investigation into why Prince Andrew passed on Virginia Giuffre's security number, presumably obtained from Epstein himself in the days when he was still alive, and tried to smear Virginia Giuffre, tried to drag her name through the mud. In other words, if you can make the person who's testifying against you seem like an unbelievable witness, then you've destroyed their reputation. They're out of your way.
27:46Prince Andrew:Look, the sheer act of that, and this is a small, geeky point, but it needs to be made, is that access to someone's social security number should be totally impossible. In the United States, you get this nine digit social security number. when I used to go into the White House the Secret Service officers would say last four numbers of your social they would never ask no one ever asks for your entire social security number because that has your identity that has everything it's like your DNA is your DNA no one ever gives it out so the fact that Prince Andrew in an email to his deputy communications director at the time the deputy communications director at the time at Buckingham Palace this is her social security number i've asked whether there could be an investigation that is so on the wrong side of the line of what is acceptable to do how he got hold of it i mean presumably from epstein but that suggests the degree of collusion these are questions that are legitimate to be asking now about what prince andrew was involved in in trying to smear her we also understand that But, you know, it's alleged that he tried to get trolls involved, kind of to be out there on social media to besmirch her name, to spread shit, to trash talk her.
29:08Yeah, it's wrong.
29:09The News Agents Hosts:I mean, there's a moment where Virginia Dufresne describes a photograph taken on holiday with her two young boys before her daughter was born and says, that was the moment I could have chosen just to live my life, you know, in Australia, on the beach, calmly getting on with my family life. instead what she does is she goes back into the fray and she goes now I'm going to fight I'm going to become the warrior I'm going to raise my voice I won't be silenced I'm going to fight for other people this kind of example tells you why so few women may have chosen to do that because you've been through a life of abuse you've been through whatever physical torment comes you know alongside the emotional abuse and then you find that your reputation is being trashed that people are hanging out in your driveway that people are coming to threaten your family that you don't ever escape from this because too many people with too much power and too much money realize that for the first time you are a threat to them and then they try and shut you down well i've spoken to someone
30:23Virginia Giuffre:close connections to the royal family who's said about prince andrew this person said he's basically extremely stupid but now he's cornered and he's trying to cling on to what he's got left the frustration i think from buckingham palace's point of view is that there's not much they can do now it will take an act of parliament to strip him of the title and all the rest of it it seems that he
30:48Prince Andrew:has got a lease that is legally binding for royal lodge he said you know back in the day the ideal solution would have been to banish prince andrew to a little tiny cottage on the balmoral estate where he would never be seen again and he would just live out his life quietly there but he's still very close to london he can still do whatever he likes and they say that his arrogance sense stupidity sense of entitlement the thick skinness means that he will just carry on being prince andrew and carry on being a thorn in the side of the royal family and the one thing this
31:26Virginia Giuffre:person said to me is that prince william is a lot less tolerant of it than the king and that will change when the prince rises to the throne yeah i mean i guess one of the questions that people are
31:37The News Agents Hosts:trying to ask is why now? The memoir explains part of it. The king's trip to the Vatican to see the Pope explains another. They're fed up, quite frankly, of all the headlines being about Prince Andrew. But I think there's another thing, and that is a very sensitive issue, which is we know the king has been ill. There is probably a place in his mind where he's thinking, I don't want to leave things unsettled. I don't want to leave the dodgy uncle problem for my son, for William. And presumably between King Charles and Prince William, they're thinking this has to be sorted, whatever sorted looks like.
32:17The News Agents Hosts:I mean, there is a world, of course, in which Prince Andrew says, let me stand trial, right? You know, I will go, I will stand trial. Maybe that is the most wholesome thing that he could do. And there's also, and I feel this actually really strongly, a world in which, I mean, you're so right to say that Prince Andrew kind of epitomises so much of the story because it's about wealthy, powerful men and vulnerable women. But it is much, much bigger than him. The Epstein story goes to New York, Palm Beach, London, Paris, Mexico. It is a global ring of paedophilia. And we don't know the names of many of the other men involved.
32:59The News Agents Hosts:We know people who had associations with him. We know people who had money from him. We know people who owed him favours. But we don't really know how many other men were involved in this, how many men were complicit in his crimes, or really the total number of women that went through his grasp. And so I guess there is a moment at which we stand back and we say, this is not just a story of royal protocol. It's not just a story of titles. You know, it's not just a story of where Prince Andrew lives. It's a story of how complicit so many people were in what happened during that decade. It's also a question of why that trial into Epstein in 2007 was shrunk into a tiny plea deal.
33:48The News Agents Hosts:What was going on at the Department of Justice? Who spoke to who about what? You've mentioned Alex Acosta in the past, you know, the man who converted what should have been the trial of the century.
34:00Prince Andrew:Into a plea deal.
34:01The News Agents Hosts:Into a plea deal. I mean, there were 40 witnesses or more, young women who'd already given their stories to police, already come forward, talked to the FBI, told their most gruelling, intimate, humiliating stories of what happened. And what happens? Epstein gets 18 months on a plea deal in an open prison where he's out during the day and is still seeing, as far as we understand, underage girls during that time and just goes to prison to sleep at night. What on earth happened there? So I think there are so many bigger questions, really, into how so few people have been held accountable for what went on over decades and decades.
34:50the news agents today has been i don't know whether to apologize or not really but a pretty
34:56The News Agents Hosts:hard listen it's a tough listen isn't it the book is out tomorrow and we will have plenty more to discuss then the ramifications of that more widely we'll see you tomorrow bye-bye bye for now this
35:09Virginia Giuffre:This has been a Global Player original production.
From the publisher
Virginia Giuffre is speaking to us from beyond the grave - with her memoir about the abuse she suffered at the hands of Epstein and - she claims - Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew continues to deny those allegations.
The book is a harrowing account of abuse, pain and control. Does it change how we see Andrew? Should he now stand trial? And what does it tell us more widely about complicity and power?
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