In more trouble for Prince Andrew, Virginia Roberts Giuffre is appearing on BBC in a potentially devastating tell-all interview on Monday. And she has dropped a bombshell on the embattled royal, as per a teaser of the chat on BBC Panorama. Roberts categorically says that the prince had sex with her three times and that he is lying about it.
"He knows what happened, I know what happened, and there's only one of us telling the truth," said Roberts, who was only 17 when she was introduced to the prince by socialite Monique Giannellon in 2001. Roberts adds that the time with Andrew was the scariest moment in her life.
BBC to air interview on Monday
The interview with Roberts, titled 'The Prince and the Epstein Scandal', will be aired on BBC on Monday. It will be a one-hour programme. BBC had initially said the explosive chat will be 30-minutes-long but has since then confirmed it's an hour-long programme.
Roberts had earlier claimed that pedophile US financier Jeffrey Epstein had forced her to have sex with Andrew three times. Andrew refuted the claims. In a disastrous interview on BBC last week Andrew repeated the claim and said he did not have sex with Virginia Roberts. He accepted that he met her in London in 2001 but that the photo of them together wasn't real.
Roberts was one of the underage girls Epstein had snared and offered up for his inner circle. Prince Andrew was one of the most high-profile people in Epstein's inner circle. According to Roberts, she met Andrew at Tramp nightclub in London on 10 March 2001 and that they had sex at British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell's Belgravia house that night.
'Smuggled' masseuse into Buckingham Palace bedroom
But Andrew denied the claim, saying he was with children at that time. "I was with the children and I'd taken Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking for a party at I suppose four or five in the afternoon. And then because the duchess [Sarah Ferguson] was away, we have a simple rule in the family that when one is away the other is there," the prince said.
In another setback for Andrew, The Daily Mail reported on Thursday that the prince had 'smuggled' a lady massage therapist into his Buckingham Palace bedroom in 2000. The secret assignment had even triggered a security alarm at the palace, the report said. Monique Giannellon, the masseuse, said she was not subjected to any background checks before she was allowed into the palace. The masseuse was taken straight to the bedroom of the prince, where Andrew lay naked under wraps.
The BBC interview with reporter Darragh MacIntyre cost Andrew dearly as the palace ordered him to step down from royal duties. Companies like BT and Barclays, as well as universities and charitable organisations have also cut ties with the prince, who is eighth in line to the British throne.
