The Duke of York is under renewed pressure to speak publicly about sex abuse allegations after flight records backed up his accuser’s claims of having met him three times.
Flight logs from the private jet of the Duke’s friend Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender, show Virginia Roberts and the Duke were both in the locations where she claims to have had sex with him, at the relevant times.
Prince Andrew has categorically denied “any sexual contact” with Miss Roberts, who was 17 at the time, and is considering whether to address the subject when he makes a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Thursday.
The Duke will speak at his Pitch@Palace event, where he introduces people starting their own companies to established entrepreneurs.
It is understood that any reference he makes to the scandal will be brief and will simply underline his previous denials, but it would nevertheless set a new precedent for a member of the Royal family to make a public statement about allegations of a sexual nature.
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His former wife, the Duchess of York, has talked about tabloid newspaper stories of her relationships after she and the Duke separated, but she had already divorced the Duke by the time she spoke about it on television.
Other members of the Royal family, including the Prince of Wales, Diana, Princess of Wales and Edward VIII have made public statements about their love lives, but only to confirm stories that were true, rather than denying claims of impropriety.
The Duke had no doubt hoped that interest in claims made by Miss Roberts in US court documents, which emerged at the start of the month, would have died down by the time he arrived in Davos, but new disclosures continue to emerge.
Flight logs for Epstein’s Gulfstream jet, published by Mail Online, together with public information about the Duke’s movements, show that Miss Roberts and the Duke were both in London in March 2001, when she claims they first had sex, and in New York and the US Virgin Islands the following month, the locations where she says their other sexual encounters happened.
Buckingham Palace has never denied that the Duke was in the locations at the relevant times, but the flight logs provide the first documentary proof that they were in a position to have met when she says they did.
Meanwhile fresh legal papers submitted to a Florida court on Tuesday evening allege that Epstein asked Miss Roberts to have his baby in return for cash and a mansion.
She describes the “disgustingly sick” proposition in an interview with her lawyer, saying he wanted her to hand the baby over to him and his girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the late newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell.
She said: “He offered me a mansion and some of his money every month, I forget what he called it, a monthly income of what he made to bear one of his children.
“The proposition was that if anything ever happened between Jeffrey and I, that I would have to sign my child over to him basically and that the child would be his and Ghislaine’s, and I would be looking after it as long as nothing happened between Jeffrey and I.
“So, I was kind of freaked out by all of that.”
She said it was the final straw that convinced her to flee from Epstein and build a new life in Australia.
The transcript was filed by the Miami US attorney’s office which is seeking to prevent her joining an existing case in which two other victims are trying to overturn a plea bargain which enabled Epstein to serve an 18-month prison sentence in return for pleading guilty to procuring a 14-year-old girl for prostitution. In exchange, all federal investigations into his alleged widespread sex abuse were halted.
Ghislaine Maxwell has always denied allegations that she acted as a “madame for Epstein”.
The new transcript also includes claims that Epstein bragged about sleeping with underage girls.
“The worst one that I heard from his own mouth was this pretty 12 year old girls he had flown in for his birthday. It was a surprise birthday gift from one of his friends and they were from France. I did see them, I did meet them,” she said.
“Jeffrey bragged afterwards after he met them that they were 12 year olds and flown over from France because they’re really poor over there, and their parents needed the money or whatever the case is and they were absolutely free to stay and flew out.”
