>
Prince Andrew’s attempts to restore his reputation with a view to returning to public life are ‘wishful thinking’.
While the King respects that his brother has the right to try to clear his name, any hope that this will pave the way back to official duties and a front-line royal role is “very misguided”, a well-placed source told the newspaper. Mail.
“That is not the King’s thought,” they said.
King Charles is in a delicate position, but he knows that he must act as a monarch, not as a brother.
The source said the problem is “much more” than Andrew’s settlement in the United States with Virginia Roberts over allegations of rape and sexual assault, which he has always denied.
The source says Prince Andrew’s (centre) attempts to return to public life are wishful thinking (Andrew pictured, with the Princess Royal on the left and King Charles on the right)
Prince Andrew has always denied the accusation made by Virginia Giuffre (pictured with Ghislaine Maxwell in 2001)
There is frustration in parts of the Royal Household that the embattled prince and his advisers, who recently launched a media blitz to try to turn the tide of public opinion, do not understand this fact.
“Decisions that were previously made about his position within the Royal Family also concern his professional judgment and personal associations,” the source said.
The King is supported by his son and heir, the Prince of Wales.
William also strongly believes that his late grandmother’s decisions to strip her supposed favorite son of his official duties and associations were the right ones. The late Queen also stripped Andrew of the right to use his Royal Highness title from him in public, so that he could fight the case as a ‘private citizen’.
Ms Roberts, now 39 and known by her married name Virginia Giuffre, claimed she was forced to have sex with Andrew when she was 17, after she was trafficked by convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew, 62, denied the allegation, but paid a £12m out-of-court settlement for Ms Roberts to drop the civil suit in the US.
Legal sources close to Prince Andrew said he would launch an £81m lawsuit against Virginia Giuffre if she repeated her allegations against him in a forthcoming memoir.
Prince William is said to be a firm believer that the decisions made by his late grandmother Queen Elizabeth II (pictured together) to strip Andrew of his official duties and associations were the right ones.
Legal sources close to the prince said he would launch an £81m lawsuit against her if she repeated the accusation in a forthcoming memoir. He has hired Los Angeles attorneys Andrew Brettler and Blair Berk to try to get her to retract her claims and possibly get an apology.
Meanwhile, Mrs Roberts’s friends scorned a bizarre ‘trick’ that was said to disprove her account of her encounter with the Duke of York. A photograph on the front page of the Daily Telegraph on Saturday showed a man and woman lying fully clothed in a bathroom in the former home of convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. They wore masks of the faces of Andrew and the accuser of him.
It was published under the headline: ‘The photo that “cleans Duke” about sex in the bathroom’. Maxwell’s brother, Ian, told the newspaper that the photograph, taken by two of her sister’s acquaintances, refuted Ms Roberts’ account of her sexual encounter with Andrew.
Maxwell said the image ‘shows[s] conclusively that the bathroom is too small for any kind of sexual diversion.’
Ms Roberts claimed that Andrew licked her toes in the bathroom before they had sex in the bedroom in 2001. A source close to Ms Roberts told the Mail on Sunday: “If this embarrassing stunt is what If the better Maxwell’s side can do in defense of Prince Andrew then it’s laughable… It’s a disgusting attempt to discredit a victim of sexual abuse and it would be laughable if it weren’t so offensive.
Also, they have the facts totally wrong. Virginia never said they had sex in the bathroom.
Lisa Bloom, a lawyer who has represented several victims of Epstein and Maxwell, said: “What a surreal and bizarre photograph. It doesn’t prove anything… Virginia said that she and Andrew were in the bathroom. The photo shows that two full size humans can fit in the bathroom.
Lawyers for Ms Roberts declined to comment. Elsewhere, evidence has surfaced that may prove the infamous image of Andrew with his arm around a teenage girl, Ms. Roberts, is real.
The photograph was said to have been taken on March 10, 2001, the night Ms Roberts said Andrew first sexually abused her.
The Mail on Sunday said it could prove the image was printed in a lab an hour away, a two-minute drive from Roberts’ former home in Florida on March 13, 2001, and that it would have been “virtually impossible” to fake it.
Last week, in a television interview from prison, Maxwell said: ‘It’s false. I don’t think it’s real for a second. In 2019, Andrew said that he “didn’t remember” the photo he had taken.