A woman who claims to have been trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein and forced to have sex with Prince Andrew as a teenager has told BBC Panorama she was “grossed out” by the “sweaty” duke as the pair danced together at a nightclub.
The Duke of York has categorically denied Virginia Giuffre’s claims.
Giuffre’s words come weeks after the prince attempted to defend himself against the accusations and explain his friendship with convicted paedophile Epstein in a BBC Newsnight interview branded a “car crash”. The aftermath saw him withdraw from public duties as a number of charities and businesses moved to disassociate themselves from the prince and his work.
Andrew was widely criticised for failing to show remorse for his association with the disgraced financier, or empathy with Epstein’s victims during his television appearance. Epstein killed himself in August in a New York prison while he was being held on sex trafficking charges.
On Monday night Giuffre will feature on a BBC Panorama programme entitled The Prince And The Epstein Scandal, which has been extended to run for an hour and is her first UK television interview.
And the now mother-of-three has restated her memories of dancing with “sweaty” Andrew at Tramp nightclub in 2001, despite his recent insistence that he had a medical condition at the time after suffering an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when he was shot at. Giuffre’s recollection had to be factually wrong, the duke claimed, because his injury left him unable to sweat.
In a transcript released ahead of the programme tonight, Giuffre said: “He is the most hideous dancer I’ve ever seen in my life. I mean, it was horrible, and this guy was sweating all over me. [...] His sweat was, like – it was raining basically everywhere.
“I was just like grossed out from it but I knew I had to keep him happy because that’s what Jeffrey and Ghislaine [Maxwell, Epstein’s girlfriend] would have expected from me.”
Giuffre alleges the duke slept with her on three separate occasions, twice while she was 17. Andrew strenuously denies the claims, and Buckingham Palace has branded them “false and without any foundation”.
She says she first had sex with Andrew as a 17-year-old, which is not below the age of consent in the locations of the three alleged encounters.
“Any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors” by the duke was “categorically untrue”, the palace said.
During his Newsnight interview, Andrew also cast doubt on the authenticity of a picture appearing to show him with his arm around the waist of Giuffre, then a teenager.
The royal said: “From the investigations that we’ve done, you can’t prove whether or not that photograph is faked or not because it is a photograph of a photograph of a photograph. So it’s very difficult to be able to prove it but I don’t remember that photograph ever being taken.”
He also claimed an alleged encounter with Giuffre in 2001 did not happen as he had spent the day with his daughter, Princess Beatrice, taking her to Pizza Express in Woking for a party.
Andrew expressed regret at making contact with Epstein in 2010 – flying to New York to say in person the friendship was over – after the 66-year-old had been released from an 18-month prison term for prostituting minors.
Interviewed for Monday’s Panorama, Giuffre said of the photo of her with the duke: “The people on the inside are going to keep coming up with these ridiculous excuses. Like his arm was elongated or the photo was doctored, or he came to New York to break up with Jeffrey Epstein.
“I mean, come on, I’m calling BS on this, because that’s what it is. He knows what happened. I know what happened, and there’s only one of us telling the truth, and I know that’s me.”
Giuffre also uses the opportunity to call on the British public for support. “I implore the people in the UK to stand up beside me, to help me fight this fight, to not accept this as being OK.
“This is not some sordid sex story. This is a story of being trafficked. This is a story of abuse and this is a story of your guys’ royalty.”
The programme will air on BBC One on Monday at 9pm UK time.