Prince Andrew: I Didn’t Have Sex With Teenager Because I Was ‘at a Pizza Party'
Duke of York delivers unexpected explanation while being grilled about Epstein
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Prince Andrew claimed he could not have had sex with a teenage girl at British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell's home because he was at home after attending a children’s pizza party at restaurant chain Pizza Express in Woking, UK.
During a bombshell interview with Emily Maitlis for BBC’s Newsnight, the Duke of York delivered the unexpected explanation while being grilled about his relationship with the late pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein.
In his contradictory account of their friendship, the prince argued he did not have sex with any of Epstein's trafficked women in his properties.
But in August, Neon Nettle reported a witness allegedly saw Andrew getting a "foot massage" from "two young women" while inside sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's New York mansion.
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The allegation was reported in emails between literary agent John Brockman and writer Evgeny Morozov, with details of the incident published by the New Republic magazine.
Andrew admitted he had flown on Epstein’s Lolita Express, and visited his private island and at his home in Palm Beach, as well as at his New York mansion.
“If you’re a man, it is a positive act to have sex with somebody,” the prince explained.
“You have to … take some sort of positive action, and so therefore, if you try to forget, it’s very difficult to try and forget a positive action, and I do not remember anything.”
Referring to Epstein, the prince said:
"Do I regret the fact that he has quite obviously conducted himself in a manner unbecoming? Yes.”
The duke said, referring to Epstein:
"I stayed with him, and that's… that's… that's the bit that… that… that, as it were, I kick myself for on a daily basis because it was not something that was becoming of a member of the Royal Family, and we try and uphold the highest standards and practices, and I let the side down, simple as that."
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The Prince denied having sex with Virginia Giuffre, formerly known as Virginia Roberts, when she was 17 years old.
But in September, Roberts gave a bombshell interview describing l how she was allegedly "trafficked" to the prince for sex.
Roberts, now Giuffre, gave details about the first time she was allegedly forced to have sex with the Duke of York.
She also claimed she partied at Trump nightclub with the prince before returning to Maxwell’s Belgravia house, where she claims she had sex with Andrew.
But the prince denied this:
“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.”
And despite the now-infamous photograph of the prince with his arm around Roberts’s waist, the prince argued that he had “no recollection of that photograph ever being taken.”
He added that the picture appeared to have been taken upstairs in Maxwell’s house, but said: “I don’t think I ever went.”
On Saturday, Giuffre retweeted several disparaging tweets, with one reading:
“Prince Andrew’s shocking interview was an attempt to save his reputation – but it just raised more questions.”
