The removal of Prince Andrew’s royal title “vindicates” his alleged sexual assault victim, her family has said, as King Charles III seeks to draw a line under the damaging scandal.
Andrew, 65, on Friday renounced his Duke of York title under pressure from his brother Charles, following further revelations about the prince’s ties to late US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The long-running saga has caused considerable embarrassment to Britain’s monarchy and UK media report that the King is “glad” about the decision which further banishes Andrew from royal life.
Speaking to the BBC, the brother of Virginia Giuffre, whom Andrew denies assaulting when she was 17, said his late sister “would be very proud” of the development.
“We have shed a lot of happy and sad tears today,” he told the broadcaster late on Friday.
“I think happy because in a lot of ways this vindicates Virginia. All the years of work that she put in is now coming to some sort of justice,” he added.
The move comes ahead of Charles’s state visit to the Vatican next week where the monarch is due to pray alongside Pope Leo XIV in a service not seen for centuries.
The two-day visit ending on Thursday will coincide with the publication on October 21 of Giuffre’s posthumous book, “Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice”.
According to extracts published by the Guardian earlier this week, Giuffre, who died in April, wrote that Andrew had behaved as if having sex with her was his “birthright”.
Giuffre, who accused Epstein of using her as a sex slave, says that she had sex with Andrew on three separate occasions, including when she was under 18.
Andrew has repeatedly denied Giuffre’s accusations and avoided a trial in a civil lawsuit by paying a multimillion-dollar settlement.
He has become a source of deep embarrassment for Charles, following a 2019 television interview in which he defended his friendship with Epstein.
In the interview, Andrew vowed he had cut ties in 2010 with Epstein, who was disgraced after Giuffre accused him of using her as a sex slave.
– ‘Play together’ –
But in a reported exchange that emerged in UK media this week, Andrew told the convicted sex offender in 2011 that they were “in this together” when a photo of the prince with his arm around Giuffre was published.
He added the two would “play together soon”.
Newly released documents published by a US congressional committee on Friday after Andrew relinquished his title showed that he took flights aboard Epstein’s private jet on four occasions.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of trafficking underage girls for sex. He had been convicted of a lesser charge of soliciting a child for prostitution in 2008.
Giuffre, a US and Australian citizen, took her own life at her farm in Western Australia on April 25.
Andrew, who stepped back from public life following the disastrous 2019 interview, has also given up membership of the prestigious Order of the Garter, the most senior knighthood in the British honours system, which dates to 1348.
But he remains a prince, as he is the second son of the late queen Elizabeth II.
The once-popular Andrew, who was hailed a hero when he flew as a Royal Navy helicopter pilot during the 1982 Falklands War, was stripped of his military titles in 2022.
Next week’s Vatican visit will be the first time a British monarch and pope have prayed together at a church service since the Reformation in the 16th century that led to the division of Christianity and founding of Protestantism.
pdh/ach
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