The New York sex abuse case against Prince Andrew was weakened because prosecutors in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial failed to call his accuser as a witness, it was claimed last night.
Jeffrey Epstein’s former lawyer Alan Dershowitz insisted the fact the Maxwell jury didn’t hear from Virginia Giuffre was because the authorities don’t believe she is telling the truth.
But critics pointed out Mr Dershowitz is also accused of sexual abuse by Ms Roberts, said that taints his opinion on the case and slammed the BBC for interviewing him on the subject without giving any context.
And royal experts said there was ‘no way back’ for Andrew’s reputation now the Maxwell verdicts are in regardless of the outcome of the case against him.
Prince Andrew and Alan Dershowitz both deny all the allegations against them.
Mr Dershowitz, 83, who was formerly Jeffrey Epstein’s lawyer, told the BBC he thought the case against Andrew was ‘weakened considerably’ after the Maxwell trial.
‘I think the most important thing for British viewers is that the Government was very careful as to who it used as witnesses,’ he said.
Heat turns up on Prince Andrew: His big problem is this picture can now be captioned ‘The sex trafficker, the ‘sex slave’ and the Duke – taken by a predatory paedophile.’ And he’s facing his own legal battle at a hearing in New York, writes RICHARD KAY
Although his name was barely mentioned, Prince Andrew‘s presence hovered uneasily over every moment of Ghislaine Maxwell‘s trial.
Twice it came up, and on each occasion it offered a tantalising glimpse of both his folly and breathtaking lack of judgment.
He was named by a pilot as one of the passengers flown on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein‘s private jet, the so-called ‘Lolita Express’, with all its unsavoury undercurrents.
And ‘Jane’, one of the anonymous girls who claimed she was groomed by Maxwell to be abused by Epstein, said she had been on the plane with the Prince.
For his part, Andrew has admitted he flew on the plane but insists he never saw anything untoward.
As disturbing as the courtroom disclosures undoubtedly were, it was the emergence of a photograph of Maxwell cuddling up to Epstein on a bench at the Queen’s picnic cabin at Balmoral — issued by the prosecution — that electrified proceedings.
Since only the closest of friends are invited to the royals’ Scottish estate, the fact that Andrew welcomed the pair into this most private of inner sanctums seemed to prove beyond doubt just how intimate they all were.
