Prince Andrew insisted Virginia Giuffre sign a gagging order so he did not embarrass Queen Elizabeth during her Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
The bombshell claim is set to be revealed in Ms Giuffre’s tell-all memoir from beyond the grave, which will be published on Tuesday.
The autobiography will heap more bad news on the disgraced royal, who was last night forced to relinquish his Dukedom to avoid inflicting further damage on the Royal Family.
In her book, Ms Giuffre describes the details of her legal battle and eventual settlement with Prince Andrew, which have so far been closely guarded.
She tells how Andrew’s disastrous Newsnight was like an ‘injection of jet fuel’ for her legal team, and it raised the possibility of ‘subpoenaing’ his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, and daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie and drawing them into the legal case.
Ms Giuffre filed a lawsuit against the royal in August 2021, seeking unspecified damages for battery, including rape, and the infliction of emotional distress.
She alleged that she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew three times when she was just 17 years old under the orders of late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The case was settled outside of court on February 15, 2022, for a reported £12 million, with £2 million thought to have been donated to her sex trafficking charity. Prince Andrew did not admit wrongdoing and has consistently and vehemently denied the claims.
However, in her new book Ms Giuffre exposes the details of the gagging order she was reportedly asked to sign by the prince.
She writes: ‘I agreed to a one-year gag order, which seemed important to the Prince because it ensured that his mother’s Platinum Jubilee would not be tarnished any more than it already had been.’
Prince Andrew insisted Virginia Giuffre sign a gagging order so he did not embarrass Queen Elizabeth during her Platinum Jubilee celebrations (Pictured: Virginia Giuffre)
Prince Andrew did not attend his mother’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in 2022. Pictured: The Royal Family on the balcony of Buckingham Palace during Trooping the Colour
Virginia Giuffre photographed with Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell in London in 2001
The agreement meant Ms Giuffre was barred from discussing her abuse at the hands of Epstein during the 70th year of the late Queen’s reign.
As a non-working royal, Prince Andrew did not appear on the balcony at Buckingham Palace along with other members of the Royal Family during the celebrations.
His titles were returned to the Crown in January that year amid the fallout over his friendship with Epstein and Ms Giuffre’s lawsuit.
Prince Andrew was, however, due to join the wider Royal Family for a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s Cathedral but he pulled out after testing positive for Covid-19.
It comes as BBC journalist Victoria Derbyshire this afternoon revealed in a post on X that Ms Giuffre’s ghostwriter will be appearing on Newsnight on Monday.
She said she had already read the memoir, explaining that it contains ‘searing details’ of the abuse Ms Giuffre suffered at the hands of Epstein and a description of how she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew, claims he denies.
Ms Giuffre, whose book is called Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, wrote, according to The Telegraph: ‘As devastating as this interview was for Prince Andrew, for my legal team it was like an injection of jet fuel.
‘Its contents would not only help us build an ironclad case against the prince but also open the door to potentially subpoenaing his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, and their daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.’
She also told how Andrew had ‘stonewalled’ her legal team for months before settlement discussions began moving very quickly when his deposition was scheduled for March 2022.
Ms Giuffre also wrote how she was ‘revolted’ to see ‘two of my abusers together’ when Andrew was pictured walking with Epstein in New York in 2011 and ‘amazed’ that a member of the royal family would be ‘stupid enough’ to appear in public with the convicted paedophile.
Andrew, who remains a prince and continues to live in the vast Crown Estate property Royal Lodge, said on Friday that the ‘continued accusations about me distract from the work of His Majesty and the royal family’.
He insisted he was putting his ‘family and country first’ and would stop using ‘my title or the honours which have been conferred upon me’.
The Royal Family appear on the balcony of Buckingham Palace at the end of the Platinum Jubilee Pageant in 2022
Prince Andrew at the Order of the Garter service in 2019 outside St George’s Chapel in Windsor – he will now relinquish his Knight of the Garter status, as well as the title of Duke of York
Prince Andrew’s statement was released by Buckingham Palace on Friday night
Ms Giuffre’s family today welcomed the news, saying they felt ‘vindicated’.
Andrew will also step down from the Order of the Garter – the UK’s most ancient order of chivalry – and will will also relinquish his position as Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victoria Order.
Speaking to Newsnight last night, Ms Giuffre’s brother Sky Roberts said his sister, who died in April, was a ‘truth teller from the beginning’ – and suggested King Charles should even consider stripping Andrew of the title of ‘Prince’.
He said his sister’s children would be ‘incredibly proud’ of her campaigning, adding: ‘[She] is an American hero, she’s an international hero and all the years of work that she put in is now coming to some sort of justice, and these monsters can’t escape from it. The truth will find it’s way out.’
Mr Roberts said: ‘We have shed a lot of happy and sad tears today. I think happy because in a lot of ways this vindicates Virginia.
‘She was a truth teller from the beginning. I know at one point she called out that he said some things and I’ve said some things and only one of us is telling the truth, and she was telling the truth.
‘And this is a moment where we feel very proud for her but we’re also sad because she should be sitting here, she should be talking to you on Newsnight tonight but she’s not and so we’re here to advocate for her and her survivor sisters.’
Moreover, Epstein victims’ expert Lucia Osborne-Crowley today claimed that the Royal Family were ‘spooked’ into forcing Andrew to give up his titles by fear over revelations in Ms Giuffre’s forthcoming book.
A new memoir by Ms Giuffre is set to be released next week and is sure to provide further embarrassment for the prince
King Charles III is said to be ‘glad’ his brother has given up his titles after discussions with Andrew and his son, Prince William
Speaking to the BBC today, Ms Osborne-Crowley, who has written an award-winning book called The Lasting Harm on the paedophile financier’s victims, backed calls from the lawyer who represented some of them, Gloria Allred, for the Prince to finally stand up and give an eyewitness account of what he has seen because ‘the story is not going away’.
‘He is a key witness – we know this as we have the photos and the flight manifest to evidence that – so he should absolutely be volunteering what he knows.
‘Hopefully, that is a step towards that because everything we are seeing at the moment is just showing us that this is finally the one time that the world is not willing to let this go quietly.’
Earlier Ms Allred told Radio 4’s Today programme that Andrew’s behaviour was a ‘stain on the monarchy’.
Ms Osborne-Crowley, who covered the Ghislaine Maxwell trial daily, said Andrew losing his titles was a ‘very symbolic victory’ for Epstein’s victims but ‘not enough’.
‘The fact that it is happening at all – and the fact that it is happening as Virginia’s book is being released – is really significant. It really does – as her brother Sky Roberts said – lend credibility to her testimony.
‘One of the things the out of court settlement with Prince Andrew did was mean that the world never got to hear her testimony and now in this book we will hear that and it has clearly spooked the Royal Family and that is really symbolic because of how vigorously they have denied these allegations and it is a symbol that there are things in that book that they find very, very worrying.
She added: ‘I certainly don’t think that there is a sense from victims that this is it or that this is enough. I think it’s the opposite.
‘What we are seeing her is that finally after thirty years that this story is not going to go away. This isn’t the end of anything – it’s the beginning.’
And Ms Osborne-Crowley said she was confident that further evidence would be released from the US Congress to build on the email exclusively revealed in last weekend’s Mail on Sunday showing Prince Andrew had lied about when he cut communications with Epstein.
‘There is already straightforward evidence that he has not told the truth from the 2011 email,’ she said.
‘We will be seeing more from Congress. We will be seeing more of those emails and I think the Palace knows that which is partly why they made the decision that they did yesterday so hopefully Prince Andrew and a lot of other people will be forced to answer questions that really they should have been forced to answer years ago.’
Prince Andrew and King Charles were last pictured together at the Duchess of Kent’s funeral last month
Meanwhile, Prince Andrews unofficial biographer has also claimed that he should be investigated for corruption for his role as a special trade envoy for the UK government.
Andrew Lownie also strongly criticised the Royal Family for not looking into Andrew’s financial sources more diligently and claimed it was Prince William not Charles who forced him to drop his titles.
Historian and author Lownie, whose recent bombshell revelations about Andrew and Fergie helped to trigger the crisis which led to the Prince sensationally relinquishing his titles on Friday night, said: ‘We need to have a statement from Andrew about exactly what his dealings with Epstein were but I think this is part of a much wider problem too.
‘The corruption was pretty implicit in his work as a special trade envoy and MPs were keen to investigate that 20 years ago and I think that should be looked at again.
‘He has a very lavish lifestyle – we need to know where this money is coming from.
‘The due diligence hasn’t been done by the Royal Family. I understand that he is still making large sums of money in ways which I don’t think would carry public favour.’
Andrew served as the UK’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment for ten years until July 2011.
Exposure of his friendship with Epstein led to him being forced to step down from the role but many questions have remained over links he made during the period.
Lownie, whose book Entitled – the Rise and Fall of the House of York was serialised in the Mail, also called for ‘much more transparency and accountability from the Royal Family in general’ and criticised Andrew’s statement on Friday night as ‘a pretty mealy mouthed statement’.
Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme today, he warned: ‘He’s been pushed out.
‘Pressure had come from the government and from William not from the King. We know that there are many more revelations still to come so this isn’t the end of the story.
‘We may have more testimony coming from the victims.
‘We have another book called Blue Butterfly coming out next month and Virginia Giuffre’s book – which is only really a rewrite of a previous book she wrote – clearly has some pretty sleazy allegations in it – so who knows what could happen.’