Virginia Giuffre: ‘There is only one of us telling the truth,’ says Prince Andrew’s accuser in first UK interview

‘He knows what happened, I know what happened,’ says American who alleges she was forced to have sex with Duke of York

The woman who claims she was forced into sex with Prince Andrew as a teenager said in her first UK interview: “He knows what happened, I know what happened and there’s only one of us telling the truth.”

Virginia Giuffre, previously known as Virginia Roberts, said being caught up with the Duke of York and Jeffrey Epstein was “a really scary time in my life”.

The BBC‘s Panorama programme released a trailer on Twitter of its upcoming episode, which features an interview with Ms Giuffre, who claims she was made to sleep with Andrew when she was 17.

The hour-long episode, titled The Prince and the Epstein Scandal, will be screened on BBC One on Monday.

Ms Giuffre alleges the duke had sex with her on three separate occasions. He denies the allegations and has insisted he has “no recollection of ever meeting this lady”.

Ms Giuffre has also criticised the Metropolitan Police for failing to investigate her allegations.

In a statement on Thursday, the Met said it stood by its decision not to investigate claims by the duke’s accuser, and added that officers had spoken to other law enforcement agencies but have “not received a formal request asking for assistance”.

The Met said it reviewed its previous decision that it was “not the appropriate authority to conduct inquiries in these circumstances” following Epstein’s death in August, and that its position remained unchanged.

Epstein took his own life in a New York prison while he was being held on sex trafficking charges. William Barr, the US attorney general, has slapped down conspiracy theories claiming the trafficker was murdered, saying that he died in a “perfect storm of screw-ups”.

The Panorama episode follows Andrew’s attempt to defend himself against Ms Giuffre’s accusations and explain his friendship with Epstein, a convicted sex trafficker, during an interview on BBC’s Newsnight which was widely branded a “car crash”.

In that interview, the duke denied Ms Giuffre’s claims and said an alleged encounter with her in 2001 could not have happened as he spent the day with his daughter, Princess Beatrice, taking her to Pizza Express in Woking for a party.

Ms Giuffre said the duke sweated heavily as they danced at London nightclub Tramp, but Andrew claimed he had a medical condition at the time that meant he could not sweat after suffering an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War.

The duke has withdrawn from public duties after he was widely criticised for failing to show remorse for his friendship with Epstein, or empathy for the alleged victims, during his television appearance.

He has resigned from more than 230 patronages, and organisations he was once involved with have severed ties.

Ms Giuffre has claimed in court papers in Florida that she was forced to have sex with Andrew when she was 17, below that state’s age of consent.

Her allegations, which Andrew strenuously denies, were struck from US civil court records in 2015 after a judge said they were “immaterial and impertinent”.

Buckingham Palace has branded the allegations “false and without any foundation”, adding that any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors by the duke was “categorically untrue”.​

Additional reporting by Press Association