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Epstein accuser Virginia Roberts-Giuffre denies Prince Andrew photo has been faked

Prince Andrew's allies have told The Telegraph this 2001 photo has been doctored. Virginia Roberts-Giuffre, pictured, insists it is legitimate
Prince Andrew's allies have told The Telegraph this 2001 photo has been doctored. Virginia Roberts-Giuffre, pictured, insists it is legitimate

A photograph of Prince Andrew with a woman abused by Jeffrey Epstein as a teenager is definitively not fake, the woman has said, in her first comments on the row over the image.

Virginia Roberts-Giuffre, now 35, claims that she was forced to have sex with the Prince, a former friend of Epstein’s, when she was 17.

A 2001  photograph of Ms Roberts-Giuffre with the Prince’s arm around her waist was dismissed as a fake by the Prince’s allies in August, with a source telling The Telegraph that the image had been doctored.

“The picture is a fake, and the girl’s story is a fantasy,” a source said. “Look at the picture. It has clearly been faked. Andrew’s fingers appear quite slender, like a girl’s fingers. They are also a strange shade of red.

“His real fingers are actually much chubbier - quite small and chubby.”

Epstein
Virginia Roberts-Giuffre claims that she was recruited to work for Jeffrey Epstein when she was a teenager, working at Mar-a-Lago

Mrs Roberts-Giuffre, in an interview with Australian television set to air at the weekend, dismissed the suggestion that the photograph was doctored.

Tara Brown, the correspondent with 60 Minutes Australia, told Mrs Roberts-Giuffre: “He says it's not his arm and those are not his fingers.”

She replied: “Oh the chubby fingers, I know.”

She continued: “This is a real photo. That is Andrew.”

The mother of three, who has spent many of the recent years living in Australia, told the television show that she hoped to see Prince Andrew brought to justice.

Andrew
The Duke of York has strenuously denied having sex with Virginia Roberts-Giuffre

Mrs Roberts-Giuffre has claimed that that she had sex three times with the Prince when she was 17. Allegations made in court papers released in the US also suggested that the Duke had flown a number of times with her on a private jet belonging to Epstein, who hanged himself in jail on August 10, awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

All the allegations against the Duke were struck from the court record in 2015 after being described as "immaterial and impertinent" by a judge.

“Prince Andrew should go to jail,” she said. “I mean, is he ever going to? Probably not.”

A Buckingham Palace spokesperson repeated its previous “emphatic and consistent denials” that the Duke of York had any form of sexual contact or relationship with Mrs Roberts-Giuffre.

The cameras also captured Mrs Roberts-Giuffre returning to Epstein’s palatial Manhattan home, which Epstein first brought her to almost 20 years ago.

“Being a kid, I didn't realise what world I was being brought into,” she said. “This mansion represents jail to me.”