I thought the encounter took place in London. People often settle out of court without admitting blame. Companies do it all the time. I don't think the payment in itself "proves" he had sex with her. He may genuinely not recall the encounter. Those whose power and money allows them to have sex with whoever they want probably cannot remember every instance. I'm not defending him per se. My point is that he is the only one (bar Epstein and Maxwell themselves, of course) whose life has been destroyed over it, which seems odd.
@ViewAhead I think that the most talked about encounter, where the photograph was taken, did take place in London, but there may have been others in the US or on Epstein's private island.
I've seen that film @KT53 and very much enjoyed it whilst being horrified at the lengths to which white Americans went to maintain segregation. The Beatles, bless them, when they toured the USA refused to play anywhere that had segregated audiences and had it written into their contracts. I have never understood how a nation made up of white immigrants who left their homes in Europe to escape intolerance and discrimination based on their religion/beliefs/lack of opportunity to work and feed their families could evolve to be so closed minded, petty and fearful of difference. As for ANdrew, of course he's guilty of being exceedingly stupid and entitled and sexual misdemeanors. Why esle would his mum have to fork out so many millions to buy silence and then confine him to barracks.
Whaaattt? nobody seems to be talking about the Amazon Web Service crash today! A lot of cloud storage, social media, banking and business run through their site (apparently a third of all internet traffic ) and it created chaos for a while and is not yet completely back. It is said to have been an error at their end and not outside hackers. I didn't notice it but I don't do internet banking, social media or use the Cloud. Written from my cave.
@ViewAhead Andrew clearly has an absolutely terrible memory. He claimed to have ended all contact with Epstein only for emails to appear showing that he not only contacted him at least a year later, but said he was looking forward to having more fun with him (or words to that effect).
And, if Andrew didn’t know Virginia Giuffre how did he know her name, date of birth, and social security numbers which enabled him to request information about her from a Police Officer?
She accused him in public. He decided to find out info about her. This would normally be done by lawyers when fighting a claim. You can paint cirs to look more damming than they are. Now, did his general arrogance and entitlement lead to him making enquiries that he should not have? Quite possibly. @KT53, he lied about his contact with Epstein. It is not actually against the law to lie to a journalist. Did he have sex with Giuffre? Almost certainly. Did it mean anything to him? Probably not. Once details were in the public domain, did he try to cover his back? Of course. That is the rich and entitled method, straight out of the "How to bluster your way out of trouble caused by your arrogance" handbook.
I don't think Andrew's life has been destroyed by any of the scandals he has been involved in. He still has his royal title, pays only a peppercorn rent for his mansion, has 24/7 security, has never been wrongly criminalised and still apparently lives "the good life". Not too bad really considering. This whole Epstein thing is a long way off from being cleared up because too many influential people were involved with him one way or another. I understand that Buck House is concerned because "the public" is now taking more notice of this issue than anything else related to the royals . Now there's a surprise !!
@ViewAhead he's a sleaze and of course he wanted to investigate her background to find means to damn her and undermine her story. It's what men do to women they've exploited.
Of course he's a sleaze. No one is denying he's a sleaze. But the fact remains he is one of many sleazes involved ... and the others have all pulled off a magic invisibility trick. How come? TBF, if someone accuses you of something as serious as sexually exploiting a minor, you are going to look for ways to fight off the allegations. But that is what teams of lawyers are for, not your private security personnel. If you suspect the motivation is to extract a large sum in compensation (and Giuffre had already had a significant payout from Epstein, which Andrew may well have known about, given what buddies they clearly were), you might legitimately get your lawyers to investigate their financial situation.
Fair point. I guess it is his reputation that has been trashed rather than his actual existence. And quite possibly he does not give a toss what anyone thinks of him anyway, provided his privilege remains intact.
This morning, I experienced one of the most idiotic and dangerous pieces of driving that I've seen in a long time. I was stopped at traffic lights and I was about a dozen or so cars back from the lights. There are 2 lanes of traffic in each direction and I was in the right hand lane. The lights changed to green and traffic started moving. There was no traffic heading the other direction. A woman crossed the two empty lanes and stood in the 'median'. By this time traffic was moving quickly in the direction I was travelling. The driver about 3 cars ahead of me had got up to about 20 mph when they decided to stop and wave the woman across - despite traffic travelling in the left hand lane. Fortunately the lady trying to cross the road had more sense than the driver and stayed where she was. Had she tried crossing, the outcome doesn't bear thinking about as it's unlikely a vehicle in the left hand lane would have had time to react to her appearance.
never take notice of hand signals by anyone other than a copper, and we all know they dont do traffic control anymore, they just go and hide somewhere if there is a snarl up.
@ViewAhead the magic is simple financial and being a tad more crafty and cunning than silly old Andrew who seems to think a prince can do as he pleases and not have his judgement questioned.