So it turns out that (ex?) Prince Andrew is going to face up to Virginia Roberts' sexual abuse claims in a public-trial - he wants a jury to judge whether he really did sexually assault her all those many years ago.
I wonder then they decided on this strategy? it was probably months ago, and they've been waiting for a suitably other-news-saturated period to announce it so it gets glossed over - and today is the PERFECT time for that - one day's headlines and then probably tomorrow we'll be back on Boris-party gate.
Apparently (according this BBC news article) Andrew's lawyers don't have 'enough information to either admit or deny' the existence of this infamous photo:
That's the photo with the prince grinning - some might say like a guy who knows he's about 'to get some' - with his arm around the then 17 year old Virginia Roberts and the now-convicted sex-trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell in the background. Allegedly the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein is behind the camera.
What to make of all this...?
Was Jeffery Epstein a Paedophile? Most probably.
Did Maxwell establish a network of teenage girls to groom for him? Probably
Did they think they were untouchable...? Certainly.
But then on the question of how much Andrew knew about all of this..... it's very possible he was unaware of just how bad this pair of, let's call them friends, were. I mean just the fact that Andrew (let's say) 'was' royalty would have put him in a social class way above their new-rich status, which probably means contact between them was on the level of 'socialite acquaintances' rather than 'intimate friends' - so do I believe Andrew when he says he didn't know Maxwell? I find that quite believable.
But then we get onto the sweaty details of the night itself - about whether they actually slept together, about consent or lack of it, about culpability..
I mean it's quite feasible that as far as Andrew was concerned this 17 year old was just a friend of Epstein and Maxwell, albeit odd that a 17 year old is hanging with friends twice her age, it's quite possible that he had no idea she was part of a whole manipulated network of teen girls and that he was just getting lucky with a consenting girl half his age on that one night.
If this were the case it's probably not the best judgement call for a Prince twice her age to make, but he wasn't knowingly doing anything illegal either.
Or is that no excuse for historical cases where people have slept with trafficked sex-slaves?
Whatever the outcome of the trial, and maybe like or maybe unlike on the night in question, Andrew the Prince is screwed.
These are important and tough questions.
How much due diligence is a gent required to do before having sex with a woman.
How much due diligence should the Prince of England due to make sure this very young looking woman is actually of legal age and actually consenting to have sex with a man easily twice her age? Whom she probably never met before?
And is it just that he is a Prince and therefore every young woman in the UK would be willing to bed him on sight?
Or if so why does he need Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell at all?
Prince Harry seemed to do alright clubbing by himself...
Or is it old married men who wish to sleep around have to go to the equivalent of drug dealers to get their fix of young women?
The structure of that arrangement would seem to be clearly s pretty bad for the Prince and the young woman.
Questions, questions and more questions.
I don't know the answers to these questions...
And I know that some people say: It doesn't put a roof over my head or food in my belly. So I understand why many don't care...
But if crimes were committed against young girls who could be our daughters, our sisters, or for some of you young blokes out their ...your future girlfriends...
who are screwed up by this sex trafficking thing, then perhaps we all should care.
The rule of law and the equal application of it, should be all of us's business and concern.
It's what makes us a civilized society where our members male and female can walk around unmolested, unrobbed, unraped and free.
@shortsegments
You do a great job in this comment of showing what a mess this whole situation is!
Then factor in the problem that we're judging someone for something they did 20 odd years ago on today's new moral standards, or at least we seem to be.
Sometimes I think it's easier if we all just stay in and do nothing, just be safe.
Epstein and Maxwell had a lot of high profile friends and it's probable a lot did not know what they were up to, but just this picture makes Andrew look to be in a dodgy situation. Some of the women affected have accused him, so it will be up to the courts, whichever ones, to decide. As a minimum he showed some bad judgement, but then he was still in contact with Epstein after his conviction. He said he visited Epstein to break off their friendship! Why would he do that? I'd be staying well away from anyone tainted like that, especially if I were a royal.
It's great fodder for the media as it has some of their favourite topics, sex and royalty.
I don't worry too much about the royals generally. They don't live in the real world, but sometimes it affects them too. They are as human as the rest of us really.
That picture must haunt him, that's for sure. He must just want this all done and dusted rather than it dragging on.
I can't see him being found guilty, the lawyers will just direct the judge and jury to the 'facts' of the matter which all took place between the two of them, no other witnesses, and if there's room for reasonable doubt, which there will be, they won't be able to find him guilty even if he is, and i don't know one way or the other, and i can't see how digging into what we know for certain about one night 20 years ago, which is basically nothing, is going to convince a jury.
It doesn't do his reputation any good that's for sure.
You have to wonder if Epstein and Maxwell would have kept further evidence for their own protection. Not that it seems to have done them any good.
We've not heard the end of it yet...
Well, actually, Prince Andrew would not be a pedophile. The definition of a pedophile that appears in the Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental (DSM-5) is an adult or teenager 16 years of age or older who is sexually attracted to prepubescent children five or more years their junior. The cutoff point has been debated on whether it should be placed at 13 years old, 12 years old, or 11 years old.
Dr. Ray Blanchard, a Canadian psychiatrist, wanted to extend the definition of pedophilia to include teenagers in a pedophile's age pole of attraction back in 2013. However, the the American Psychiatric Association (A. P. A.) denied his request. Even if he had gotten his way back then, Virginia Roberts would still have been considered to be too old to be a potential target of pedophilia.
In any event, the A. P. A. would deem Virginia Roberts to have been too old at the ripe age of 17 to have been the potential target of a pedophile back when she got involved with Prince Andrew. She wasn't even living the lifestyle of a potential child-molestation victim back then. While she was involved with Prince Andrew at the age of 17, she was not living at home with her parents but rather with her boyfriend in New York City. She was well beyond Tanner Stage 1 in her bodily development. Therefore, she was clearly past the crayons-and-playground phase of her life, and no real pedophile would have had any kind of sexual interest in her. To a pedophile, she would have looked like an old lady when she was 17.
Did Prince Andrew break the law in hooking up with Virginia Roberts? Of course, he did. She was under the control of slave drivers, and she felt obligated to have sex with him. That would make him a hedonist and a criminal offender, but it would not make him a pedophile. Now, if she had been 7 years old, then it would make Prince Andrew a pedophile.
Am I surprised about Prince Andrew's behavior? No, I'm not. Let's remember that he is a descendent of King Henry VIII, who had no moral compass and exercised no moral boundaries whenever he took any woman to bed with him.
Are Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell pedophiles? Technically, they both fall short of being ones. None of the girls that they enslaved were prepubescent children. Now, if you want to argue that they were tyrants and rich scoundrels, you would get no argument from me. I don't believe that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. Somebody murdered him.
Journalists and particularly prosecutors here in the United States have to be careful whom they accuse of being pedophiles. Criminal defendants have actually gotten off the hook on a technicality because of it whenever it turned out that they didn't qualify to be pedophiles under the DSM-5.
Very fair point about the definitions!
But winning that argument in front of the media is going to be a tough one!
Oh, I completely get it. The press and the media have always been notorious for playing by their own rules. At least here in the United States they have been. One time so many years ago I was watching a panel discussion among legal experts on television. One of the legal experts was Geoffrey Fieger, who made his claim to fame as an attorney when he represented the family of the late Scott Amedure in a civil suit against The Jenny Jones Show back in the 1990s. If I remember it correctly, a celebrity had contemplated bringing a defamation suit against a news agency for falsely accusing him of being a pedophile. Geoffrey Fieger said that this celebrity would only be wasting his time, because the press and the media "bought ink by the barrels." Mr. Fieger never applied wrong judgment in any statement he made on camera from as far back as I can remember him.
Seems like life’s easy for tabloid journalists in the UK the past months :-)
It's a wonder they get paid!
When there's a demand for something....😞
The problem is I don't think there is much demand for this product!
Let me get this straight, because I'm not very familiar with the affairs of the royal heads. This is the other Prince, not the one that moved to the States with his actress wife, and gave up his title and benefits (or that was the punishment)?
Andrew is Prince Charle's brother, so Harry's (who moved to the States with Megan) Uncle.
I don't think that was a punishment, they'd just had enough of royal duties.
Ah, I thought he was Harry's brother. :) That would have seemed really bad. This way, it's just another scandal... I think.
No Harry's Brother is Will, Married to Kate, they are basically the golden children of the Royal Family.
Andrew is the major league fuck up.
Exactly. That's why I was surprised. Except I mixed up characters, lol.
Exactly what I was thinking. I'm 35 and I don't hang out with 17 years old girls, although I'd like that.
I still don't get how were they getting these girls. I mean they most certainly paid them or lured them with something.
Well Ghislaine Maxwell was recently found guilty of historic cases of grooming young girls for Epstein.
I imagine money was involved.
It's all quite seedy!
Money as always...