Sarah Ferguson calls Prince Andrew ‘humongously good man’
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Version 0 of 1. Sarah Ferguson issued a fresh statement in support of Prince Andrew on Tuesday, describing her ex-husband as a “humongously good man” and endorsing Buckingham Palace’s denial of allegations that he had sexual relations with a teenage girl. Appearing on breakfast television in the US, the Duke’s former wife declined to say if she and Andrew had discussed his encounters with Virginia Roberts, who alleged in a court filing last month that she was forced by Andrew’s friend Jeffrey Epstein to have sexual liaisons with the prince. However she described Roberts’s allegations as “defamation of character” and associated herself with the official rebuttal made by the royal family. “Buckingham Palace put out a denial,” Ferguson told NBC’s Today, “and we stand by that denial.” “I won’t stand by – because I know what it feels like to have salacious lies made up about you – and not support him so publicly, because they are just shockingly accusatory allegations,” said Ferguson, who added: “The American people know my integrity.” She said that given Andrew’s qualities “as a great father, and a humongously good man, and all the works he does for Britain,” she would not “let him have his character defamed to this level”. She called Andrew “my best friend and my best ex-husband ever”. Roberts has long claimed to have been forced to work as a “sex slave” to Epstein, a wealthy former hedge fund manager who spent 13 months in jail under a controversial plea deal after being convicted in Florida in 2008 of soliciting prostitution from underaged girls. Roberts alleged that she had relations with Andrew at Epstein’s properties in London and New York and on his private island in the US Virgin Islands – all of which Andrew denies. Earlier this month Buckingham Palace issued vehement denials that the duke had “any form of sexual contact or relationship with Virginia Roberts” and said that “any suggestion of impropriety with under-age minors is categorically untrue”. Ferguson’s latest intervention came as a journal purportedly written by Roberts, containing explicit details of an alleged encounter with Andrew, was published on a US website. Roberts was reported to have written an entry about a 2001 visit with Epstein and his entourage to London, where she said she danced with Andrew at Tramp nightclub before they both left to go to the town house of Ghislaine Maxwell’ – a friend of both Epstein and the prince – where she alleges they had sex. Lawyers now representing Roberts said in a statement that while they were “aware of the existence of a journal” kept by Roberts, to whom they referred as Jane Doe #3, they did not have a copy of it and were not behind Tuesday’s publication. The attorneys, Brad Edwards and Paul Cassell, argued that the excerpts were “entirely consistent” with the allegations filed to court last month and “rebut any contention that those allegations are the product of a recent fabrication”. At the weekend an unnamed source described as “close to the Duke” by the Daily Telegraph was quoted saying Prince Andrew acknowledged his friendship with Epstein had been “foolish” and that the story had been “deeply uncomfortable for the Royal family”. Questioned on Tuesday about whether she had asked Andrew about meeting Roberts, Ferguson said: “We’re not getting into that subject because you need to ask him that, you need to ask Buckingham Palace that.” The government of the US Virgin Islands said that it would be reviewing corporate sponsorship deals after the Guardian disclosed that Epstein had in recent years given gifts of computers to teenage school pupils and funded government events for young children. Epstein used his Virgin Islands-based corporations to fund a summer camp for children with intellectual disabilities, a prize for a school essay-writing competition and Kindle e-readers for a school library. The manager of his firms was the First Lady of the US Virgin Islands. Martin Weinberg, an attorney for Epstein, said in a statement that Epstein’s philanthropy was “heartfelt and decades old” and had “only a single objective – to help those in need, and in this case, students who in the Virgin Islands are in need of computers and other educational tools that provide them with a real opportunity to learn and succeed”. |