UK Police Drop Investigation Into Sexual Assault Claims Against Prince Andrew

The Metropolitan Police will take no further action against Prince Andrew after reviewing documents related to alleged sexual offences.

Officers reviewed documents connected to Virginia Giuffre’s legal case against the Duke of York in the US.

UK newspaper Sunday Times reported that officers had spoken to Giuffre, who in an ongoing civil lawsuit claims she was sexually assaulted by Prince Andrew at three locations when she was 17 years old. But detectives in the UK have now dropped their investigation.

Giuffre, now 38, alleges that in 2001 – when she was known as Virginia Roberts – she was trafficked to the UK by billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein and forced to have sex with Prince Andrew in the London home of socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as in Epstein’s homes in New York and the US Virgin Islands. Prince Andrew has always strenuously denied the allegations, as has Maxwell. Maxwell is in a US jail awaiting trial in November. She has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking and other charges related to her alleged role in procuring teenage girls for abuse.

In August, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick said that the case had been reviewed twice before and that “nobody is above the law”.

"It's been reviewed twice before, we've worked closely with the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service], we are of course open to working with authorities overseas, we will give them every assistance if they ask us for anything within the law obviously,” she said at the time.

"As a result of what's going on, I've asked my team to have another look at the material.”

In a statement on Monday, the Metropolitan Police said, "As a matter of procedure MPS officers reviewed a document released in August 2021 as part of a US civil action. This review has concluded and we are taking no further action."

Giuffre’s US lawyer, Sigrid McCawley, a partner at Boies Schiller Flexner, told the Sunday Times, “Given the clear and compelling evidence implicating Prince Andrew, the Metropolitan Police should reopen its investigation and stand by their statement that no one is above the law.”

Prince Andrew, 61, stepped down from royal duties in 2019 after a disastrous interview on the BBC’s Newsnight, in which he claimed that he was at home after attending a children’s party at a Pizza Express restaurant in Woking on the night he was alleged to have sex with Guiffre.