I think it will be fair to presume that when you provide a high value associate with these free perks a hidden camera or two can be a good insurance policy. There could be tapes.
Stepping away from this particular case, here is a brief backgrounder on how the British Establishment deals with - uh - embarrassments:
Westminster paedophile dossier
j
The worst which probably matters to him is happening:
It feels like this isn’t the worst but is instead preemptive because the worst is about to come out (perhaps in Virginia Giuffre’s book).
Or that might just be wishful thinking on my part.
Sure, but he doesn’t call…he doesn’t write…dude’s changed.
Joking aside? The level of association and travel with Epstein informs me that he’s a fucking monster.
Prosecute accordingly.
Could his brother, King Charles, pardon him? I mean, yeah, the optics alone would cause a rift in the space-time continuum, but is it on the table theoretically? ETA: Assuming he were convicted of a crime, that is.
The royal prerogative of granting pardons is exercised on the advice of Ministers — in England, specifically on the advice of the Secretary of State for Justice. It would cause a constitutional crisis if the king were to exercise it on his own initiative, or against ministerial advice.
It affects sentence, not conviction, so there is no point in exercising it until a sentence has been imposed, which of course only happens after conviction. Therefore it can’t be used to avert a trial before it happens — you can’t reverse or amend a sentence until there is a sentence to reverse.
There is no known crime of “associating and traveling with a paedophile” and definitely no known crime “being a fucking monster”. It’s not therefore easy to see what prosecution might occur.
“The Worst for Prince Andrew” will be determined by the monarch and UK government based on widely held public views (such as those you state), not a prosecution.
If the allegations made by Virginia Giuffre are true, then Andrew had sex with an underage person who had been trafficked into the UK for the purpose. That’s a serious crime.
I think there’d be considerable difficulty prosecuting the crime after such a lapse of time, and with the principal witness dead, so no matter how far Andrew’s stat may fall there will probably never be a prosecution. But he certainly has been accused of a serious crime.
Just building on UDS1’s post, we don’t have a custom of the Head of State issuing pardons for guilty people. On very rare occasions, the Government of the day may issue a pardon but these tend to be for clear failures of justice, either for wrongful conviction, or for someone being convicted of a crime which we nowadays regard as Bad Law, such as homosexual men convicted of sodomy.
and pardoning of Alan Turing took an embarrassing amount of time, and involved not a little dissembling and clearly homophobic rhetoric from the government before they finally did relent on a posthumous pardon in late 2013.
In 2011 you had the then justice secretary, Lord McNally, who said Turing was “properly convicted” for what was, at the time, a criminal offence. Revelations that pardons were regularly provided to informants who had been convicted of terrorist attacks, including murder, didn’t exactly help the government’s position. So proper conviction was clearly a rubbery definition.
In 2017, the UK government passed law to pardon the deceased, and provide a mechanism for the living to apply to have their conviction disregarded, after which a pardon comes into effect. Many feel that Turing’s pardon provided the catalyst.
Personally I would not be surprised if there had been a little hint from the palace to the government about not being dicks. At least for Turing’s pardon.
The upshot being that the palace (as a collective for the monarch plus advisors) is not a fool. And historically has played a very straight bat. I would be betting on this continuing.
I’m still not clear on the trafficking bit - I assume if Andy asked for a girl(s) to be brought or helped pay, then he’d be liable for trafficking. But just having sex with one that someone else trafficked on their own initiative - is that a crime? Do you have to know? Remember, Andy was top A-lister, and Epstein was a major social climber; plenty of high society people went to plenty of his dinner parties that did not include his usual “party favours”, although with certain guests - like Andy - he apparently knew and happily provided girls. I assume Andy in his position never personally paid for any sex.
I’m more curious about customs arrangements. From what I’ve heard, when divorced parents travel with their children, they need documentation saying the other ex agreed. How does some guy arrive in, say, England with a business jet with under-18 girls and just get waved through customs? “they’re models here for a photoshoot”? Doesn’t some sort of paperwork have to be filed for that?
The underage sex problem is more real for him. The age of consent in England is 16, so he is safe from prosecution there. IIRC, the age is 17 in NYC and 18 in the Virgin Islands, so the details and dates are important in this context. I’m surprised there aren’t more women claiming to have been used by him. After all, how many senators or Fortune 500 CEO’s would the average teenage girl be able to identify… but a Prince of England?
If she was underaged or unwilling, then yes, that’s rape.
I assume of course standard rape laws always apply - if she indicated she did not want to, then yes.
Andy knew that Epstein systematically provided girls to have sex with people Epstein wanted to be close to. And he knew that Estein had brought Giuffre to London for his, Andy’s, entertainment.
Older teenagers routinely travel in Europe on their own passports without needing to produce evidence of their parents’ consent. At 17, it’s not a big deal.
The age of consent in the UK is 16 for, um, conventional relationships. If there’s any kind of sex work involved — as there was here — the age of consent is 18,
Then why the question? Did you think that some victims of sex trafficking are willing?
Depending on what exactly you mean by “willing”, the victims of sex trafficking may well be willing. In many sex trafficking laws the question of whether the trafficked sex workers consent to what is happening or not is irrelevant; the elements of the offence do not include a requirement that the trafficked person should have happened without their consent. (This is especially the case where we are talking about the trafficking of underage persons, as in this instance.)
We should do a full-stop here for a moment and try to construct what that day would look like in the life of a 17 year-old girl being brought from the NYC area to London/ Heathrow or Gatwick to be raped by a then-in proper standing Prince Andrew.
One must assume that this is private jet stuff. One must assume that this child- and a sex worker under 18, as mentioned above, is a minor- does not have to stand before U.K. Immigration at a glass window and happily produce her US Passport. Things get “managed” at that level. How else would you transport in this child to be raped by British Royalty?
She went from wherever she was living in the NYC area to Teterboro Airport in northern NJ ( Usual departure for high-end private jets, etc. ) to private car into London to wherever she was raped without benefit of the protection of a parent/ adult/ guardian.
Human trafficking plain and simple.
But this still does not answer the question - what is Andrew’s legal liability?
IANAL, but it seems that to be guilty of sex trafficking, he would have to have at the very least asked for the girl(s) to be brought, or else paid for the transport or helped arrange it. Unless there are emails or he wrote cheques, that could be difficult to prove.
Simple. Again, IANAL. The laws of rape, unless it’s below the age of consent, is I understand that that the victim has to indicate they do not consent. (Canada just had a prominent trial that involved this issue). For all we know, Andrew may be sufficiently dense and oblivious as to think these girls were willing, or at least willing hires. Presumably Epstein one way or another had made it clear to those girls not to object to what his friends wanted.
The guy’s a slimeball, and I agree, he must have known or at the very least more than suspected something, but the question I’m asking is whether there are sufficient grounds for actual criminal charges - what for, and on what actual evidence?
Or if you’d excuse putting it crudely, the kind of man who thinks along the lines of (a) “15 is not a child” and (b) “whores are for using, who’s ever stood for them against important men like us?”
One can easily imagine that aristocrats and magnates have been able to get away with that forever. And there’s no crime of “Aggravated Asshole Creep”.