Duke of York ‘has visited Queen at Balmoral for crisis talks over Jeffrey Epstein’

Prince Andrew ‘has visited the Queen at Balmoral for crisis talks over billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein’.

The Duke of York, 60, left lockdown at Windsor in Berkshire to rush to the Scottish Highlands castle to see his mother for the first time since July.

He has been accused of failing to help US prosecutors in their investigation into the financier and Ghislaine Maxwell.

A source told the Sun: ‘The Queen and Andrew will have lots to discuss. So much has come out over the summer.

‘The Queen wants to be kept informed and she will not be back at Windsor until early October.’ 

Prince Andrew’s sex accuser Virginia Roberts last month claimed he played a ‘guessing game,’ with Maxwell about her age when she was 17-years-old before comparing her to his daughters.

Now known as Virginia Giuffre, the accuser spoken out in a documentary series, Surviving Jeffrey Epstein, claiming she met the Queen’s second son in London, describing him as an ‘abuser,’ and ‘not the prince from the fairy tale stories you read’.

Ms Giuffre, who says she was trafficked by paedophile financier Epstein, alleges the duke had sex with her on three separate occasions, including when she was 17, still a minor under US law.

Andrew has categorically denied he has had any form of sexual contact or relationship with Ms Giuffre.

The Duke’s friend, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, is awaiting trial in the US after being charged with procuring teenage girls for Epstein to abuse. She denies this.

Ms Giuffre said of Andrew, who is the father of Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, in a clip: ‘Before he abused me, when we just met, Ghislaine does this guessing game and he guessed right, I was 17 and he compared me to his daughters, saying, ‘Oh, my daughters are a few years younger than you’.’

She added: ‘Prince Andrew is not the prince from the fairy tale stories you read. Andrew deserves to be outed. He deserves to be held accountable. He’s an abuser.’

Lady Victoria Hervey, formerly friends with Andrew and Maxwell, told the programme that friendship with Epstein offered the duke a form of escapism.

She said: ‘Jeffrey definitely enjoyed the idea of being friends with the Queen’s son and Prince Andrew had just gone through a divorce.

‘There’s this American billionaire that wants to fly him around the world and introduce him to people, and it was probably an escapism, really, for him.’

Christopher Mason, a journalist and also a former friend of Maxwell, said he once bumped into Andrew and Maxwell while walking in Madison Avenue in New York.

Mr Mason said: ‘He told me that he was staying at Jeffrey’s townhouse. That kind of fascinated me. It just seemed like a kind of perfect instance of the kind of people that Jeffrey was hanging out with.’

Andrew stepped down from royal public life in November following his disastrous BBC Newsnight interview, which had led to criticism of a lack of empathy for Epstein’s victims and a lack of remorse over his friendship with the convicted sex offender.

Maxwell, 58, has pleaded not guilty to helping Epstein recruit and eventually abuse three girls, who prosecutors did not publicly name, from 1994 to 1997, and to committing perjury by denying her involvement under oath.

She was arrested on July 2 in New Hampshire, where prosecutors said she was trying to evade capture, and is being held in a Brooklyn jail after a judge called her a flight risk.

In total Maxwell is facing six counts – four relating to child sex trafficking, and two of perjury for lying under oath about the trafficking during a previous lawsuit.

If convicted on all charges, she is facing up to 35 years behind bars. Maxwell’s trial is scheduled for next July.

Epstein was found hanged at age 66 last August in a Manhattan jail, while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges for abusing women and girls in Manhattan and Florida from 2002 to 2005. He had also pleaded not guilty.

During her pre-trial incarceration, Maxwell is being watched by a team of prison psychiatrists who are compiling a secret file on her mental health, her lawyers have claimed.

In a letter protesting about the ‘uniquely onerous conditions of her confinement’ in a Brooklyn jail, her legal team claim she has been kept under constant surveillance without her consent.  

Maxwell is asking the judge in her case to order that her lockup conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center be modified to be the same as other inmates.

Surviving Jeffrey Epstein was screened on the Crime+Investigation channel with a double episode on August 25 followed by parts three and four the following evening.

A spokesman for Prince Andrew told the Sun they did not want to comment on his reported trip to Balmoral.