Meghan Markle was reportedly “horrified” by comments made by Prince Andrew during an interview in which he denied having sex with a teenager and called sex a “positive act” for men.
Andrew, the third child of Queen Elizabeth II, was a longtime acquaintance of Jeffrey Epstein, who stood accused of running a sex trafficking ring that provided sexual access to underage girls. Epstein died at 66 by suicide in a New York jail cell awaiting trial in August after he was accused of trafficking, rape, sexual abuse, and many other crimes by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who was 17 years old when she claims she was trafficked by Epstein. Giuffre also asserted that she had sex with the royal in 2001 when she was still a minor.
In an interview with the BBC last week, Andrew, 59, didn’t deny that he was friends with Epstein but rejected the notion that he had been sexually involved with Giuffre or any other underage girls.
“No,” the Duke of York said to a question about whether he had been involved with young girls. “And without putting too fine a point on it, if you’re a man, it is a positive act to have sex with somebody. You have to take some sort of positive action, and so, therefore, if you try to forget, it’s very difficult to try and forget a positive action, and I do not remember anything.”
Friends of Markle, a former American actress who married Andrew’s nephew Prince Harry in 2018, reported that the Duchess of Sussex was “horrified” by Andrew’s comments and that many listening to the interview were “uncomfortable.” The friend also said the prince’s words “left everyone watching it wanting to curl under a table” because “it just got worse and worse and worse.”
Since joining the British royal family, Meghan has been active in charity that benefits women and has been outspoken in her condemnation of violence against women and girls worldwide.
After the interview, the Duke of York was kicked out of his offices within Buckingham Palace, a move that was approved by his mother. He was also removed from Pitch@Palace, a company he founded that permitted him to take a cut of tech investment deals. The queen also told him to step down from his royal duties, making him the only member of the British royal family to retire from their duties because of a scandal.
