A second woman has alleged that Jeffrey Epstein sent her to the UK to have a sexual encounter with Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, according to her lawyer, as UK government pressure on the former prince to testify before the US Congress mounted.
The woman has claimed she spent the night at the former prince’s residence Royal Lodge in 2010, her US lawyer, Brad Edwards, told the BBC. The woman, who is not British, was in her 20s at the time, it was reported.
Edwards, from the Florida-based law firm Edwards Henderson, said that after spending the night with Mountbatten-Windsor, the woman claims she was given a tour of Buckingham Palace and tea.
“We’re talking about at least one woman who was sent by Jeffrey Epstein over to Prince Andrew. And she even had, after a night with Prince Andrew, a tour of Buckingham Palace,” Edwards told the broadcaster.
BBC News said it had received no response to a request for comment from Mountbatten-Windsor on the claim, and that although Buckingham Palace routinely records the names of tour guests, it had not been possible to corroborate the woman’s visit without revealing her identity.
The lawyer told the BBC he was considering filing a civil lawsuit on the woman’s behalf against the former prince.
Edwards is said to represent dozens of Epstein survivors worldwide, and represented Virginia Giuffre, who alleged that she was brought to London to have sex with the former prince in 2001 when she was 17.
Giuffre said she was forced to have sex with Mountbatten-Windsor twice more in 2001 and 2002, once in New York and once on Epstein’s private Caribbean island. She killed herself in April last year.
Mountbatten-Windsor has denied Giuffre’s claims and any wrongdoing related to Epstein, a convicted sex offender who killed himself in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019.
Mountbatten-Windsor, who was stripped of his titles last year amid the fallout from his friendship with the billionaire, features heavily in the latest tranche of Epstein files, released on Friday by the US justice department.
Last year a US congressional panel investigating Epstein said it had written to Mountbatten-Windsor to ask that he submit to questioning as part of its investigation into Epstein’s criminal operations.
The UK’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, has said Mountbatten-Windsor “should be prepared” to give evidence about his links with Epstein.
Speaking on the final leg of his trip to east Asia, Starmer said: “I’ve always said anybody who’s got information should be prepared to share that information in whatever form they’re asked to do that, because you can’t be victim-centred if you’re not prepared to do that.”
An April 2020 US justice department document reveals the US authorities were prepared to conduct an interview with the then Prince Andrew under a “proffer letter” if he requested.
They were seeking to interview him as a witness. In US law a “proffer letter” does not guarantee immunity, but it does outline conditions under which US authorities would not use his statement against him.
Steve Reed, the communities secretary, said Mountbatten-Windsor clearly has insight into what was going on”.
Asked on Sky News’s Sunday Morning With Trevor Phillips programme if the government would comply with an extradition request from the US for Mountbatten-Windsor, should one be made, Reed said: “You’re asking me now details of legislation that would depend on the type of offence that may or may not have been committed. It’s entirely hypothetical.
“I don’t think it’s sensible for me to come on here and start talking hypothetically about situations that may or may not exist.”
Echoing the prime minister’s insistence that efforts to investigate Epstein should be “victim-centred”, Reed added: “But the principle here is very, very clear: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor clearly has insight into what was going on, and he should testify, because the victims deserve and need him, and anybody else who may have witnessed things, to do that.”
Reed also spoke of new images which have emerged of a barefoot Andrew crouching on all fours over a woman, telling the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, they are “very disturbing”.
The shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, said both Mountbatten-Windsor and Peter Mandelson should “give all the assistance they possibly can” to authorities investigating Jeffrey Epstein.
“It’s pretty horrifying to see just how extensive Jeffrey Epstein’s nefarious activities extended. Horrifying to see how many people were involved embroiled in his network,” he said.
Giuffre filed a civil lawsuit in the US against Andrew in 2021 and settled the case in February 2022 for a reported $12m (£8.7m).
The Guardian has attempted to contact Mountbatten-Windsor for comment.
