Shown almost immediately after the five-out-of-six "Guilty" verdicts were passed down on Ghislaine Maxwell for her role in the coercion and abuse carried out on young girls by her close contact and one-time-lover, the disgraced billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein, this programme went on to examine the links from that case to the now pending abuse case brought against the U. K.'s Prince Andrew, the second and we're told favourite son of the Queen, by one of the Epstein / Maxwell victims, Virginia Giuffre.
While Maxwell still awaits sentencing and will likely appeal against her conviction, the reporter here began by representing the background to her case. There were interviews with a number of her accusers and former employees with the case for her defence put by her brother Iain. It's not for me to say whether the guilty verdict against her was the right one, but at the very least she seemed to have a case to answer. However, hearing her brother, himself once tried for fraud in the aftermath of the death of their father, the disgraced media mogul Robert Maxwell, get upset about her conviction for me paled against the anguish the many young victims she allegedly groomed for Epstein must have suffered.
The reporter then moved her investigation onto Epstein and Maxwell's connections to Andrew. This included the for me, surprise allegation that Andrew and Maxwell were lovers at one point although what's not in doubt is that she introduced the prince to Epstein and so gained well-documented exclusive access to Royal circles. The infamous photograph of Andrew embracing Giuffre was naturally displayed along with the prince's it seemed to me rather unconvincing denial of any kind of interaction with the young girl, who has maintained that he abused her on more than one occasion in different locations. Excerpts from Andrew's much-vilified TV interview were also shown in which he offered the rather spurious-sounding defence that he was attending a birthday party at a Pizza Hut the night Miss Giuffre alleged he attacked her and bizarrely that he physically can't sweat anymore.
I'm not sure that this programme couldn't have been more judiciously made. At least one of the witnesses to Maxwell's visits to the Palace was a jailed former employee of the Palace staff while I didn't think the programme benefitted from the presenter revealing that she too had been a victim of child abuse in her own family at the age of twelve.
Nevertheless, it has certainly looked very unseemly if not downright seedy the way that the Royal's legal team has raised a phalanx of legal obstructions hoping to make the case go away but as things stand, Miss Giuffre will have her day in court which will only concentrate the spotlight on the Prince's questionable lifestyle. He has already since been forced to renounce many of his honorary positions with the Armed Forces, his membership of the R & A St Andrews golf club and even his HRH personal title. He clearly has a lot more to lose if this highly anticipated trial does finally go ahead and ultimately goes against him, the way it already has for his old friends Epstein and Maxwell, not to mention the negative impact it will undoubtedly have on the Queen's pending Platinum Jubilee celebrations...
