Prince Andrew has again been urged to speak to investigators by a lawyer representing more than a dozen women who claim they were abused by Jeffrey Epstein.
Gloria Allred says the Duke of York should not be waiting for a “gold-plated invitation delivered by a footman on a silver platter” before agreeing to an interview with prosecutors in New York.
“It would be really great if he didn’t just think about himself and he would think about the victims,” said Ms Allred.
Gloria Allred is representing 16 women who have alleged they were assaulted by Epstein
Representatives for the prince say he has repeatedly offered his co-operation. That has been contested by investigators probing Epstein’s life and crimes.
The billionaire died in his prison cell in New York last summer.
His former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, who introduced him to Prince Andrew, was charged by the FBI last week with aiding Epstein in trafficking young girls for sex.
One of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, has alleged she was forced to have sex with Andrew while she was a minor.
The Duke and Buckingham Palace have consistently denied the allegation.
“The victims deserve the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and this delay is just like a water torture test for them,” said Ms Allred.
“Every day there is the drip, drip, drip. Will he answer the questions of law enforcement? Will he not? Why not? When?
Ghislaine Maxwell has been charged by the FBI with aiding Epstein in trafficking young girls for sex
“He has said he’s done nothing wrong. Well, if he’s done wrong then step up and give an interview.”
Ms Allred represents 16 women who have alleged they were assaulted by Epstein. Since Maxwell’s arrest, she said, a number of British women have come forward with new allegations.
She appeared at a news conference alongside a woman, Alicia Arden, who says she was assaulted by Epstein in a hotel room in 1997.
Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell on a pheasant shoot with Prince Andrew in Sandringham, Norfolk. Pic: Albanpix/Shutterstock
Ms Arden filed a police complaint but no further action was taken. “It seemed my complaint was ignored,” Ms Arden told reporters.
“Had Jeffrey Epstein been investigated and had he been prosecuted and convicted, perhaps countless victims would have been spared from the sexual assaults and rapes they were forced to suffer,” Ms Allred said.
Announcing the charges against Maxwell last week, Audrey Strauss, the acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said the “door is open” for Prince Andrew to speak to investigators.
Maxwell has now been transferred from New Hampshire, where she was arrested, to New York. She is not being held at the detention centre where Epstein took his own life last summer.
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She is expected to appear in court on Friday to face multiple charges. Prosecutors have opposed bail on the grounds she poses an “extreme risk of flight”.
Last month, Ms Strauss’s predecessor Geoffrey Berman had filed an application under an international treaty requesting Prince Andrew face questions in the UK.