Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor Arrested for Misconduct in Public Office as Epstein Files Undermine His Virginia Giuffre Denials

An email sent by Jeffrey Epstein and first reported by Byline Times, and then picked up by the wider media the following day, suggests the convicted sex offender never disputed a sexual encounter took place between the late trafficking survivor Virginia Giuffre and the former Prince, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

Giuffre alleged she was trafficked to Andrew and raped, starting when she was 17 years old. He has always denied ever meeting her.

Now on Thursday, his 66th birthday, he has been arrested at the King’s Sandringham estate in Norfolk, where he was residing since King Charles III stripped him of his royal titles and honours.

Thames Valley Police confirmed that a man in his sixties had been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office, and that searches were under way at addresses in both Berkshire and Norfolk.

The arrest follows months of mounting scrutiny across multiple police forces. At least seven British constabularies – including the Metropolitan Police, Thames Valley, and Norfolk Constabulary – have been examining allegations arising from more than three million pages of documents released by the US Department of Justice as part of its Epstein investigation.

Thames Valley Police had said previously that it was assessing reports that Mountbatten-Windsor forwarded confidential trade reports to Epstein in 2010, while serving as the UK’s trade envoy, sending official briefings to the convicted sex offender within minutes of receiving them from his then-special adviser. The arrest appears to relate to that allegation.

Misconduct in public office is a common law offence carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment. It requires prosecutors to demonstrate that a public officer deliberately breached their duty in a manner representing a serious and wilful abuse of public trust.

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‘Consensual Sex’

The arrest is the latest and most dramatic development in a scandal that has been building since the Epstein files began entering the public domain – and it places renewed focus on a piece of evidence first uncovered by Byline Times, which went on to be covered widely by national and international outlets.

Among the documents released by the US Department of Justice was a private email exchange in January 2015 between Epstein and Landon Thomas Jr, then a reporter at the New York Times. In the correspondence, then New York Times reporter Landon Thomas Jr refers casually to Andrew having had “consensual sex” with the late Virginia Giuffre – the initials ‘VR’ are used throughout the Epstein files as shorthand for her premarital name Virginia Roberts. “I think the big issue is separating yourself from Andrew”, wrote Thomas Jr. “I mean in the end he had consensual sex with VR. And VR worked for you. The rest is atmospherics.”

As a minor at the time of the alleged offence, Giuffre would not have been able to give consent, under the law.

In the correspondence, Epstein did not dispute that the encounter took place. The thread shows Epstein and Thomas Jr commiserating over a new US court document filed by Giuffre at the time alleging that Epstein had forced her to have sexual relations with Mountbatten-Windsor.

Mountbatten-Windsor has always categorically denied ever meeting Giuffre. In his BBC Newsnight interview in 2019, he told Emily Maitlis he had “no recollection” of the encounter she described, and that it “didn’t happen”. Epstein’s private email – in which the financier had every reason to be candid – tells a different story.

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Giuffre’s Allegations

Giuffre alleged that she was trafficked by Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell as a 16-year old and raped by Mountbatten-Windsor on three occasions when she was 17: first in London in March 2001, then at Epstein’s New York mansion, and once more on Epstein’s private island in the Virgin Islands. Mountbatten-Windsor has consistently denied all of these allegations. A child, of course, does not have the legal capacity to consent to sex with an adult, regardless of how a perpetrator frames it.

The significance of her age is not in doubt. Giuffre’s posthumous memoir Nobody’s Girl, published in October 2025, recounts that when Mountbatten-Windsor arrived at Maxwell’s Belgravia townhouse that evening in March 2001, Maxwell invited him to guess Giuffre’s age. He guessed correctly: 17. “My daughters are just a little younger than you,” he allegedly told her.

Mountbatten-Windsor settled a civil lawsuit brought by Giuffre in New York in 2022, on terms that included no admission of liability, following a US court ruling that allowed her case to proceed. In the settlement, he acknowledged that Epstein was a sex trafficker and that Giuffre was “an established victim of abuse.”

He subsequently had his honorary military titles and royal patronages removed, and was later stripped of his title as prince entirely. He repaid the Royal Family’s financial backing for his legal settlement only after sustained public and institutional pressure.

Giuffre died by suicide in April 2025, before seeing full accountability for those she said had abused her. In a statement responding to today’s arrest, her siblings said: “At last, today, our broken hearts have been lifted at the news that no one is above the law, not even royalty. On behalf of our sister, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, we extend our gratitude to the UK’s Thames Valley Police for their investigation, and the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. He was never a prince. For survivors everywhere, Virginia did this for you.”

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Questions That Must Now Be Answered

The arrest is unprecedented in modern British history: no member of the royal family has been arrested in the contemporary era. It follows years of deference and delay that insulated Mountbatten-Windsor from the scrutiny his conduct demanded. The Epstein files – quietly embedded in millions of pages of US court filings, and painstakingly interrogated by journalists and campaigners on both sides of the Atlantic – have now placed the allegations at the centre of active criminal investigations.

The evidence now in the public domain, including Epstein’s private acknowledgement of a sexual encounter between the former Prince and Giuffre when she was underage, raises questions that go considerably further.

Those questions – about whether Mountbatten-Windsor’s denials of ever meeting Giuffre are tenable, and about his conduct toward her – deserve urgent, thorough and independent investigation by the appropriate authorities.

Giuffre spent years fighting for a reckoning she never lived to see. The least the authorities can do now is ensure that her allegations across more than two decades are finally, properly, investigated.

In a statement, issued by Buckingham Palace, King Charles said: “I have learned with the deepest concern the news about Andrew Mountbatten Windsor and suspicion of misconduct in public office.

“What must now follow is the full, fair and proper process by which the issue is investigated in the appropriate manner and by the appropriate authorities. In this, as I have said before, they have our full and wholehearted support and cooperation.

“Let me state clearly the law must take its course as this process continues. It would not be right for me to comment further on this matter. Meanwhile, my family and I will continue in our duty and service to you all.”