British King Charles III has ordered his brother Prince Andrew to vacate his royal home following renewed attention to his ties with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The royal family has stripped Andrew of his remaining titles, leaving him known as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, and has directed him to move to alternative private accommodation. According to the royal family, these censures are deemed necessary despite Andrew’s continued denial of the allegations against him. The statement emphasized that the royal family’s thoughts and sympathies remain with the victims and survivors of any form of abuse.
Andrew remains eighth in line to the British throne despite losing his titles. In 2022, Andrew settled a civil lawsuit with US activist Virginia Giuffre, who alleged that he raped her three times in 2001 when she was 17 years old. Giuffre, who committed suicide in April, claimed that Epstein and his girlfriend, British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, had trafficked her to the royal. Andrew maintained that the alleged incidents never happened and insisted that he was unaware of Epstein’s crimes when he hosted him and Maxwell at Royal Lodge in 2006.
Interest in the Epstein case was reignited earlier this year after US government agencies said they had found no evidence of foul play in his 2019 death in a Manhattan jail, which was ruled a suicide. Officials also denied that the disgraced financier had kept a list of wealthy people he allegedly trafficked women to. Giuffre’s memoirs were posthumously released in October, bringing renewed attention to Andrew’s ties to Epstein.