Giuffre Family on Andrew Arrest: Royalty Not Above Law

The family of the late Virginia Giuffre said Thursday that the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, King Charles III’s younger brother, has lifted "our broken hearts."

They added that "no one is above the law, even royalty."

Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested Thursday, his 66th birthday, on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

Authorities are investigating allegations related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He was later released under investigation.

Giuffre, an American who accused Mountbatten-Windsor of assaulting her on three separate occasions when she was a teenager, died by suicide last year at age 41.

"At last, today, our broken hearts have been lifted at the news that no one is above the law, not even royalty," Giuffre’s brothers Sky and Danny, and their spouses, said in a statement. "On behalf of our sister, Virginia Roberts Giuffre, we extend our gratitude to the UK’s Thames Valley Police for their investigation and arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

"He was never a prince. For survivors everywhere, Virginia did this for you."

Although Mountbatten-Windsor denied her allegations, he paid Giuffre about $12 million in 2022 to settle a lawsuit she filed a year earlier.

As part of the settlement agreement, Mountbatten-Windsor acknowledged that Giuffre was a genuine victim of sex trafficking, praised her bravery and pledged to support anti-trafficking causes, according to the Palm Beach Post. He did not apologize.

Giuffre died by suicide on April 25, 2025, at her farm in western Australia. Her memoir, “Nobody’s Girl,” was published six months later and became the No. 1 book on The New York Times' combined print and e-book nonfiction bestseller list.

On Oct. 31, 2025, King Charles III stripped Mountbatten-Windsor of his remaining royal titles and his Windsor residence as the monarchy sought to distance itself from the Epstein scandal.

In her memoir, Giuffre wrote that Mountbatten-Windsor assaulted her at Ghislaine Maxwell’s townhouse in London; at Epstein’s mansion in New York; and on Epstein’s private island, Little Saint James, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, according to the Post.

Epstein arranged each encounter, she wrote.

Giuffre said Mountbatten-Windsor knew she was 17 when Epstein and Maxwell brought her to London in 2001. Maxwell presented her to Mountbatten-Windsor and other powerful men the way one might present a gift, she wrote.

She wrote that on the night they met, Mountbatten-Windsor mentioned his own daughters were "just a little younger" than she was. She said she danced with him at a nightclub, where he was profusely sweating, before returning to Maxwell’s townhouse, where he sexually assaulted her.

He behaved as though sex with her was "his birthright," she wrote.

Epstein paid her $15,000 for the encounter, she wrote, more than a year’s wages she previously earned as a locker room attendant at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, where Maxwell first approached her.

Maxwell offered Giuffre, then 16, the opportunity to train as a massage therapist for a wealthy businessman. Giuffre wrote that she went to Epstein’s waterfront mansion, where she was undressed and sexually assaulted.

A photograph showing Mountbatten-Windsor with his arm around Giuffre’s waist, Maxwell grinning beside them, became the most contested piece of evidence against him. Giuffre said she had the photo developed at a shop in West Palm Beach on March 13, 2001.

In a 2019 BBC interview, Mountbatten-Windsor said he had no recollection of ever meeting Giuffre, questioned whether the photograph had been doctored, and said it could not have been him dancing with her that night because a medical condition from his military service left him unable to sweat, according to the Post.

However, newly released files include an email from Mountbatten-Windsor, to Epstein the day after the photo was published in the British press in 2011, in which Mountbatten-Windsor, wrote: "It would seem we are in this together and will have to rise above it… keep in close touch and we’ll play some more soon!!!!" contradicting his claim that he had severed all ties with Epstein in 2010.