The British royal family is once again engulfed in controversy as Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir, Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, hits shelves and reignites scrutiny over Prince Andrew’s decades-long ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The book, published on October 21, 2025, just months after Giuffre died by suicide at age 41, delivers a harrowing account of alleged abuse, palace cover-ups, and the personal toll of her relentless pursuit of justice.
According to Fox News Digital, Giuffre’s memoir details her first meeting with Prince Andrew in March 2001, when she was 17 and already ensnared in Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s trafficking ring. She describes being woken by Maxwell and told, “just like Cinderella” she would meet “a handsome prince.” Giuffre alleges that Maxwell instructed her to “do for him what you do for Jeffrey,” a chilling directive that set the stage for what she claims were three coerced sexual encounters with Andrew—first in London, then at Epstein’s New York residence, and finally on Epstein’s private Caribbean island, where she says about eight other girls, all appearing under 18, were present.
Giuffre’s account does not introduce entirely new allegations, but its vividness and timing have thrown fuel on a fire that has burned for years. In her words: “After casting doubt on my credibility for so long—Prince Andrew’s team had even gone so far as to try to hire internet trolls to hassle me—the Duke of York owed me a meaningful apology as well.” She continues, “We would never get a confession, of course. That’s what settlements are designed to avoid. But we were trying for the next best thing: a general acknowledgment of what I’d been through.”
The book’s release has triggered fresh outrage and calls from both the public and politicians for the monarchy to take decisive action. On October 21, 2025, lawmakers from the Scottish National Party lodged a parliamentary motion demanding legislation to formally strip Andrew of his titles. Conservative MP Robert Jenrick told The Guardian, “It’s about time Prince Andrew took himself off to live in private and make his own way in life. He has disgraced himself, he has embarrassed the royal family time and again.”
Amid the uproar, Prince Andrew announced on October 14, 2025, that he would stop using his titles, including Duke of York, in an attempt to limit the damage to the monarchy. “In discussion with The King, and my immediate and wider family, we have concluded the continued accusations about me distract from the work of His Majesty and the Royal Family,” Andrew said in a statement reported by Fox News Digital. “I have decided, as I always have, to put my duty to my family and country first… I will therefore no longer use my title or the honours which have been conferred upon me. As I have said previously, I vigorously deny the accusations against me.”
Still, the prince’s denials have done little to quell public anger. His 2019 BBC Newsnight interview, intended to clear his name, is widely remembered as a “car crash” and a public relations disaster. In the memoir, Giuffre skewers Andrew’s bizarre insistence that he couldn’t have danced with her at a London nightclub because he was unable to sweat due to “an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War”—a claim met with widespread disbelief. She wrote, “He said he had no recollection of ever meeting me—‘None whatsoever.’ Most outlandishly, he said he couldn’t have danced sweatily with me at the Tramp nightclub, as I’d described, because he’d temporarily developed an inability to perspire after enduring ‘an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War,’—a bizarre reference to his military service nineteen years prior to our meeting.”
According to BBC and Fox News Digital, Andrew’s legal troubles escalated in 2021 when Giuffre filed a sexual abuse lawsuit in New York. The case was settled out of court in 2022 for an undisclosed sum. While Andrew did not admit wrongdoing, he acknowledged Giuffre’s suffering as a victim of sex trafficking and agreed to make a donation to her charity. Yet, the settlement did little to restore his reputation or that of the monarchy.
In recent days, new evidence has surfaced that further undermines Andrew’s credibility. On October 19, 2025, The Mail on Sunday published leaked emails suggesting that in 2011, Andrew asked a police bodyguard to investigate whether Giuffre had a criminal record in the U.S.—a move many view as a smear campaign. The Metropolitan Police confirmed to The Guardian that they are “actively looking into the claims made.” Meanwhile, British newspapers published an email dated February 28, 2011, from Andrew to Epstein, in which he wrote, “I’m just as concerned for you! Don’t worry about me! It would seem we are in this together and will have to rise above it.” This directly contradicts Andrew’s previous statements that he had severed ties with Epstein in 2010.
Royal experts and commentators have not minced words about the gravity of the situation. Hilary Fordwich told Fox News Digital, “In addition to all we know, [Andrew] comes across even worse as unrepentant and manipulative. This is ghastly for the royal family.” Richard Fitzwilliams added, “The portrait she paints of Andrew is of a bovine, entitled and supercilious individual, in some ways never out of the nursery… If his Newsnight interview did not exist, no one would have been able to invent it outside a spoof.”
With Buckingham Palace and the UK government facing mounting calls to strip Andrew of his remaining privileges and evict him from his 30-room mansion near Windsor Castle, the scandal shows no sign of fading. Both Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson currently reside at Royal Lodge, a 30-bedroom property owned by the royal family in Windsor Great Park. The optics of their continued residence there, as Fitzwilliams noted, are “truly terrible.”
Giuffre’s ghostwriter Amy Wallace, speaking to the BBC, emphasized the importance of Giuffre’s courage: “She deserves all credit for whatever role she played in forcing Prince Andrew to relinquish a few more of his titles. But she deserves all credit even more than that for being brave enough to stand up to say, ‘This isn’t right.’”
The timing of the memoir’s publication has also created headaches for the royal family, overshadowing key events for King Charles III and Prince William. As Ian Pelham Turner told Fox News Digital, “King Charles is making a historic journey to visit the Pope and kneel in prayer with him, a ceremony which has not happened for centuries. Early next month William is traveling to Brazil for Cop 30 to talk about his Earthshot prize, all these important issues by the royal family are being overshadowed by Andrew.”
While Prince Andrew has not faced criminal charges, the renewed investigations and public outcry threaten to cement his status as a royal pariah. As Fitzwilliams put it, “Unable to use his titles, stripped of his patronages and an outcast in the royal family, he and his devoted ex-wife Sarah Ferguson face the future as pariahs.”
Virginia Giuffre’s memoir, now a bestseller, may not have introduced new allegations, but it has ensured that the questions of accountability, privilege, and justice at the heart of the royal scandal remain impossible to ignore.