Prince Andrew and the 17-year-old girl his sex offender friend flew to Britain to meet him

[link to www.dailymail.co.uk]

As the UK's special representative for international trade, the Duke of York holds an important position, requiring sound judgement and widespread respect.

But those qualities have been thrown into question since photographs of Prince Andrew with his billionaire financier friend Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted child-sex offender who was jailed for 18 months for soliciting underage prostitutes, appeared last weekend.

Today, however, even more serious doubts are cast on his suitability after a woman at the centre of the Epstein case revealed to The Mail on Sunday that she had, as a 17-year-old employed by Epstein, been flown across the world to be introduced to the Prince.

Epstein, a Wall Street money manager who once counted Bill Clinton and Donald Trump among his friends, became the subject of an undercover investigation in 2005 after the stepmother of a 14-year old girl claimed she was paid $200 (£125) to give him an ‘erotic massage’.

The subsequent FBI probe uncovered at least 20 girls levelling sexual allegations against him. Eventually, Epstein struck a ‘plea bargain’ with prosecutors – a practice not permitted under British law – under which he was allowed to plead guilty to two relatively minor charges.

Police claim that his donations to politicians and his ‘dream team’ of influential lawyers deterred prosecutors from bringing more serious charges of sex-trafficking. The deal certainly kept the names of a lot of Epstein’s famous friends out of an embarrassing court case.

However, an unusual part of the agreement was that Epstein’s alleged victims were allowed to bring civil proceedings against him.

He has so far made 17 out-of-court settlements, and some cases are ongoing. One of these girls was to have been a key witness for the prosecution had the case gone to trial. She was just 15 years old when she was drawn into Epstein’s exploitative world in 1998.

In her civil writ against him, under the pseudonym Jane Doe 102’ she alleged that her duties included being ‘sexually exploited by Epstein’s adult male peers including royalty’.