LONDON: Prince Andrew of Britain on Friday renounced his title of Duke of York and other honors after being increasingly embroiled in scandals around his ties to US sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“I will... no longer use my title or the honors which have been conferred upon me,” Andrew, 65, said in a statement.
He said his decision came after discussions with his brother, King Charles III, and his own “immediate and wider family.”
“I have decided, as I always have, to put my duty to my family and country first,” he said.
He again denied all allegations, but said “we have concluded the continued accusations about me distract from the work of His Majesty and the Royal Family.”
Andrew, who stepped back from public life in 2019, will remain a prince, as he is the second son of the late queen Elizabeth II.
But he will no longer hold the title of Duke of York that she had conferred on him.
His ex-wife Sarah Ferguson will also no longer use the title of Duchess of York, though his daughters Beatrice and Eugenie remain princesses.
The bombshell announcement came after new allegations emerged this week in the posthumous memoir of Virginia Giuffre, the woman at the center of the Epstein scandal.
She wrote that Andrew had behaved as if having sex with her was his “birthright.”
In “Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice,” Giuffre said she had sex with Andrew on three separate occasions including when she was under 18.
Giuffre rose to public prominence after alleging the disgraced US financier Epstein used her as a sex slave and that Andrew had assaulted her.
Andrew has repeatedly denied Giuffre’s accusations and avoided trial by paying a multimillion-dollar settlement.
In extracts published by The Guardian this week, Giuffre describes meeting the prince in London in March 2001 when she was 17.
Andrew was allegedly challenged to guess her age, which he did correctly, adding by way of explanation: “My daughters are just a little younger than you.”
- ‘Entitled’ -
Giuffre and Andrew later went to the Tramp nightclub in London, where she said he was “sort of a bumbling dancer, and I remember he sweated profusely.”
They later returned to the London house of Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s associate and former girlfriend, where they had sex, she alleged.
“He was friendly enough, but still entitled — as if he believed having sex with me was his birthright,” Giuffre wrote.
Giuffre, a US and Australian citizen, took her own life at her farm in Western Australia on April 25.
Andrew’s association with Epstein has left his reputation in tatters and made him a source of embarrassment to the king.
In a devastating 2019 television interview, Andrew — once feted as a handsome war hero who served as a helicopter pilot in the Falklands War — denied ever meeting Giuffre and defended his friendship with Epstein.
