Remember me
Lisa Phillips told a special edition of BBC Newsnight on Wednesday evening that the alleged incident had happened to a friend of hers, after she herself was assaulted by Epstein on his private island – at the same time as Andrew was there.
However, Phillips – who was speaking alongside four other survivors of the sex offender’s abuse – said that the police in the UK had never tried to interview her about her experience.
Asked to tell her story, she told the BBC: “I was a young fashion model. I was kind of living my dream. I was just on a photo shoot and another young model – she was Eastern European – she had told me that [Epstein] had helped her to get her visa to work in the US, and so she just said like, ‘he's a mentor, he's a great guy’, and dragged me over to this island.
“He sent a boat and I just spent the day there. One of the young girls knocked on the door and said, Jeffrey was ready for his massage, and I had to always remember that phrase.
“Like they [the other survivors] all said, it was a real massage, that turned into, with myself, it was an assault.
“Right after, he turned around and started masturbating and assaulted both myself and the other girl that was in the room that day.”
Phillips said she had been left “horrified”, adding: “I was on an island. I didn't know how to get away and I just stayed up all night just waiting for dawn to break, just to get on that boat to go back and leave that island.
“We weren't expecting this to happen – and I think that he liked the fear in our eyes. I think he liked that we were frozen and scared and didn't know what to do, and I think he got off on that.”
She then claimed that Andrew had been on the island at the same time.
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“He was in the pool with a young blonde girl. And at dinner, he was getting ready to leave and he said goodbye to everybody at the table,” she said. “I didn't really think much of it till a few years later.”
Host Victoria Derbyshire then asked about her friend’s allegations against Andrew. Phillips said: “My girlfriend, she was the reason why I started speaking out, because I wanted to speak for her because she didn't want to, because the abuse happened to her.
“In late 2003, she had been travelling a bit with Jeffrey … to different countries and things, and she said she went to his Upper East Side house and former prince Andrew was there and that he made her, forced her to go into a room and to have sex with this man.
“She didn't want to, and she argued with him, but she said he made her, and she went into the room for a few minutes, and then he kind of discarded her and walked out.
“She was, after that, she was just traumatised over the situation. She left crying and she called me right away and she was like, ‘you don't know who this man is’. She was just frightened and she just couldn't make sense of why he made her do that.”
Derbyshire then confirmed that Phillips had meant that it had been Epstein “making her go into that room and Andrew was in there, and she was required to have sex with him”.
“That’s what happened,” Phillips alleged.
She was then asked if she had confronted Epstein about the incident, to which she replied: “I had just said to him, why did you make so-and-so do that?
“He had this little grin that he has, a little smirk he has, ‘Oh, I like to have things on people’.
“And I was just like, what? I remember, I wrote it in my diary.”
Asked if the UK police had ever tried to interview her, Phillips said they had not, going on: “I think they should, yes. I think they would learn a lot by talking to the victims.”
You can find the full BBC Newsnight episode with testimony from all of Epstein victims on the iPlayer.
Andrew has long denied all wrongdoing.
Buckingham Palace refused to be quoted but pointed to previous statements, including from King Charles after his brother's arrest.
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The broadcast came after news broke that a team has started searching through records related to Andrew’s former role as a trade envoy – but signalled it would take time before they are ready to release.
Ministers agreed in February to publish files related to the former prince appointment to the post amid allegations that he may have passed sensitive government documents to his paedophile friend – allegations which saw him arrested and released under investigation in February.
Labour minister Chris Bryant said: “We have begun searching historic departmental records and have commissioned parallel searches in other departments, in particular the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the Cabinet Office.
“We have established a process with the Cabinet Office and Thames Valley Police to ensure that any material released does not prejudice the police investigation.”