From: To: Jeffrey Epstein <[email protected]> Subject: Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2011 00:47:55 +0000 Inline-Images: Dominic_Lawson_15587a.GIF Dominic Lawson: I stayed at Epstein's so don't hound Andrew Prince Andrew has been damned for his choice of friends, but he is blessed in his enemies, like Labour MP Chris Bryant The Sunday Times Published: 13 March 2011 Recommend (0) Comment (0) Print Follow Comment DOMINIC LAWSON Guilt by association is a conveniently elastic property for the press, when it is engaged in a manhunt. In this case the man is Prince Andrew, Duke of York, and he has been associating with a sex offender named Jeffrey Epstein. In 2008 Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in jail, having pleaded guilty to the charge of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution. Last December Prince Andrew was snapped by a paparazzo while walking in Central Park with Epstein and the shot was duly published in the News of the World. The Prince and Epstein were old friends, and the fourth in line to the throne had been staying at the billionaire's New York mansion. This occasioned only mild scandal at the time; but a fortnight ago The Mail on Sunday published the account by Virginia Roberts of her employment as a 17-year-old masseuse by Epstein, in which she repeated in bowdlerised form her previously pseudonymous court deposition — as "Jane Doe 102" — that she had been "sexually exploited by Epstein's adult male peers including royalty". The story was accompanied by a photograph of Prince Andrew with his arm around Ms Roberts, taken in 2001. Although the newspaper went out of its way to emphasise that there was no suggestion that the Queen's second son had engaged in any improper or illegal sexual conduct, headlines such as "Prince Andrew and 'naked pool parties' at his paedophile friend's house" had the desired effect of portraying a royal duke wallowing in slenp. As is usual in such circumstances, other papers, not wanting to be left