US Judge Loretta Preska ruled in December that documents that were part of a 2015 defamation case by Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell should be made public.
Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Stephen Hawking are among those named in court documents relating to Ghislaine Maxwell, her relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and alleged victims of sexual abuse.
A US judge, Loretta Preska, ruled in December that documents that were part of a 2015 defamation case by Virginia Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell should be made public.
Judge Preska ordered that some individuals should be named because they had already given interviews to the media.
In one document, a woman named Johanna Sjoberg – while giving testimony in May 2016 – claimed the Duke of York touched her breast while sitting on a couch inside the US billionaire’s Manhattan apartment in 2001.
Buckingham Palace has previously said the allegations are “categorically untrue”.
At the time, Ms Sjoberg testified that Maxwell called her to an upstairs closet where they pulled out a puppet of Prince Andrew that had been made for a BBC programme.
“It looked like him,” Sjoberg said. “And she brought it down and presented it to him; and that was a great joke, because apparently it was a production from a show on BBC.”
“And they decided to take a picture with it, in which Virginia and Andrew sat on a couch.
“They put the puppet on Virginia’s lap, and I sat on Andrew’s lap, and they put the puppet’s hand on Virginia’s breast, and Andrew put his hand on my breast, and they took a photo.”
In the documents released, Ms Sjoberg said that while flying to Manhattan with Epstein, Maxwell, Ms Giuffre and Prince Andrew, the financier’s jet was diverted to Atlantic City, New Jersey – where Epstein suggested going to one of Donald Trump’s casinos.
“The pilot’s told me to go back and tell [Epstein] that we can’t land in New York and that we were going to have to land in Atlantic City,” she said.
“Jeffrey said, Great, we’ll call up Trump and we’ll go to – I don’t recall the name of the casino, but – we’ll go to the casino.”
Later, when questioned on if she had to give Mr Trump a massage, Ms Sjoberg said she was never asked to.
