SAN JOSE (CA)
Mercury News
Sept. 18, 2019
By Martha Ross
Pollsters have ranked Prince Andrew as the least popular royal; he’s known for being boorish, self-centered and tone-deaf to criticism. Even a positive quality attributed to him — loyalty — has often gotten him in trouble, notably when it came to his desire to stay friends with Jeffrey Epstein.
In fact, Andrew stuck by the now-deceased Epstein even after the multimillionaire financier was first investigated for sex trafficking and was convicted in 2008 of solicitation of a minor.
“You’re such a puritan,” Andrew told a friend who urged him to cut ties with Epstein, according to a 2011 Vanity Fair report. “Leave me alone. Jeffrey’s my friend. Being loyal to your friends is a virtue. And I’m going to be loyal to him.”
It turns out that registered sex offender Epstein is not Andrew’s only longtime friend who was accused of sex crimes against minors. A 2017 investigative report by the Canadian magazine Maclean’s showed that the Duke of York also stayed loyal to an Anglican priest who was the chaplain at the elite prep school he attended as a teenaged exchange student 40 years earlier.
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