'Andrew's team tried to hire internet trolls to hassle me'

New allegations by Virginia Giuffre appear in 'Nobody's Girl'

- ALEX ROSS

Virginia Giuffre claims Prince Andrew’s team tried to hire internet trolls to target her after she made allegations that the royal had “raped and battered” her, according to her bombshell memoir.

In her posthumous book Nobody's Girl, due to be released today, Giuffre claimed Andrew and his team attempted to “cast doubt on my credibility” after she spoke out about alleged abuse at the hands of paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein and his then girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell.

The latest revelations come after the Metropolitan Police said it is “actively” looking into claims that Andrew passed her date of birth and social security number to his bodyguard in a bid to dig up dirt for a smear campaign.

Andrew, who has always vehemently denied any wrongdoing, reached a financial settlement with Giuffre in 2022. He relinquished use of his Duke of York title on Friday, but pressure is growing on the royal family to back a move to formally strip Andrew of his dukedom through parliamentary legislation.

The book gives detailed accounts of three separate occasions when Giuffre, who died by suicide aged 41 this year, said she had sex with Andrew. The first occasion took place at Maxwell’s London home in March 2001, when the infamous picture of the pair was taken by Epstein at her own request as a memento for her mother, she wrote.

In the memoir, Giuffre reveals difficulties she and her legal team faced in lodging the civil sexual assault case, launched in August 2021, in which she wrote that she “alleged Prince Andrew had raped and battered me when I was a minor, causing me severe and lasting damage”.