EPSTEIN’S pal Jean-Luc Brunel accused of sharing a “sex slave” with Prince Andrew has been charged with raping a teenager.
The 75-year-old is currently on remand in a Paris prison in connection with multiple alleged attacks on Virginia Giuffre – now 38 and a woman who is also suing the Duke of York, 61, for sexual assault.
It follows dozens of women saying Brunel abused them while running an underage sex ring for Epstein, a friend of both men who committed suicide in a New York prison in 2019.
The fashion agent was arrested at the airport in Paris following accusations of rape, sexual assault of minors and human trafficking.
An investigating source in Paris confirmed today that Brunel was in June charged with the “aggravated rape of a young foreign model”.
The source told Le Parisien that the crimes were “allegedly committed in the late 1990s, when she was only 17 years old.”
The latest complainant has not been named for legal reasons, but she is now in her 40s and believed to be living in the USA.
She told examining magistrates that Brunel raped her at her Paris home after a night out at a nightclub, where she believes that a drug was placed in her drinks.
Like Prince Andrew, Brunel has vehemently denied any wrongdoing, with his lawyers saying he was being subjected “to a media lynching.”
In November, Ms Giuffre responded to an online English language appeal by French magistrates for alleged victims of Brunel to come forward.
She said that she was raped by Brunel in the early 2000s – around the time that she is said to have had sex with Prince Andrew when she was 17 and a minor under U.S. law.
The “multiple rapes” of Virginia Giuffre – now a mother of three who was called Virginia Roberts before her marriage – were said to have mainly taken place at Epstein’s home on the private island of Little Saint James, in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Ms Giuffre had produced sworn testimonies saying that both Brunel and Prince Andrew attacked her there.
According to French law, a French citizen such as Brunel can be tried in France for offences committed abroad.
Brunel was intercepted by detectives at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris on December 16 with a one-way ticket to Dakar, the capital of Senegal, in West Africa.
Others said to have been involved in the sex ring include Epstein’s ex-girlfriend, the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, 59, who is currently on remand in the USA after being charged with the trafficking of underage girls and the enticement of minors.
Prince Andrew, was, like his friend Maxwell, a regular visitor to Epstein’s mansion flat in Paris, where many of the worst crimes against girls are said to have taken place.
DENIED ACCUSATIONS
A French judicial enquiry into Brunel’s conduct and the sex ring was opened in August 2019, when prosecutors first heard allegations that Brunel and the Queen’s second son shared a lover.
Giuffre said she was forced to sleep with the Duke after being trafficked to him at least three times when she was 17.
Prince Andrew has consistently denied the accusations levelled by Giuffre, telling the BBC in 2019: “I have no recollection of ever meeting this lady. None whatsoever.”
Giuffre has told the French she was routinely raped by Brunel between the ages of 16 and 19.
Brunel, who has worked with celebrities including Jerry Hall, Sharon Stone and Monica Bellucci, is also suspected of using his contacts in the fashion industry to provide victims to Epstein and his friends.
He is said to have flown 12-year-old sisters from a Paris housing estate to America so they could be abused by Epstein as ‘a birthday present’.
Epstein – a convicted paedophile – committed suicide in his prison cell in New York on August 10 2019, while awaiting trial for a range of other offences, including trafficking minors for sex, and multiple rapes.
A statement released by Brunel’s lawyers, Marianne Abgrall and Mathias Chichportich, on Thursday reads: “Our client has always firmly asserted that he has never abused any woman.
“This accusation, which arises almost twenty years later and without the slightest proof, is a new illustration of the media-judicial lynching suffered by Jean-Luc Brunel since the suicide of Jeffrey Epstein.”
On Monday, the High Court in London accepted a request by Ms Giuffre’s legal team to formally contact Prince Andrew about the sexual assault case launched against him in the United States.
