Buckingham Palace has stepped up efforts to defend Prince Andrew after the British royal was embroiled in claims of sexual impropriety with an underage woman.
In a second statement since the claims surfaced, officials emphatically denied allegations by an unidentified woman who said she was forced to have sex with the royal when she was under the age of 18.
The woman claimed in a Florida court filing that American financier Jeffery Epstein made her have sex with prominent people, including the Duke of York.
The woman was only identified as 'Jane Doe Number 3' in the papers.
Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz was also named along with the Prince in the court documents.
Dershowitz has denied all the allegations and says he believes the Prince should be more vocal about his innocence.
"The allegations against me are totally made up, they're absolutely false, they're made up out of whole cloth. I don't know this woman. I never had sex with her or any other below-age woman or any woman having any association with Jeffrey Epstein, I wasn't in the places at the times that she alleges. If Prince Andrew is as innocent as I am and I must of course presume he is, he should be fighting back in the way that I'm fighting back."
Royal officials made the statement after two tabloid newspapers published details of interviews with the alleged victim.
