Ghislaine Maxwell ordered to search emails for mentions of Prince Andrew and ‘sex toys’

Virginia Roberts, photographed with Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell (not pictured) in early 2001.

Ghislaine Maxwell was ordered to search her email accounts for mentions of Prince Andrew and references to “sex toys” and “massage”, newly released court documents have revealed.

The 62-year-old daughter of the media magnate Robert Maxwell, who has since been imprisoned for trafficking girls with Jeffrey Epstein for sex, was ordered to search her records in a 2015 lawsuit.

A New York court demanded she search her emails for references to the Duke of York and the words “underage”, “sex”, “nipple” and “dildo” as part of the discovery phase of defamation proceedings brought by Virginia Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers.

The Prince has been mentioned several times in the latest files, unsealed by a New York judge this week after the Miami Herald argued they should be made public.

He has denied all accusations of wrongdoing, and settled a separate lawsuit brought by Giuffre with no admission of guilt over his relationship with Epstein.

The papers also uncovered that Maxwell had been concerned about being questioned regarding Prince Andrew in 2015, before Epstein was arrested on sex charges and their relationship forced him from the working royal family.

The resurgence of documents about Maxwell and Epstein has brought more unwanted attention to the Prince in recent days, amid calls for the Metropolitan Police to investigate allegations he had sex with Giuffre when she was 17 years old.

Maxwell said in a deposition, also unsealed this week, that she has no recollection of sex toys being stored at Epstein’s house.

However, the financier’s housekeeper, Juan Alessi, said that he had cleaned up “big dildos” from the house’s massage room and placed them into a laundry basket in Maxwell’s wardrobe.

The 2015 lawsuit that produced the papers came after Giuffre sued Maxwell for telling British newspapers she had lied in her accusations about Epstein in a court action in Florida the same year.

Maxwell was also required to submit her medical records, emails to Epstein and her lawyers, and sit for more than seven hours of deposition. She ultimately settled the lawsuit in May 2017.

The papers revealed after Giuffre made her allegations, in January 2015, Maxwell’s lawyers urged her to make a public statement denying the claims or risk of “reputational suicide”.

One of her advisers described Epstein as “toast” and urged her to distance herself from her former boyfriend.