2019.11.18爱泼斯坦向安德鲁王子提供了什么

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What Jeffrey Epstein Offered Prince Andrew
An oblivious interview exposes the two-tier world in which Jeffrey Epstein flourished.

By Helen Lewis
A photo of Prince Andrew during his interview with the BBC's Emily Maitlis.
The BBC's Emily Maitlis interviews Prince Andrew. (Mark Harrison / BBC)
NOVEMBER 18, 2019
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Prince Andrew has, clearly, made many poor decisions in life: traveling to royal engagements in Britain in a helicopter, rather than taking the train; criticizing the government’s attempts to combat corruption over lunch with British businessmen in Kyrgyzstan; captaining a team in a medieval-themed game show broadcast on national television.

Yet his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein—which continued after the latter’s conviction for solicitation of prostitution involving a minor—is disturbing on another level. The prince’s decision this weekend to give an interview to the BBC about that friendship, which entirely lacked empathy or remorse, compounds the offense.


From the start, it was apparent that the queen’s second son dwells not on Earth, but on Planet Aristocracy. It is a land governed by rules and codes that are unfathomable to the rest of us. When the BBC’s Emily Maitlis asked whether he had invited Epstein to a party, Andrew quickly corrected her: “It was a shooting weekend … a straightforward shooting weekend.” The distinction—between an evening event and staying with friends to fire guns in muddy fields—is meaningless to anyone who grew up outside the English upper classes. Throughout, he seemed to adhere to an honor code where ghosting a friend is unconscionably discourteous, but exploiting underage girls is merely a “manner unbecoming.” It is essentially a two-tier view of the world, where people are divided into equals and human chaff.

In 2011, the scandal surrounding Epstein, a former hedge-fund manager, cost Andrew his job as Britain’s trade envoy, a role that involved indiscriminate schmoozing of dictators, oligarchs, and business leaders. Questions about their friendship have dogged him ever since. He presumably thought the interview would help refute the persistent allegation that he had sex with a minor—Virginia Roberts (now Virginia Giuffre), then age 17—in 2001. In a court filing, Roberts said she was essentially trafficked by Epstein, and forced to have sex with his friends, including Andrew.


Read: Arresting Jeffrey Epstein is just the start

A secondary motive might have been to show remorse for the friendship, which continued long after it was clear exactly what kind of person Epstein was. On the surface, the millionaire’s lifestyle was glittering—donations to tech research, dinners with public intellectuals—but its darkness ought to have been obvious to anyone who saw it up close. Epstein attended Andrew’s daughter Beatrice’s 18th-birthday party at Windsor Castle in 2006, two months after an arrest warrant was issued for his sexual assault of a minor. (He was given a plea bargain, allowing him to serve just 13 months in prison, as well as immunity from future prosecutions not just for him, but for “any potential co-conspirators.”)

When protesting his own innocence in the BBC interview, the prince floundered. He sounded queasy and evasive. He could not have slept with Roberts on the date she alleged, he said, because he was at a pizza restaurant in a town near London. Why did he remember that so specifically? “Because going to Pizza Express in Woking is an unusual thing for me to do.” (Never mind that Woking is only 30 miles from London, putting it about an hour’s drive from Tramp Nightclub, where he is alleged to have met Roberts that evening.) Her memory of him as sweating also threw the story into doubt, he believed: “I didn’t sweat at the time because I had suffered what I would describe as an overdose of adrenaline in the Falklands War when I was shot at.”

On the second count—expressing remorse—the prince also failed. Maitlis asked Andrew straight out whether he regretted the friendship. “Still not,” he said. “The people that I met and the opportunities that I was given to learn either by him or because of him were actually very useful.” (No room in the picture for another set of people: Epstein’s victims.) She tried again later, and got essentially the same answer.

Read: The myth of the ‘underage woman’

As an interviewer, Maitlis was calm and forensic. The prince said he and Epstein were not “close friends.” And yet Andrew had been on his private plane? “Yes.” Had stayed on his private island? “Yes.” Had stayed at his home in Palm Beach? “Yes.” After Epstein was released from prison, where he was serving a sentence for procuring a minor for prostitution, Andrew stayed at Epstein’s house in New York, and was photographed walking through Central Park with him. “I went there with the sole purpose of saying to him that because he had been convicted, it was inappropriate for us to be seen together.” Maitlis was politely incredulous: “You went to break up the relationship and yet you stayed at that New York mansion several days?”

Although the interview will be remembered for the weirdness of its details—the pizza and the sweat—its true value lies elsewhere. It provided, through an apparently unaware narrator, a portrait of the whole toxic brew that fed the Epstein scandal and others like it. When historians try to understand the interplay of celebrity and sexual predation in the early 21st century, it will be as revealing a document as the recent books on Harvey Weinstein. Every abuser requires enablers. Every abuser requires silenced victims. Every abuser requires blind eyes.

These 45 minutes of television laid out the whole sorry dynamic. Take an aristocrat and offer him access to an exciting whirl of glittering people. Remember that he is used to, from birth, the constant presence of “staff,” so that he invisibly divides the world into his peers and those shadowy beings who fulfill his every whim. (“I don’t wish to appear grand, but there were a lot of people who were walking around Jeffrey Epstein’s house,” he told Maitlis. “I interacted with them, if you will, to say, ‘Good morning,’ ‘Good afternoon,’ but I didn’t [ask], ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘Why are you here?’ ‘What's going on?’”) Then offer him the use of a house, a plane, an island, an implicit transaction of money for royal stardust. He is a trophy, rarer even than a stuffed lion, to show off to friends.

This is a world where houses are busy, as Andrew put it, like “a railway station”—run by staff, of course—and are much more convenient than staying in a hotel. A whole class of humans, just so much moving scenery, keeps the world turning. A stratified approach to humanity was evident throughout the interview. Repeatedly, Andrew missed opportunities to express sympathy for Epstein’s victims. (His PR adviser quit two weeks before the interview, after advising against it.) They didn’t seem to exist as vividly as he and his friends.

If the prince had not come across so unsympathetically, there might have been another lesson to be drawn from his words: the deforming effect of Britain’s obsession with its royal family on the members of that family. They are treated with extreme deference and extreme resentment, a divide that threatens to shear their psyches in two. Kate Middleton is praised and reviled for the flat dullness of her public image. For every cruel column accusing Meghan and Harry of narcissism, there are huge numbers of supporters who adore them uncritically. For Prince Andrew, there is a sharp disconnect between the fawning millionaires with whom he surrounds himself and the relentless hostility of a press that sees him as a spendthrift playboy.

Buried in Andrew’s words were plenty of reasons to pity him. He grew up, he said, in an “institution”—using the same word for the royal family that you might for a children’s home or youth prison. He was careful of having photographs taken, constantly on his guard. He could not tell if anything strange was happening around Epstein, because “if you are somebody like me, then people behave in a subtly different way.” (It reminded me of the old joke that the queen thinks everywhere smells of fresh paint.) His description of his inability to sweat after serving in the navy sounded like a hint that he found the experience traumatic. Despite his apparent lack of remorse, I did feel there was something tragic about his story: a man born into a role he didn’t ask for, given money and attention he didn’t earn, living a gilded, hyper-visible, fundamentally abnormal life.

Yet the sympathy stretches only so far. Prince Andrew said Epstein had taken advantage of his “tendency to be too honorable.” It is more likely that Epstein took advantage of his entitlement and self-regard. There are only two ways for Andrew to explain the friendship. The first is that he knowingly associated with a convicted sex offender, because he did not regard that as a disqualification. The second is that he was too stupid, or too incurious, to comprehend the evil going on around him.

Read: Is the British royal family worth the money?

I lean toward the latter explanation. Privileged obliviousness is the royal family’s default setting. Some have escaped it: Andrew’s sister, Anne, refused royal titles for her children, as she was determined to bring them up outside the royal bubble. Andrew did not: His daughters are princesses. At her wedding last year, the younger one, Eugenie, chose a reading from The Great Gatsby, which she said reminded her of her future husband. “He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly,” observes the novel’s narrator, Nick Carraway, in the section of the novel read out by her sister, Beatrice. “It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life.”

How delightful—except that the man Carraway is describing is Jay Gatsby, a con man who weasels his way into high society through flattery and charm. “They were careless people,” writes F. Scott Fitzgerald of two of The Great Gatsby’s other characters, Tom and Daisy. “They smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

In his interview with the BBC, Prince Andrew revealed himself as a man of vast carelessness. He was friends with a man who smashed up young girls’ lives, and used his money and influence to secure a plea deal that saw him treated with incredible lenience.

At the very least, Prince Andrew tolerated and indulged that impulse in Epstein. Now, after 24 hours of backlash over his disastrous interview, British newspapers are carrying quotes from the prince telling friends of his “regret” at the friendship and “great sympathy” for the victims.

Other people are now trying to clean up the mess he has made.

Helen Lewis is a staff writer at The Atlantic.



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杰弗里-爱泼斯坦向安德鲁王子提供了什么
一次漠不关心的采访暴露了杰弗里-爱泼斯坦在其中蓬勃发展的两级世界。

海伦-刘易斯报道
安德鲁王子在接受BBC记者Emily Maitlis采访时的照片。
BBC的Emily Maitlis采访安德鲁王子。(Mark Harrison / BBC)
2019年11月18日
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显然，安德鲁王子在生活中做出了许多错误的决定：在英国参加皇室活动时乘坐直升机，而不是乘坐火车；在与吉尔吉斯斯坦的英国商人共进午餐时批评政府打击腐败的努力；在国家电视台播出的中世纪主题的游戏节目中担任队长。

然而，他与杰弗里-爱泼斯坦（Jeffrey Epstein）的友谊--在后者因引诱未成年人卖淫而被定罪后继续保持--在另一个层面上令人不安。王子本周末决定接受英国广播公司（BBC）的采访，谈及这段友谊，完全没有同情心或悔意，这使他的罪行更加严重。


从一开始，很明显，女王的第二个儿子不是居住在地球上，而是居住在贵族星球。这是一个由我们其他人无法理解的规则和守则所支配的土地。当BBC的Emily Maitlis问他是否邀请爱泼斯坦参加聚会时，安德鲁迅速纠正了她。"那是一个射击周末......一个直接的射击周末。" 这种区别--晚上的活动和与朋友们一起在泥泞的田野上开枪--对任何在英国上层社会以外长大的人来说都是毫无意义的。自始至终，他似乎都在遵守一种荣誉准则，在这种准则中，与朋友幽会是不合情理的不礼貌行为，而剥削未成年少女只是一种 "不合适的方式"。这基本上是一种两级的世界观，人们被分为平等的人和人渣。

2011年，围绕前对冲基金经理爱泼斯坦的丑闻使安德鲁失去了英国贸易特使的工作，这个角色涉及不分青红皂白地讨好独裁者、寡头和商业领袖。从那时起，关于他们友谊的问题就一直困扰着他。他可能认为这次采访将有助于驳斥持续存在的指控，即他在2001年与当时17岁的未成年人弗吉尼亚-罗伯茨（现在的弗吉尼亚-朱弗尔）发生了性关系。在一份法庭文件中，罗伯茨说她基本上是被爱泼斯坦贩卖的，并被迫与他的朋友，包括安德鲁发生性关系。


阅读。逮捕杰弗里-爱泼斯坦只是一个开始

一个次要的动机可能是对这种友谊表示悔恨，这种友谊在人们清楚地知道爱泼斯坦是什么样的人之后仍然持续了很长时间。从表面上看，这位百万富翁的生活方式是闪亮的--为技术研究捐款，与公共知识分子共进晚餐--但其黑暗性对于任何近距离观察的人来说应该是显而易见的。2006年，爱泼斯坦出席了安德鲁的女儿比阿特丽斯在温莎城堡举行的18岁生日派对，两个月后，他因性侵犯未成年人而被发出逮捕令。(他得到了认罪协议，只允许他在监狱中服刑13个月，以及不仅对他，而且对 "任何潜在的同谋者 "的未来起诉的豁免权）。

在英国广播公司的采访中，当抗议自己的清白时，王子陷入了困境。他听起来很不安，也很回避。他说，他不可能在罗伯茨指控的日期与她上床，因为他当时在伦敦附近的一个小镇上的一家比萨饼店。为什么他记得那么清楚？"因为对我来说，去沃金的比萨快餐店是一件不寻常的事情。" (不要忘了，沃金离伦敦只有30英里，离Tramp夜总会大约一个小时的车程，据称他当晚在那里遇到了罗伯茨。） 他认为，她对他出汗的记忆也使这个故事受到了怀疑。"我当时没有出汗，因为我在福克兰群岛战争中遭到枪击，我可以说是肾上腺素过量。"

在第二项罪名上--表达悔意--王子也失败了。梅特里斯直接问安德鲁，他是否对这段友谊感到遗憾。"仍然没有，"他说。"我遇到的人和我因他或因他而获得的学习机会实际上是非常有用的。" (她后来又试了一次，得到的答案基本相同。

阅读。未成年女子 "的神话

作为一个采访者，梅特里斯很冷静，也很有鉴赏力。王子说他和爱泼斯坦并不是 "亲密的朋友"。然而，安德鲁曾乘坐过他的私人飞机？"是的。" 曾在他的私人岛屿上停留过？"是的"。住过他在棕榈滩的家？"是的。" 在爱泼斯坦出狱后，他因介绍未成年人卖淫而服刑，安德鲁住在爱泼斯坦在纽约的房子里，并被拍到与他一起在中央公园散步。"我去那里的唯一目的是对他说，由于他已经被定罪，我们在一起是不合适的。梅特里斯礼貌地表示难以置信："你去断绝关系，但你却在纽约的那座豪宅里呆了几天？"

尽管这次采访将因其细节的怪异而被记住--比萨饼和汗水--其真正的价值在于其他方面。它通过一个显然没有意识到的叙述者，提供了一个关于滋生爱泼斯坦丑闻和其他类似丑闻的整个毒酒的画像。当历史学家试图了解21世纪初名人和性掠夺的相互作用时，它将和最近关于哈维-温斯坦的书一样具有揭示性。每个施暴者都需要助纣为虐者。每个施暴者都需要沉默的受害者。每个施暴者都需要盲目的眼睛。

这45分钟的电视展示了整个遗憾的动态。以一个贵族为例，让他进入一个令人兴奋的闪亮人群的漩涡。请记住，他从出生起就习惯于 "工作人员 "的持续存在，因此他无形地将世界划分为他的同龄人和那些满足他每一个愿望的阴暗生物。("我不想显得很隆重，但有很多人在杰弗里-爱泼斯坦的房子里走来走去，"他告诉梅特里斯。"我与他们互动，如果你愿意的话，说'早上好'、'下午好'，但我没有[问]，'你在这里做什么？''你为什么在这里？''发生了什么？") 然后给他提供房子、飞机、岛屿的使用权，用金钱换取皇家星尘的隐性交易。他是一个战利品，甚至比毛绒狮子更稀有，可以向朋友炫耀。

这是一个房屋繁忙的世界，正如安德鲁所说，就像 "一个火车站"--当然是由工作人员管理--比住在酒店要方便得多。整个人类的阶层，只是这么多移动的风景，让世界不断转动。在整个采访过程中，对人类的分层态度是很明显的。安德鲁一再错过对爱泼斯坦的受害者表示同情的机会。(他的公关顾问在采访前两周建议不要这样做，于是辞职了）。他们似乎并不像他和他的朋友那样生动地存在。

如果王子没有表现得如此不近人情，也许可以从他的话中得出另一个教训：英国对其王室的迷恋对该家族成员的畸形影响。他们受到极度尊重和极度怨恨的对待，这种分歧有可能将他们的心灵剪成两半。凯特-米德尔顿因其公众形象的平淡无奇而受到赞美和谩骂。对于每一个指责梅根和哈里自恋的残酷专栏，都有大量的支持者不加批判地崇拜他们。对安德鲁王子来说，在他身边的那些献媚的百万富翁和将他视为挥霍无度的花花公子的媒体的无情敌意之间，存在着尖锐的脱节。

在安德鲁的话语中，埋藏着很多让人怜悯他的理由。他说，他是在一个 "机构 "里长大的--用这个词来形容皇室，就像你形容儿童之家或青年监狱一样。他对拍照很小心，时刻保持警惕。他无法判断爱泼斯坦周围是否有什么奇怪的事情发生，因为 "如果你是像我这样的人，那么人们的行为就会有微妙的不同"。(这让我想起了一个老笑话，女王认为到处都有新油漆的味道）。他对自己在海军服役后无法出汗的描述，听起来像是在暗示他觉得这段经历很伤人。尽管他表面上没有悔意，但我确实觉得他的故事有一些悲剧性：一个人出生在一个他没有要求的角色，得到了他没有争取到的金钱和关注，过着一种镀金的、超可见的、从根本上不正常的生活。

然而，人们的同情心只延伸到这里。安德鲁王子说，爱泼斯坦利用了他的 "过于光荣的倾向"。更有可能的是，爱泼斯坦利用了他的权利和自尊。安德鲁只有两种方式来解释这段友谊。第一种是他明知故犯地与一个被定罪的性犯罪者交往，因为他不认为那是一种不合格的行为。第二种是，他太愚蠢，或者太无知，无法理解他周围发生的邪恶。

阅读：英国王室是否值得花钱？

我倾向于后者的解释。特权的遗忘是王室的默认设置。有些人已经摆脱了这一点。安德鲁的姐姐安妮拒绝为她的孩子们授予皇室头衔，因为她决心在皇室的泡沫之外把他们带大。安德鲁没有这样做。他的女儿们都是公主。在去年的婚礼上，小女儿尤金妮选择了《了不起的盖茨比》的朗读，她说这让她想起了她未来的丈夫。小说的叙述者尼克-卡拉威在她的妹妹比阿特丽斯朗读的部分中说："他善解人意地笑了，比善解人意的笑还要多"。"那是一种罕见的微笑，其中有一种永恒的保证，你在生活中可能会遇到四五次。"

多么令人愉快啊--只不过卡拉威所描述的人是杰伊-盖茨比，一个通过奉承和迷人的方式进入上流社会的骗子。"他们是粗心大意的人，"菲茨杰拉德在谈到《了不起的盖茨比》的另外两个人物汤姆和黛西时写道。"他们打碎了东西和生物，然后退回到他们的钱或他们巨大的粗心或任何使他们在一起的东西中，让其他人来清理他们制造的混乱。"

在接受BBC采访时，安德鲁王子透露自己是一个大意的人。他是一个打碎年轻女孩生活的人的朋友，并利用他的金钱和影响力来确保认罪协议，看到他受到难以置信的宽大对待。

至少，安德鲁王子容忍并纵容了爱泼斯坦的这种冲动。现在，在对他的灾难性采访进行了24小时的反击后，英国报纸刊登了王子对朋友们说他对友谊的 "遗憾 "和对受害者的 "极大同情 "的话语。

其他人现在正试图清理他所造成的混乱。

海伦-刘易斯是《大西洋月刊》的一名工作人员。