Dame Cressida Dick, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Britain’s most senior police officer, has said “no one is above the law”.
Her statement was in response to a question concerning the accusations against Prince Andrew.
Judging from the evidence of the photographs and other testimony, in legal terms, there appears to be a case to answer.
No one in the press or media in the UK has raised the issue of Section 72 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 amended Section 72 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 this amendment removed the aspect of ‘dual criminality’ for sexual offences.
This means that UK nationals who commit sexual offences against children abroad are criminally liable for the offence, regardless of whether the exploitation is classed as a criminal offence overseas.
In other words, there is no requirement for the crime to be an offence in both countries. The Act extended extraterritorial jurisdiction for the offence of grooming children for sexual exploitation.
Although Virginia Giuffre was 17 at the time of the alleged liaison with Prince Andrew, the law in the UK regarding prostitution outlaws the use of prostitutes under the age of eighteen, see below:
Paying for sexual services of a child
Sexual Offences Act 2003
(1)A person (A) commits an offence if—
(a)he intentionally obtains for himself the sexual services of another person (B),
(b)before obtaining those services, he has made or promised payment for those services to B or a third person, or knows that another person has made or promised such a payment, and
(c)either—
(i)B is under 18, and A does not reasonably believe that B is 18 or over, or
(ii)B is under 13.
The question is why has the law not been knocking on Prince Andrew’s door?
As the old Music Hall song put it:
She was poor but she was honest
Victim of a rich man’s game.
First he loved her, then he left her,
And she lost her maiden name
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