A Man of Dishonour, Rewarded
I can well imagine that the thought has passed through many minds over the last few days, but the title is already taken, and by someone far more deserving of public attention and a lasting memory. Andrew Albert Christian Edward Mountbatten Windsor may well be a former Prince, as well as having been granted many other honorific titles, but he is now in a position of disgrace, albeit one which will hardly dent his ego, or his pocketbook. The man who used to be called Prince, Duke, Earl and Baron, as well as being a Vice Admiral in the Royal Navy, will be able to continue his former life with a hefty pension for his self-made troubles – some might say crimes – just under a slightly different name and, hopefully, well out of the public gaze. That he will not completely disappear is, sadly, a matter of fact, and will remain so as long as justice is impeded elsewhere.
The British Royal Family is well used to scandals, and especially ones which, while rocking their own status in higher society, would destroy anyone else. Their ability to weather each and every storm, with few exceptions, is the stuff of legends, and the only way their power has been stopped is through an arrow in the eye, or the executioner’s axe. Even abdication, in a society that accepted religiously mixed marriages otherwise, has not caused the family to fall from grace, to relinquish anything of its power and wealth.
A few years ago, in the United States, a judge decided to award a young rapist nothing more than a slap on the wrist, stating that he saw no reason to bring down the full severity of the law, as a stiffer sentence would ruin the life of someone on the outskirts of a major career, and with a bright future in society. That the lives of his victims were also ruined, if not destroyed, by this rapist seems not to have entered the equation. The man, brought into the criminal spotlight for a brief moment of inadequate justice, returned to society with the same rights and privileges he had before. The raped women did not.
It is claimed that Andrew Mountbatten Windsor was heavily involved in the criminal activities of Jeffrey Edward Epstein, the American financier who, with Ghislaine Noelle Marion Maxwell, arranged under-aged women – in many cases children according to the laws of some of the States in the United States – as sex partners for those within his tight circle of friends, and for others in positions of power, money and influence. For his crimes, Epstein was gaoled, as was Maxwell, and it is claimed that he committed suicide in prison. Those complicit in performing the crimes, of abusing and raping young women, have not been brought to justice and, as long as the higher powers in the United States of America – that democratic bastion of freedom and justice – continue to prevent the release of evidence, no one will be brought before the courts. The rot, as it has been said many times, begins at the head and works its way down.
Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, set up with an income rumoured to be one million pounds a year, a plush residence and all the benefits of influence, will live a life without remorse or consequences. His victims, those young women sold to him on Little Saint James, Epstein’s island, and possibly in a well-known resort in Palm Beach, Florida which, if the many stories surrounding the last few years of activity there are to be believed, tended toward the same sexual exploitation of young women without justice being served, will bear the scars and memories for the rest of their lives. They will not be able to set those events to one side, assign them to a distant memory and relax with a high, unearned income and good name. In all likelihood, their fight for justice will carry on until, sometime in the future, those in power now are no longer at the head of regimes, or hidden away in stately homes, and can be brought before a court, and given the justice they so richly deserve.
