With the scrutiny of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor over his associations with Jeffrey Epstein, much attention has been drawn to his daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. One writer said she understood their position more than most. In an essay published in The Telegraph, the anonymous source revealed that her own father had been convicted of possessing and making child abuse images. The discovery, she wrote, shattered her childhood memories and left her carrying a burden of shame that was not hers to bear.
She starts her text by claiming how much she adored her father as a child. He had been « a gentle if nervous man, endlessly patient and never too busy to play castles with me, or to read me a bedtime story ». For years, she said, she pushed aside faint feelings of something being wrong. It was not until one Christmas Day during her final year at university, when he locked her out of the house and smashed her computer, that her « most revolting suspicions » began to feel real.
At 25, she received a call from her father. « Now, look, I’m ringing to tell you that the police have arrested me, » he told her, in what she described as a tone so matter-of-fact it sounded rehearsed. « They kicked a hole in the roof, and they’ve taken my computer and some hard drives. » She said she did not need to ask what for as she already knew.
Two years later, he was found guilty and handed an 18-month suspended sentence, along with a requirement to attend group therapy for offenders. The details were reported in the local press. By then, rumours had circulated in the community for years.
As a teenager on nights out, she had been greeted with the taunt: « It’s the paedo’s daughter! » At the time, she had not understood. Afterwards, it « all made sense ».
Looking at the coverage surrounding Epstein and the scrutiny faced by Princess Beatrice and Eugenie, she said she recognised the silent cost borne by children of disgraced men.
She explained how she recognises parallels between her experiences and those of the princesses, despite the fact that Andrew has never been convicted of a crime and denies all allegations against him.
« With the media awash with the details of Jeffrey Epstein’s horrific crimes against women and girls, my thoughts have turned to Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie and the shame they must be feeling, though their parents deny the allegations against them, » she wrote.
Her message, she concluded, was that the shame belonged to the offender, not the child. But she acknowledged that separating the two had taken years of therapy, resilience and painful self-examination.
In another high-profile case, Gisèle Pelicot’s daughter has spoken about the emotional toll her family experienced after her father’s crimes, who drugged and raped his wife Gisèle tens of times alongside other men, came to light.
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