Prince Andrew with Virginia Roberts, then 17, in 2001. He denies they had sex

Prince Andrew faces further embarrassment from the Jeffrey Epstein scandal after a judge ordered thousands of secret documents relating to an alleged “sex slave” of the tycoon to be released.

About 2,000 files from a defamation case involving Virginia Roberts, an alleged trafficking victim, are due to be unsealed following a ruling by the US court of appeal this month. Roberts claims she was forced by Epstein to have sex with the Duke of York in London, New York and the Caribbean. Prince Andrew has strongly denied the claims.

In 2015 Roberts, now 35 and a mother of three, claimed she had been recruited as a “sex slave” by Epstein, a billionaire financier who was charged last week with trafficking girls as young as 14.