Virginia Roberts Giuffre and Prince Andrew have been pictured together in a now infamous photograph taken in 2001. Prince Andrew denies the allegation and says the photo is a fake. Courtesy: 60 Minutes

The young woman who claims she was forced to have sex with Prince Andrew by billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein says the Duke of York — who denies her allegations — needs to “stop with all of these lame excuses”.

In recent weeks, friends of the Royal have claimed that the infamous 2001 photo of Prince Andrew with his arm around the waist of 17-year-old Virginia Roberts Giuffre is “doctored” — that his fingers look “too chubby” and their heights do not match.

“Those are his fingers. That is Andrew,” Ms Roberts Giuffre told 60 Minutes on Sunday night.

“This photo has been verified as an original and it’s been since given to the FBI and they’ve never contested that it’s a fake. I know it’s real. He needs to stop with all of these lame excuses. We’re sick of hearing it. This is a real photo. That’s the very first time I met him.”

The photo, which the FBI and US Justice Department believe is genuine, was taken at the London home of Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, who is accused of helping procure young women for the disgraced financier.

“We went to club Tramp and he danced with me,” Ms Roberts Giuffre said.

“He sweats a lot and he smells funny. And then we get in the car and Ghislaine tells me in the car that I have to do what I do for Jeffrey for Prince Andrew and that’s where I learned what was going to happen.”

Ms Roberts Giuffre says she had sex with Prince Andrew three times — the first in London, another time at Epstein’s New York mansion and the final time on his private island in the Caribbean.

On that occasion, she alleges there were “a lot of younger girls with us”. “I believe there (were) eight,” she said.

Prince Andrew has vehemently denied the allegations.

In repeated statements, the Duke of York has said the claims – which were struck from the record by a judge in UK legal proceedings in 2015 as being “immaterial and impertinent” – are “false and without foundation”.

“Any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue,” a statement from Buckingham Palace said earlier this year.

Ms Roberts Giuffre said she was “abused by people that I can’t even mention”. “I was trafficked to other billionaires, I was trafficked to politicians, professors, even royalty,” she said.

“It was the elite of the world. It was the people who run the world. It was the most powerful people in the world. He used me as a form of blackmail. So these people would owe him favours. He wanted to always have something on someone just in case he needed it.”

Prominent New York lawyer David Boies, who is representing nine of Epstein’s alleged victims including Ms Roberts Giuffre, has written to Prince Andrew asking for the Duke of York to give his side of the story.

So far there has been no response.

“At some point he’s going to have to face the music, at some point he’s going to have to testify,” he said. “He can’t hide forever … Well, if he wants to stay locked up in the palace and not travel outside the UK, maybe he can escape a reckoning.”

Mr Boies says if Prince Andrew returns to the US he could be served with a subpoena.

“I think that’s quite likely,” he said. “I mean at a minimum he’s a witness. I mean if people aren’t suing him directly he’s an important witness. So I think if he was to come to the United States right now it’s likely he’d be served the process.”

Epstein, the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender, was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell in August while awaiting trial on new sex trafficking charges involving underage girls, sparking widespread outrage and disbelief.

Following Epstein’s death, Prince Andrew issued a statement saying that he met the financier in 1999 and had “stayed in a number of his residences” but that “during the time I knew him, I saw him infrequently and probably no more than only once or twice a year”.

“At no stage during the limited time I spent with him did I see, witness or suspect any behaviour of the sort that subsequently led to his arrest and conviction,” the statement said.

“I have said previously that it was a mistake and an error to see him after his release in 2010, and I can only reiterate my regret that I was mistaken to think that what I thought I knew of him was evidently not the real person, given what we know now. I have tremendous sympathy for all those affected by his actions and behaviour.”

‘I BROUGHT HIM 50 TO 70 GIRLS’

Photos of phone messages to Epstein from French modelling agent Jean Luc Brunel, unsealed earlier this year by a Manhattan court, make chilling references to providing him “girls”.

“She is 2 X 8 (16) years old not blonde,” Brunel said in one 2005 message. “Lessons are free and you can have 1st today if you call.”

Courtney Wild first met Epstein in 2001 when she was just 14, while she was living in a West Palm Beach trailer park.

Another 14-year-old brought her to his luxurious Palm Beach Island mansion, where he began abusing her. Soon he was paying her to bring him other girls, the younger the better.

“(He) definitely targeted women, like, children like myself that were vulnerable to him and his money and we felt like we were being helped and saved by him when ultimately he was just preying on us,” she told 60 Minutes.

Ms Wils said all she knew was “I was coming here to give a guy a massage and to make $200”. “It was never told to me that I would be molested by this man or anything like that,” she said.

“We were taken upstairs. We were escorted up a stairwell. It was like a circular stairwell that led to a hallway, that led to his bedroom. He asked us to get comfortable, to just, you know, take our clothes off. To be in our bra and panties.”

After 30 minutes Epstein rolled over and asked the other girl to wait downstairs.

“That’s when the sexual abuse happened,” Ms Wild said.

“I just remember afterwards how I felt walking down the stairs and I just felt so dirty, and so just like a piece of me had been taken. Dirty, I felt it was like my dirty little secret you know.”

She said it was clear Epstein’s addiction “wasn’t drugs or alcohol, it was definitely young girls”. “If I couldn’t bring him a girl, when he couldn’t get his obsession he just would get so mad,” she said.

As an adult I know it’s right to run but as a kid who had been through what I had been through in my life already I guess the last thought that I had was well this is what life’s about.

Ms Wild said she brought him “at the minimum 50 but anywhere from 50 to 70 girls, the same ages as me, 14, 15 and 16”.

“I just hold a lot of guilt and shame for doing those things,” she said.

“Just to know that I had any influence on that happening to somebody else, it’s really, just devastating and breaks my heart.”

frank.chung@news.com.au