A motion filed in a Florida court this week as part of an ongoing lawsuit against multimillionaire and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has accused Prince Andrew, Duke of York of having sexual relations with a woman who claims to have been used a sex slave when she was still 17, a minor under Florida law.

The woman, who has since been identified by The Mail on Sunday as Virginia Roberts, alleges that she “was forced to have sexual relations with the prince when she was a minor” in London, New York and on a private Caribbean island owned by Epstein. 

Epstein was convicted of soliciting sex with a minor in 2011 after a plea bargain, after which Prince Andrew publicly apologized for his friendship with Epstein. In a 2011 interview with Vanity Fair, Andrew denied any involvement with the acts to which Epstein plead guilty. 

Buckingham Palace denied to comment on the legal proceedings, but in a rare move issued a vehement denial of the allegations: “For the avoidance of doubt, any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue.” A further statement to The Daily Mail on Sunday “emphatically denied that the Duke of York had any form of sexual contact or relationship with Virginia Roberts” and repudiated “any claim to the contrary” as “false and without foundation.”

The rebuttal, which royal sources claim is the beginning of a campaign to discredit Roberts, is the most personal statement issued on behalf of a senior royal in recent years, says the International Business Times. 

Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor and esteemed criminal defense attorney is also accused in the motion of having sexual relations with Roberts and witnessing the abuse of others. In a statement to The Guardian, Dershowitz said that the allegations were “totally false and made up.”

Read more at The Guardian. 

Reach Associate News Editor Ashley Yang here, or follow her on Twitter.