Prince Andrew faces claims he groped woman as she sat on his lap at Jeffrey Epstein’s New York home

PRINCE Andrew last night faced claims he groped a woman on his lap as she played with a Spitting Image puppet of him.

Johanna Sjoberg alleged he grabbed her breast in 2001 at the New York home of his deceased paedo pal Jeffrey Epstein, according to court papers.

Unsealed documents reveal Andrew allegedly touched Johanna, then aged 21, when they posed for a picture.

In her testimony, she said Andrew and Virginia Giuffre - then Roberts - were sat on a couch with the puppet on her lap.

She added: “And so then I sat on Andrew’s lap — and I believe on my own volition — and they took the puppet’s hands and put it on Virginia’s breast, and so Andrew put his on mine.”

Almost 2,000 pages of a lawsuit were released in a defamation case involving Ms Giuffre, who in 2015 claimed Andrew slept with her three times, and Epstein’s ex-lover Ghislaine Maxwell.

Epstein hanged himself in his New York prison cell on Saturday, US officials have revealed, having been detained on sex trafficking charges.

The prince strongly denied having sex with her in London and New York when she was 17, and a year later at an orgy on Epstein’s private island in the Virgin Islands.

Another document describes an alleged sexual encounter between Ms Giuffre, now 35, and Andrew in a bathtub.

It was raised by lawyers for Ms Maxwell in an effort to show the former masseuse had not mentioned it before 2014 and was lying about it. The document says the tub was “too small for a man of Prince Andrew’s size to enjoy a bath in let alone sex”.

But lawyers for Ms Giuffre responded by stating she had reported having sex with Andrew to the FBI in 2011.

She was “forced to have sexual relations” with him in the London flat of Maxwell, who acted as a “madame”, the documents say.

A manuscript by Ms Giuffre, also released with the court papers, claims Epstein and Maxwell invited Andrew to meet her in the capital to help him get over the “fresh wounds still lingering on” after his divorce from Sarah Ferguson.

She said she initially found it hard to make conversation, adding: “Keeping up with Andrew’s constant gazes in my direction was all I could manage.”

They went for dinner before going to Tramp nightclub, where she danced with him as he “whispered sweet nothings” in her ear and kissed her neck.

She wrote: “I would just giggle, not really knowing how to reply to an ageing man with a bad smile and terrible moves.”

A Buckingham Palace spokesman told the Sun Online: “This relates to proceedings in the United States, to which The Duke of York is not a party.

"Any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue.

“It is emphatically denied that The Duke of York had any form of sexual contact or relationship with Virginia Roberts. Any claim to the contrary is false and without foundation.

"Ms Giuffre's claims against Andrew were later struck from a court case in 2015."

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