The Prince, the butler and a scandal over 'rape' at court

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The Prince of Wales flew back to Britain this weekend to face mounting pressure over an incriminating tape allegedly made by Princess Diana. Cole Moreton reports 10 November 2002

As he sits down to watch his former servant on television tonight, Prince Charles will be wishing he had never come back from Italy. After lunch at the presidential palace in Rome on Friday, he strolled by the peaceful graves of Keats and Shelley. Then he flew home, back into the eye of a storm that threatens the very existence of all the heir to the throne holds dear.

Constitutional experts will spend today speculating on the damage done to the House of Windsor by allegations that the Prince ordered a rape in his household to be covered up. By the time Paul Burrell appears on screen talking to Trevor McDonald this evening, Charles will know how many more royal secrets have been brought into the light by the peculiar power of police incompetence, bitter servants, and tabloid cash.

This time, unlike the failed prosecution of the former butler, there is a real and serious crime involved. A footman says he was raped and also sexually assaulted by a male aide close to the Prince, a dozen years ago.

At the time Charles told his wife the allegations were "downstairs gossip" – but the footman was given a £37,000 pay-off and left royal service.

He kept silent, being an old soldier and loyal to the crown, even when the trauma caused him to enter a psychiatric hospital and contributed to the break-up of his marriage.

Yesterday, while the royal bags were being unpacked at Highgrove, the 41-year-old man, who must remain anonymous for the time being, was in hiding, considering offers of big money. He is on the edge of another breakdown according to his father. "My son has been getting his life together and this publicity has brought all his problems back."

The trouble for both his son and Prince Charles is that Princess Diana did not listen when she was told to forget all about the tittle-tattle. Instead she sat, it is alleged, at the end of the victim's bed at the Priory Clinic in London, with a tape recorder hidden in her handbag, and persuaded him to talk about what had happened.

The Princess knew that knowledge was power. So she supposedly kept the tape in a box with other intimate possessions that might come in useful one day, such as threatening letters from her father-in-law, the Duke of Edinburgh. The story of the recording – and the rape – may well have remained secret if she had not been killed. It emerged during the trial of Mr Burrell, because the tape was one of the things the police were looking for when they hammered on his door early one morning in January 2001. Lady Sarah McCorquodale, Diana's sister, had said they might find this potentially explosive recording there. They didn't.

The tape may have vanished but the story of it refused to go away, even after Mr Burrell was cleared of theft. Several tabloid newspapers have been throwing money at people throughout the week to spill the beans, partly as compensation for not winning the contract to serialise Mr Burrell's recollections.

As tongues loosened a new set of characters began to emerge from the shadowy corridors of St James's Palace. One was the lawyer Fiona Shackleton, the former debutante who became close to Prince Charles when she handled his divorce. He sent the lawyer flowers when that process was over, which was also when the rape allegations emerged, six years ago. Mrs Shackleton apparently told the Prince to deal with them internally rather than going to the police.

Later she worked closely with the prosecution for Mr Burrell's trial. Some MPs believe the Queen intervened to stop proceedings when it looked likely the butler would mention the tape in court. Under oath he might have felt obliged to name the alleged attacker, bringing his identity into the public domain.

Mrs Shackleton does not get on well with Mark Bolland, former deputy private secretary to the Prince and now his public relations consultant, who is said to call her "the White Witch". One acquaintance has recalled him pledging to "have her legs off" – which may be one reason why the press has paid her so much attention this week. He never wanted the trial to go ahead and is said to be "incandescent" over the way in which the rape allegations were dealt.

A spokeswoman for St James's Palace denied there had been any cover-up, however, and said there was no evidence the tape had ever existed. The police were not called in 1996, because "no evidence was forthcoming and the alleged victim did not want to pursue the matter further."

Scotland Yard did begin to investigate the rape allegations in October 2001, but the alleged attacker denied rape, saying the sex was consensual. The decision not to take matters further was taken personally by the director of public prosecutions, Sir David Calvert-Smith.

However, Prince Charles was alarmed by an inquiry conducted by the legal firm Kingsley Napley which concluded the allegations had been handled "lamentably".

As a three-sided media war broke out between the Spencers, the Windsors and Mr Burrell last week, the Prince ordered a second internal inquiry, and was in constant touch with the palace even while on his official visit to Italy. Charles is highly loyal to those he trusts, but anyone who is in the habit of asking servants to hold his specimen bottle while he fills it ought perhaps to offer loyalty at least, in return. He has spent around £100,000 on legal work in support of a beleaguered aide.

Detectives who visited the palace last year were said to be "bemused" by the Prince's determination to "protect" the alleged attacked. Staff, on the other hand, complained they had been asked "impertinent and irrelevant intimate questions" about their boss.

All of this is rich material for conspiracy theorists, of course. Mohamed al-Fayed, the owner of Harrods, maintains the security services played a sinister role in the death of his son Dodi and Diana. Yesterday he claimed his theories had been reinforced by the Queen's warning to Paul Burrell to beware of dark and secret powers.

"Her Majesty is well-known to be a sensible, level-headed woman not given to wild or extravagant statements," he said. "It now seems quite clear that Burrell's trial was stopped by those mysterious 'powers' who wanted at all costs to prevent him from revealing Royal secrets."

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2002


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