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Royals hold rape case crisis talks
LONDON, England -- Prince Charles's staff have held a "crisis summit" at London's St James's Palace amid allegations that one of his key aides once raped another male servant. The aide, who has not been identified, issued a denial through his solicitors amid huge UK media coverage of the ramifications of the collapse of the theft trial of Princess Diana's former butler Paul Burrell. Meanwhile in New York where he is appearing on a number of TV shows Burrell said he realised there would be a backlash when he sold his story to the Daily Mirror tabloid, but he never realised it would be "so vicious and personal." Charles's aide was accused of rape by ex-valet and Falklands veteran George Smith, 42, in the Mail on Sunday newspaper. The former valet also told the Mail on Sunday he had witnessed an "incident" involving a member of the Royal Family and a palace servant. The paper said it was prevented from repeating the allegations for legal reasons. Royal analyst Robert Jobson said the meeting at St James's Palace was of Prince Charles's top officials. "They are trying to put a handle on the situation before it spins out of control, which it appears to be doing at the moment," he said. (Q & A) CNN's Nic Robertson said royal officials were stressing that Smith, who suffered fatigue syndrome over his role in the Falklands conflict, was "not the best witness in this case." A St. James's Palace spokesman told CNN: "All of George Smith's claims are wholly inaccurate." In his statement, Smith's alleged attacker labelled his accuser an "unreliable alcoholic" who kept changing his story. The statement, from London solicitors Kingsley Napley solicitors, said: "The allegations made now to the Mail on Sunday by Mr. Smith differ substantially and significantly in many regards from those made to the police last year and must cast serious doubt on Mr. Smith's reliability and the accuracy of any allegations he might be persuaded to make." It added: "Our client has consistently denied that these offences ever took place, and whilst he has no desire to enter into the current media frenzy, cannot allow wholly untrue allegations against him to be reported and unchallenged."
Smith claimed the aide raped him in 1989 and later tried to assault him again while they were accompanying the Prince of Wales on a foreign tour to Cairo. Last year police investigated the matter but Scotland Yard said the alleged victim chose not to pursue the claim and it was subsequently dropped. The incident has come back into the spotlight following the abrupt end to the trial of Princess Diana's butler Burrell, who was cleared of stealing hundreds of royal items after the intervention of the queen. Smith, who was married at the time, said that in 1996 he told Diana about the alleged rape and that she recorded his accusation on tape. The Mail on Sunday said Diana deposited the cassettes, one labelled "The Confessions of George Smith," in a locked mahogany box -- the one it emerged at the Burrell trial police were searching for when they raided Diana's ex-butler's house during their theft inquiry in January 2001. Smith apparently decided to come forward after the case came into the spotlight in the Burrell trial. After the trial, Burrell decided to sell his story, along with lurid details of goings-on in the royal family, to the Daily Mirror. Something that came up in the newspaper as well as in the trial was that Princess Diana once taped a servant describing how the 1989 rape had occurred. Rival newspapers then pursued the story, leading to the naming of Smith by the Mail on Sunday and the subsequent denial by the unnamed man he accused. CNN has confirmed that the tape was in fact once recorded containing such allegations. What happened to the tape is not clear. Royal analysts said the reports of illegal activities at the royal palaces were potentially very damaging to the British monarchy and a gift to those who wanted its abolition. They said the latest allegations had taken the gloss over what had seen to have been a good year for Queen Elizabeth II with her highly successful Golden Jubilee celebrating 50 years on the throne. The Daily Telegraph wrote that Charles's staff at St James's Palace had pitted themselves in a "zero sum game" against other members of the royal family, including the queen and her Buckingham Palace staff, for favourable media coverage. This had engaged Charles "and his sons, by proxy, in the world of spin for which he is temperamentally and constitutionally unsuited" and isolated the heir to the throne. "If the prince's way of getting a good headline is to make sure that the queen -- or another member of the royal family -- gets a bad one, then the institution is damaged rather than enhanced by his success," the paper said in an editorial on Monday. Burrell was under media siege in a New York hotel on Monday as the aftermath of his trial continued to dominate news coverage in Britain and was set to take off in the United States. Burrell, staying in the Millennium Hotel with wife Maria and two sons, was set to appear on American TV to tell his story to Barbara Walters' show 20/20, breakfast show Good Morning America and daytime show The View, the Daily Mirror newspaper said. He has also been lined up for an American quiz show called Paul Burrell's What The Butler Saw, according to his personal manager Dave Warwick. Diana's former butler sold his story to the Daily Mirror for an estimated £300,000 ($477,000), which has published his account of his life with Diana over several days, with up to 15 pages a day devoted to the story. Editor Piers Morgan says the series of stories has sold more than a million extra copies of the paper.
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