The dramatic series of events that unfolded last week, which are monumental by royal standards, might never have occurred without a particular photograph. This image, which Virginia Giuffre handed to me and was first published by The Mail on Sunday in 2011, set a chain of events into motion.

Virginia, then just 17, asked Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender, to capture a moment of her alongside Prince Andrew using a disposable Kodak FunSaver camera. Her intention, she explained to me, was simply to have proof for her mother that she had indeed encountered a member of the royal family.

Yet, this seemingly simple snapshot became the catalyst that eventually saw Prince Andrew stripped of his royal titles and distanced from official duties.

Despite Prince Andrew’s consistent denials regarding Virginia’s allegations, I have always believed the account she shared with me during our first interview.

When I met her, she welcomed me into her humble bungalow on Australia’s Central Coast, anxiously holding an envelope containing the photo she had safeguarded for nearly ten years.

“I’m not sure if I should show you this. He is a British prince,” the 27-year-old mother of three hesitantly remarked.

The photo, in which Andrew’s arm circles her bare waist in front of a smirking Ghislaine Maxwell, has been reproduced countless times around the world since its revelation by this paper. 

It provided evidence to the FBI of Virginia’s life as a ‘sex slave’ to Epstein and Maxwell, and prompted the criminal investigations that led to his suicide in prison and Maxwell’s 20-year sentence for sex trafficking.

The infamous photo of Andrew with his arm around Virginia Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell posing malevolently in the background first published by the Mail on Sunday

The royal’s accuser, 41, who took her own life earlier this year, alleged she was trafficked by paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein three times for sex with the ex-Duke, 65, as a teenager

Jeffrey Epstein and Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence in the US for sex trafficking and conspiracy to abuse 

But when King Charles finally took action last week it came too late for Virginia. Her suicide in April is blamed by some relatives on the break-up of her marriage. 

But she told me she was haunted by horrific memories of the years she spent in Epstein and Maxwell’s depraved world, in which she claimed to have had three sexual encounters with Andrew

‘I’ve gone from pain, to hurt, to anger,’ she said as we sipped coffee in her garden. 

‘Epstein was a monster. He and Andrew were shameless. They have no remorse, no guilt for anything they have done. Andrew knew how young I was.’

He has vehemently and repeatedly denied her claims and paid a reported £12 million to settle a lawsuit she filed with no admission of wrongdoing.

He has claimed that Virginia sucked me into a plot to discredit him and that the photo we published was created by some kind of digital trickery. 

He told Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis: ‘I have absolutely no memory of that photograph. I’m afraid to say that I don’t believe that photograph was taken in the way that has been suggested.’

In my opinion, it is a ludicrous suggestion, for if it were a hoax, Buckingham Palace failed to contact me to say so. Nor did Virginia seek me out. I found her after spending weeks digging into a lawsuit she’d filed against Epstein under the pseudonym ‘Jane Doe 102’.

I was intrigued because the documents said she had been ‘sexually exploited by Epstein’s adult male peers including royalty’.

The filing revealed she had been head-hunted by Maxwell from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, where she was a $9-an-hour changing room assistant. 

The club employed scores of workers in similar positions, but I accumulated clues.

One source recalled that her maiden name was Virginia Roberts. I learned she continued to date her high-school sweetheart, Tony Figueroa, even while working for Maxwell. 

I located Tony in a small town in Georgia. Epstein had approved of him continuing his relationship with Virginia.

Tony said: ‘I would give her rides to his house. I would hang out there, sit by the pool, talk to the chef. Jeffrey treated me like a friend.’ Then the bombshell.

When Virginia returned from London, she showed Tony the photo of herself with Andrew.

He said: ‘She told me Jeffrey was hanging out with Andrew and she had hung out with him. It was supposedly just massages.’

He said he was sickened because he had come to understand that, in Epstein’s warped circle, ‘massage’ was a euphemism for sex.

‘I tried to get her to stop the trips with Jeffrey but she didn’t. I think she was scared,’ he added.

Tony and Virginia had long separated by the time I met him, but he gave me the next lead to Virginia’s whereabouts.

Her father’s name was Sky Roberts. I left a message on his answerphone saying I was investigating Jeffrey Epstein.

And on February 4, 2011, the email that would change my life – and Andrew’s – landed in my inbox.

Virginia wrote: ‘Hi Sharon, my father, Sky Roberts, informed me of your call and I thought I’d send you my contact details so we can get in touch.’ 

Her voice was shaking when she took my call and confirmed that Andrew was the royal in her lawsuit. 

She had fled the trafficking ring and was happily married, but she decided to break her silence because, weeks before I contacted her, she had seen a photo of Epstein strolling with Andrew through New York’s Central Park.

A police probe had revealed the financier paid children in Florida for sex. After a slap-on-the-wrist 2008 jail sentence, Epstein resumed his activities.

Pictured: Virginia Giuffre, with a photo of herself as a teen, when she says she was abused by Jeffrey Epstein

‘I’m appalled Andrew is still hanging out with him,’ Virginia said. ‘To me, it’s saying, “We are above the law”.’

After our meeting in Australia, I was contacted by a US prosecutor who said she had been tipped off that I had found Virginia. 

‘The FBI would like to fly to Sydney to interview her,’ she said. Virginia wept when I passed on the message. Would Epstein have her killed, she asked me, if she cooperated with the FBI?

She told me that she was terrified of retaliation from a well-known politician who she had been ordered to meet at a cabana on Epstein’s New Mexico ranch. 

‘He repeatedly choked me and got aroused when I begged for my life,’ she said. Yet she wanted to do the right thing. She agreed to meet two US federal agents.

Mail photographer Michael Thomas and I drove her and her husband to the US Consulate in Sydney.

We weren’t allowed to accompany her inside but she told us she gave them the photograph of herself with Andrew. 

They made a scan of the front, and of a time stamp on the back that the FBI agents believed proved that it was legitimate. It showed it was developed on March 13, 2001 by a one-hour photo service close to her Florida home.

When this newspaper sent the picture to Andrew, prior to publication, he did not deny its authenticity on the spot. 

And for me, an email obtained last month by The Mail on Sunday, in which he suggested at the time that he had employed his personal protection officer to dig up dirt on Virginia, is proof that he knew the picture was real.

But the story doesn’t end with him. There are other powerful men who must be held accountable for their role in the crimes of Epstein and Maxwell.

As events unfolded last week, I thought back to that brave young woman I met all those years ago.

When Virginia handed me that photograph, neither she, nor I, could possibly have imagined the juggernaut it would become.

I will always remember her courage. And I am proud to have played my part in telling her story – and of obtaining the photograph that changed the course of history.