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The “older woman” who took Prince Harry’s virginity says she spoke out only because the royal revealed their story in his best-selling memoir.
Sasha Walpole, 40, revealed to British media at the weekend that she was the woman Harry said “treated me like a young stallion” in an encounter behind a British pub when he was 17.
In one of the bombshell stories in Spare, the Duke of Sussex revealed he was still a student at Eton College when he had sex for the first time in a paddock behind a “very busy pub”.
He described a “humiliating episode with an older woman who liked macho horses”, but did not name the woman. That led to wild speculation about who she might have been – including rumours it was actor Elizabeth Hurley.
Hurley shut down the speculation smartly.
“Not me. Not guilty. Ha!” she told Britain’s Times newspaper in December.
“No. Not me. Absolutely not.”
On Sunday, Ms Walpole revealed she was the “older woman” – at two years Prince Harry’s senior (and younger than Harry’s wife Meghan Markle).
“I am the woman who took Harry’s virginity. It was literally wham-bam between two friends,” she told The Sun.
“The sex was passionate and sparky because we shouldn’t have been doing it. One thing just quickly led to another. We ended up on the floor.
“It wasn’t Prince Harry to me. It was Harry, my friend – and something that got a little bit out of control. It just so happened that he was a prince.”
Ms Walpole, now a digger driver, was a groom for Harry’s father, then Prince Charles at the time.
She said she had had invited the then 16 or 17-year-old Harry to the Vine Tree pub to celebrate her 19th birthday. She said he consoled her when her ex arrived at the pub with a new girlfriend, and the pair got drunk over shots.
Ms Walpole told The Sun she and the teenage prince decided to go outside to share a cigarette. They climbed a fence into a paddock, where the Duke of Sussex started “to kiss me”.
She said they both got very excited and there were “no words” during their five minutes of sex. Ms Walpole confirmed giving Harry a “slap” on his “lovely peachy bum” afterwards, in line with revelations from Spare.
“I mounted her quickly, after which she spanked my ass and sent me away,” Prince Harry wrote about the session.
“One of my many mistakes was letting it happen in a field, just behind a very busy pub. No doubt someone had seen us.”
On Sunday, Ms Walpole said she decided to tell her side of the story after Harry shared the details in Spare, which has already sold millions of copies worldwide.
She said no one, including the prince, had warned her the story would feature in his book.
“At the time I didn’t know he was a virgin – I didn’t think about it then. There were no virgin vibes from him, he seemed to know what he was doing,” she told The Sun.
“I knew when thinking about it afterwards that he was a virgin.
“I hadn’t known him to have slept with anyone. And obviously, I’ve been hanging around with him for a few years. So yeah, I think I kind of knew, but at the time, I don’t think it was a thing.”
When the story became public with the book’s release a month ago, Ms Walpole at first “thought I could hide and that it would blow over”.
“But as the names of different women, some of whom I know, became public I realised that to make the speculation stop, I needed to tell the truth,” she said.
“At least now I can tell my story, in my words, with the correct context and detail, and without panicking. I can stop looking over my shoulder. I wanted to take control of the situation before it took control of me.
“I would never have spoken out if Harry hadn’t. I’m not that sort of person. If I was going to talk about it, I could have done so a long time ago. He has brought it to my door by writing about it.”
