Ever since 2015, when Virginia Roberts’ 24-page handwritten diary surfaced alleging Prince Andrew’s involvement with her as an underaged sex slave for Jeffrey Epstein, the Royal had insisted he would fight the charges. Now, just one month shy of his deposition, he has settled for an estimated £12million. As a handwriting analyst who has studied her journal, I’d say he made the right decision.
Based on Iris Hatfield’s 40-point checklist in A Question of Honesty as Revealed in Handwriting, it is abundantly clear that this 17-year-old was telling her own truth. You can check out her script here and judge for yourself based on some simple graphological concepts.
Basically, prevarication in handwriting looks interrupted and troubled. The slant and spacing is irregular where the author paused to formulate their lies. The rounded vowels, which lie in the middle zone of present concerns, are muddied with random stabs/extra loops/hooks and illegible corrections, and are sometimes open at the baseline, which is also referred to as the line of reality. In other words, they know what they’re saying isn’t real, and the gaps on the line equate to holes in their story. One might find distorted shapes in the upper loops and personal pronoun I. The writing may be illegibly thready, painfully laborious, or smeary. Conversely, a practiced liar may have artfully perfect script such as one normally sees only in professional engraving. The symptoms are many and varied, but while some such variations are human, it's a safe bet that the higher the tally, the worse the offender.
In Roberts’ case, based on the seven Daily Mail diary excerpts, there are a scarce five instances where the writing betrays even a hint of dishonesty. What we have here is typical teen script, infinitely legible, where even the touch-ups provide clarity rather than confusion. I hope she enjoys her newfound fortune, even if it can never fully compensate for her trauma.