Monaco prince acknowledges fathering child

Monaco’s Prince Albert II has acknowledged fathering a second child out of wedlock: a 14-year-old girl living in a California town, his lawyer said in an interview with France’s Le Figaro published today.

Albert, ruler of the principality, “officially recognises a paternity that was legally established a few weeks ago”, lawyer Thierry Lacoste was quoted as saying.

Monaco’s royal palace refused to comment on the “private affairs of the prince”, spokeswoman Christiane Stahl said.

However, Lacoste’s secretary confirmed today that the lawyer gave an interview to Le Figaro and said his office did not contest the newspaper’s account of his comments.

The secretary refused to be quoted by name and said that Lacoste was abroad and unavailable for comment.

Albert had initially planned to keep his parentage of Jazmin Grace Rotolo secret until she reached adulthood, but “the situation had become untenable for her” in recent weeks amid increasing speculation about her father, Lacoste said.

A 1992 birth certificate identified the father as Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre Grimaldi of Monaco.

French media reports have said Albert had a brief affair with the girl’s mother, former waitress Tamara Rotolo, in 1991 when she vacationed on the Cote d’Azur.

The Desert Sun newspaper of Palm Springs talked to a Palm Desert woman named Patricia Rotolo, who identified herself as Tamara Rotolo’s cousin. “All’s been handled really well for (the child’s) sake,” she said on Tuesday.

The family was aware that French journalists and paparazzi had been in town recently to take photos of Jazmin, she told the newspaper.

The woman’s telephone was disconnected shortly after the newspaper talked to her on Tuesday.

Jazmin attends St Margaret’s Episcopal School in the fast-growing community, about 120 miles south-east of Los Angeles.

Today, a parade of sport utility vehicles dropped off youngsters in uniforms of white shirts and tan shorts under the watchful eye of a police officer in a black-and-white patrol car.

An Associated Press reporter and photographer were warned they would be arrested and their camera gear seized if they set foot on the private school property.

Lacoste said Jazmin was welcome in Monaco, but cannot take the throne and will not bear the Grimaldi family name.

Neither will Albert’s other child out of wedlock, three-year-old Alexandre.

The 48-year-old ruler, who has never married, acknowledged last July that he had fathered the boy with a former Togolese flight attendant.

Last year, Albert told The New York Times that other women had made similar claims. “I don’t know of any others that could be true,” he said.

Rotolo made a paternity claim shortly after Jazmin was born, he told the Times, but after a US court dismissed the case, he thought the matter had gone away.

Since the story of Alexandre hit the media, however, he said she had contacted his lawyer again.