A federal judge in New York has decided that Prince Andrew is to face a civil case in the US over allegations he sexually assaulted Virginia Giuffre when she was 17. The latter is suing the prince, claiming he abused her in 2001. Prince Andrew is the third child and second son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Andrew is ninth in the line of succession to the British throne.
The judge in New York denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against Prince Andrew filed by Virginia Giuffre who alleges she was sexually trafficked to the royal when she was underage.
“Ms. Giuffre’s complaint is neither ‘unintelligible’ nor ‘vague’ nor ‘ambiguous,'” Judge Lewis Kaplan wrote in the ruling. “It alleges discrete incidents of sexual abuse in particular circumstances at three identifiable locations. It identifies to whom it attributes that sexual abuse.”
Giuffre alleged in the lawsuit that the late financier Jeffrey Epstein trafficked her and forced her to have sex with his friends, including the prince, and that Andrew was aware she was underage (17) in the US at the time. She alleges the Prince sexually abused her at Ghislaine Maxwell’s home in London, at Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands and at his mansion in Manhattan.
Giuffre brought her case under the Child Victims Act, a New York state law enacted in 2019 that expanded the statute of limitations in child sex abuse cases to give survivors more opportunities to seek justice.
Prince Andrew has denied the allegations and had moved to dismiss the suit.
His attorneys argued that her lawsuit violated the terms of her 2009 settlement agreement with Epstein in Florida, in which she agreed to a “general release” of claims against Epstein and others. That settlement, which was released to the public last week, shows that Epstein paid Giuffre $500,000 to drop the case without any admission of liability or fault. The prince’s name does not explicitly appear as a party.
However, Giuffre’s attorney David Boies argued the settlement is irrelevant to her claim against the prince, noting Andrew did not know about it at the time and that it didn’t apply to him.
