The timetable is becoming clearer in the affair of Prince Andrew, accused of sexual assault by the American Virginia Giuffre. As AFP reported, the complaint is expected to be heard in late 2022 in a civil court in New York, a judge said on November 3, 2021. The Duke of York (61) continues to deny the charges and has demanded – once again – to the American justice the rejection of this complaint last Friday, assuring that she was seeking to profit financially from the affair.
New York judge Lewis Kaplan heard from lawyers for both sides this week and said on Wednesday that he could “not give a trial date“in civil but that he planned that it takes place”between September and December next year“. For their part, the lawyers of Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre should make testify a dozen people each, including representatives of the parties. According to Me David Boies, representing Ms Giuffre, two people from the United Kingdom should to appear “voluntarily” in New York without needing to be summoned.
As a reminder, the son of Queen Elizabeth II is the subject of a complaint for sexual assault filed last August by the American Virginia Giuffre. The latter accuses him of being “one of the powerful men” to whom she would have been “handed over for a sexual purpose” when she was, she says, the victim between 2000 and 2002, from her 16 years, of the vast sex trafficking for which Jeffrey Epstein was charged and imprisoned, before killing himself in a Manhattan prison in the summer of 2019. The “sexual assaults” would have occurred three times: in London at Ghislaine Maxwell, an associate of Jeffrey Epstein whose criminal trial begins on November 29 in New York, and at Mr. Epstein’s properties in New York and the Virgin Islands.
Prince Andrew has repeatedly denied these accusations. After a calamitous interview with the BBC in November 2019, the father of Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice was forced to retire from public life. Since then, the Briton and ex-husband of Sarah Ferguson has kept a low profile and only appears on horseback rides on royal private estates. His presence in the foreground, alongside the Queen, at the funeral of his father Prince Philip last April, did not fail to react …