Lawyers for British Prince Andrew on Tuesday called on American justice to dismiss a civil complaint for “sexual assault” that an American filed in New York for facts dating back to 2001, when she was a minor.
The defenders of the second son of Queen Elizabeth II are based on a compensation and exemption agreement signed in 2009 between this woman, Virginia Giuffre, and Jeffrey Epstein, the American multimillionaire who died in prison in 2019 and accused of sex crimes.
Lawyers argue that this 12-year-old regulation made public Monday by Manhattan federal court also “protects” other “potential defendants” in Epstein’s entourage, including his friend Prince Andrew.
It is precisely because Virginia Giuffre “gave up her rights to file a complaint against them by signing the 2009 agreement and that she received money from Mr. Epstein” that the prince is protected against legal action The Duke of York’s attorney, Andrew Brettler, said in a teleconference hearing before Manhattan federal judge Lewis Kaplan.
The accuser and alleged victim of Andrew and Epstein “intended [d’exonérer] a wide category of individuals, including royalty and businessmen, ”insisted Mr.e Brettler.
” Without ambiguity “
Under the terms of this 2009 agreement, Mr.me Giuffre had received US $ 500,000 from Epstein and she promised not to prosecute Epstein or “other potential defendants” in his entourage.
Andrew’s name is not mentioned there, but for his lawyer Me Brettler, “it’s unambiguous”.
On the contrary for the defense of Mme Giuffre, the prince is not “covered” by the transaction of 2009 and lawyer David Boies repeated it before Judge Kaplan. The latter promised a decision “very soon” on the fate of this civil complaint filed in August in New York.
Virginia Giuffre, now 38, claims that Andrew “sexually assaulted” her three times in 2001 – when she was 17 and her name was Virginia Roberts – in London, New York and the Virgin Islands American. This is where the prince’s friends resided, the couple formed at the time by Jeffrey Epstein and the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell.
Epstein, a figure in the international jet set, took his own life in Manhattan prison in August 2019, at age 66, ahead of his trial for sex crimes against underage girls.
His companion and accomplice for three decades, Ghislaine Maxwell, 60, has been in prison since the summer of 2020. She was convicted last week in New York of sex trafficking of teenage girls for the benefit of Epstein and faces dozens of deaths. years of imprisonment.
” Accountable “
Virginia Giuffre, who was not a plaintiff in the Maxwell trial, welcomed the judgment and said she hoped others “will be held to account”, alluding to Andrew.
The prince, 61, is not prosecuted and “categorically” denies having assaulted Virginia Roberts at the time. He even claims not to remember this young girl.
The Manhattan judge had already rejected on December 31 a nullity request made by Andrew, on the grounds that Mr.me Giuffre could not file a complaint in the United States because she “resides” in Australia. If all the princely remedies fail, a civil trial could be held “between September and December” 2022, Judge Kaplan said this fall.
Finally, the lawyers of Mme Giuffre has been asking for weeks that Andrew provide a medical certificate attesting that his body does not sweat, that he is never “sweaty”.
In an interview with the BBC in November 2019, deemed calamitous, he had indeed denied having danced “in a sweat” with Virginia Giuffre in a nightclub in London more than 20 years ago, as she had recounted. The prince would suffer from an impossibility of “sweating” since the Falklands War in 1982, when his body would have secreted too much adrenaline.
Widely distributed, a number of photos attest to the proximity between Andrew, Epstein, Maxwell and Giuffre. A 2000 snapshot shows the American financier, British socialite and the prince on a hunting trip in eastern England. Another photo shows Andrew and Giuffre holding each other at the waist, all smiles, with Maxwell in the background.
For more than two years, the Maxwell-Epstein sex scandal has plunged the prince into turmoil and forced him to withdraw from public life.