Prince Andrew has reached an amicable agreement with Virginia Giuffre, the American who accuses him of having sexually assaulted her in 2001. He thus avoids a resounding and embarrassing civil trial in New York for the family British royal.
‘Virginia Giuffre and Prince Andrew have reached an amicable settlement,’ reads a letter released on Tuesday by Ms Giuffre’s lawyer, David Boies, on behalf of both parties, outlining their intention to put end the case within 30 days.
The second son of Queen Elizabeth II, 61, was the subject of a complaint from this 38-year-old American woman, a former victim of American multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, who accused her of sexual violence when she was 17.
A former military hero turned royal pariah, the prince has always disputed the charges. But the case had again shone the spotlight on his links with Epstein, a sulphurous financier caught up for the sex trafficking of many young girls, and who had been found dead, hanged in his Manhattan cell, in the summer of 2019.
The exact financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but according to the court document, the Duke of York ‘intends to make a significant donation to Virginia Giuffre’s organisation’, which was set up last year and dubbed ‘Speak Out, Act, Reclaim’, which supports victims of sex trafficking.
The case had become increasingly embarrassing for the British royal family and a trial, even in civil proceedings, would have had a huge impact, although Prince Andrew retired from public life following a calamitous interview with the BBC in 2019, where he was trying to defend himself.
Stripped of his titles
In mid-January, after failing to have the procedure annulled and shortly before the anniversary of the 70-year reign of Elizabeth II, an unprecedented longevity, he had been stripped of his military titles and royal sponsorships by the queen. One more humiliation for the one who was seen as a hero of the Falklands war in 1982.
‘Prince Andrew never intended to disparage Ms Giuffre, and he acknowledges that she suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unjust public attacks,’ the document states. court filed Tuesday in the file of New York judge Lewis Kaplan.
According to the lawyers, Prince Andrew ‘regrets his links with Epstein and salutes the courage of Ms Giuffre and the other victims who have spoken up in their defence’. In this one-page note, there is never any mention of the American’s accusations against Prince Andrew, nor of the latter’s denials.
“I believe that the event announced today speaks for itself,” commented Virginia Giuffre’s lawyer, David Boies, in a statement sent to AFP. Prince Andrew did not react on Tuesday.
‘Relief’
Virginia Giuffre ‘has accomplished what no one else could have done: got Prince Andrew to stop his nonsense and side with the victims of sexual violence’, praised a lawyer for Epstein’s victims, Lisa Bloom , on Twitter.
The agreement nevertheless sounds like “a relief” for Prince Andrew, analyzes a former prosecutor contacted by AFP, Bennett Gershman. “The prospect of a difficult and embarrassing deposition and a trial has disappeared, and his reputation remains preserved by the fact that he has not admitted any misconduct with regard to Mrs. Giuffre”, adds this professor of law at Pace University.
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Virginia Giuffre accused the prince of sexual assaults in London, New York and the US Virgin Islands, at the residences of the couple formed by Jeffrey Epstein and British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, in 2001, when she was 17 years old.
During the BBC interview, Andrew claimed not to remember the girl, despite a snapshot showing him holding hands with Virginia Giuffre, all smiles, with Ghislaine Maxwell in the background.
In December, Ghislaine Maxwell, 60, was found guilty in federal court in New York of sex trafficking minors for the benefit of her former partner. His sentence has not yet been set.
/ ATS