Prince Andrew has filed seeking a trial by jury in Virginia Giuffre’s sexual abuse lawsuit against him. The court documents filed by his lawyers on Wednesday also denied allegations that Jeffrey Epstein trafficked girls to him.
Epstein, who was convicted of child prostitution in 2008, was arrested again in 2019 on charges of sex trafficking. He died by suicide while awaiting trial.
Giuffre, one of Epstein’s accusers, sued Prince Andrew in 2021 for forcing her to have sexual intercourse with him when she was 17. She alleged that Epstein kept her as a “sex slave” and forced her to have sex with Andrew at the London home of his recently convicted associate Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of late media baron Robert Maxwell.
Giuffre sued Andrew under the Child Victims Act, a New York state law that allows child sexual abuse victims to “pursue claims against their abusers, even if the abuse occurred decades earlier.”
Andrew had earlier tried to get Giuffre’s suit dismissed on the basis of a 2009 agreement between Giuffre and Epstein. However, the US Disctrict Court of New York turned down his plea for dismissal noting that Andrew’s immunity under the settlement in question was ambiguous.
After Giuffre was allowed to move forward with her suit, Andrew’s legal team petitioned to interrogate her husband Robert Giuffre and her psychologist Dr Judith Lightfoot. Giuffre’s legal team, on the other hand, has sought to speak to the Prince’s former assistant, who was witness to the alleged abuse.
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In the filing on Wednesday, Andrew’s lawyers brought up the settlement between Giuffre and Epstein once again and claimed that it shielded Andrew from litigation as it includes a release for third parties. They also said that the Duke of York lacked sufficient information to admit or deny the allegations of sex trafficking levelled against Epstein and Maxwell.
Although Andrew denies all allegations of misconduct, the filing does mention that he met Epstein “in or around 1999.”
Amid all the controversy around the Duke of York, the Buckingham Palace recently stripped him of his military duties and royal patronages, and announced that he will defend himself in Giuffre’s case as a private citizen.