Virginia Giuffre’s sexual assault lawsuit against Prince Andrew was formally dismissed by a US court on Tuesday. This comes weeks after the two parties agreed on a financial settlement.
In February, Giuffre and Andrew’s attorneys filed court papers stating that they had reached an agreement in principle to settle the suit. The settlement amount has not been disclosed, but is reported to be between £10-12 million.
Giuffre, one of the accusers of the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, sued Prince Andrew in 2021 on the grounds that he had forced her to have sexual intercourse with him when she was a minor. She sued Andrew under the Child Victims Act, a New York state law that allows victims of child sexual abuse to hold their abusers accountable, even if the abuse occurred decades earlier. She has said that she was a victim of Epstein’s sex-trafficking and abuse from the age of 16.
Andrew has, since the beginning of the case, denied the allegations and the out-of-court settlement announced in February made no admission of guilt. However, it said that Andrew “regrets his association with Epstein, and commends the bravery of Ms Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others.” The settlement also said Andrew would make a “substantial donation” to Giuffre’s charity in support of sexual assault victims.
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The dismissal of the case comes as a respite for Prince Andrew, who was stripped of his military duties and royal patronages by the British royal family in January, after the US District Court of New York turned down his plea for dismissal of Giuffre’s lawsuit.
Andrew had argued that he was immune from any liability based on a 2009 agreement between Giuffre and Epstein. However, the court noted that his immunity under the settlement in question was ambiguous, since it did not mention him explicitly.