Britain’s Prince Andrew attends a Sunday service at the Royal Chapel of All Saints at the Royal Lodge, Windsor, following the announcement of the death of his father, Prince Philip, in England, Sunday, April 11, 2021.
One of Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime accusers sued Prince Andrew on Monday, alleging he has repeatedly publicly filed complaints against her, including sexually assaulting her at the age of 17 at a formal site. it was done. Lawyers for Virginia Giuffre sued in Manhattan federal court, where Epstein was criminally charged with sex trafficking, a month before he killed himself in August 2019 at the age of 66 in an adjacent federal prison, where He was ordered to await trial.
Giuffre has repeatedly leveled his charges against Epstein, his one-time girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell, and Andrew, but the trial was the first time he had directly confronted Andrew in such a formal setting. This increases the pressure of public relations on the prince, even if it is beyond the reach of the courts.
In a statement, Giuffre said she was “holding Prince Andrew responsible for what he had done to me.” “The powerful and the rich are not exempt from being held accountable for their actions. I hope other victims will see that it is not possible to live in silence and fear, but to reclaim their lives by speaking up and demanding justice,” Giuffre said.
“I didn’t take this decision lightly,” she said. “As a mother and a wife, my family comes first – and I know this action will subject me to further attacks by Prince Andrew and his surrogates – but I knew that if I did not pursue this action did, then I would let them and the victims go down everywhere.”
In late 2019, Prince Andrew told BBC Newsnight that he had never had sex with Giuffre, adding, “It didn’t happen.”
He said he had “no recollection” of ever meeting him and told an interviewer that “many things are wrong” about Giuffre’s account, which alleges that the encounter took place in 2001.
“I can tell you quite frankly that this never happened,” Andrew said.
The interview was widely panned by critics, who said Andrew seemed insensitive to Epstein’s victims. Later, the prince relinquished royal duties.
Giuffre has long said that Maxwell recruited her from 1999 to 2002 at the age of 17 for sexual abuse by Epstein and Maxwell.
According to the trial, which sought unspecified compensatory and punitive damages, the prince abused Giuffre on several occasions when she was under the age of 18.
The lawsuit states that during each alleged act, Giuffre was made “expressed or implied threats” by Epstein, Maxwell and/or Andrew to engage in sexual acts with the prince.
The suit states that he feared “death or bodily injury to himself or to any other and other consequences” for disobeying all three by reason of his “powerful connections, wealth and authority”.
It said that on one occasion, Maxwell’s London home was sexually abused by the Prince when Epstein, Maxwell and Prince Andrew forced her to have sex with the Prince against her will.
The lawsuit states that on another occasion, Prince sexually assaulted Giuffre at Epstein’s New York mansion, when Maxwell forced Giuffre and another victim to sit on Andrew’s lap, as the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit also alleges that Andrew sexually assaulted Giuffre on Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands.
The lawsuit states that Andrew knew her age at the time, based on communications with Epstein and Maxwell. It said that he proceeded anyway “for the purpose of satisfying his sexual desires”.
The lawsuit was brought under the New York state law of the Child Victims Act, 2019, which allows victims to temporarily make legal claims of abuse when they were children, regardless of when or for how long the alleged abuse occurred. happened before.
Maxwell, 59, has pleaded not guilty to sex trafficking charges in Manhattan federal court, where she faces trial in November. He has been kept without bail. Her lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.
As part of an ongoing investigation into Epstein and his encounters with women and teenage girls, Manhattan federal prosecutors formally requested him to speak with Andrew.
The request, similar to the issuance of a summons, was made under the Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, an agreement between the two countries to share evidence and information in criminal cases. US prosecutors reportedly made a formal request through the British government to interview Andrew.
Brad Edwards, who represents dozens of Epstein victims, has said the prince failed to answer questions from earlier civil lawsuits.
“I’ve always been given the impression that, whether he has immunity or not, he certainly behaves the way he does,” Edwards said.
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