WARNING: This piece contains particulars of sexual assault.
NEW YORK (AP) — A girl who says she was sexually trafficked to Britain’s Prince Andrew by Jeffrey Epstein accepted $500,000 in 2009 to settle her lawsuit in opposition to the American millionaire and anybody else “who might have been included as a possible defendant,” in accordance with a courtroom report unsealed Monday.
The prince’s attorneys say that language ought to bar Virginia Giuffre from suing Andrew now, despite the fact that he wasn’t a celebration to the unique settlement.
The personal 2009 authorized deal resolved Giuffre’s allegations that Epstein had employed her as an adolescent to be a sexual servant at his property in Palm Seaside, Florida.
Andrew was not named in that lawsuit, however Giuffre had alleged in it that Epstein had flown her world wide for sexual encounters with quite a few males “together with royalty, politicians, academicians, businessmen and/or skilled and private acquaintances.”
WATCH: How prosecutors proved Ghislaine Maxwell was Epstein’s ‘enabler-in-chief’
The settlement unsealed Monday additionally doesn’t point out Andrew, however incorporates a single paragraph saying it protects anybody “who might have been included as a possible defendant” from being sued by Giuffre.
Legal professional Andrew Brettler, representing the prince, has advised a Manhattan federal courtroom choose that the settlement ought to launch Andrew “from any purported legal responsibility.”
Giuffre sued the prince in August, saying he had sexually assaulted her a number of occasions in 2001 when she was 17.
The prince’s attorneys say Andrew by no means sexually abused or assaulted Giuffre and that he “unequivocally denies Giuffre’s false allegations in opposition to him.”
Additionally they wrote that Giuffre sued Andrew “to realize one other payday at his expense and on the expense of these closest to him. Epstein’s abuse of Giuffre doesn’t justify her public marketing campaign in opposition to Prince Andrew.”
Arguments over the request to dismiss the lawsuit are scheduled for Tuesday.
Lately, the prince’s attorneys have mentioned Giuffre ought to be disallowed from suing within the U.S. as a result of she has lived a lot of the previous 20 years in Australia and might’t precisely declare to be a resident of Colorado, the place her mom lives.
Decide Lewis A. Kaplan has rejected an try by the attorneys to halt development of the lawsuit and to topic Giuffre to a deposition over the difficulty of the place she is a resident.
In late 2019, Prince Andrew advised BBC Newsnight that he by no means had intercourse with Giuffre, saying, “It didn’t occur.”
He mentioned he has “no recollection” of ever assembly her.
The interview was extensively panned by critics who mentioned Andrew appeared insensitive to Epstein’s victims. Afterward, the prince stepped again from royal duties.
A message in search of remark was left with a spokesperson for Giuffre’s attorneys and with Brettler.
Epstein, 66, killed himself in August 2019 as he awaited trial within the U.S. on intercourse trafficking costs that didn’t contain Andrew.
His former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, 60, was convicted final week in Manhattan on intercourse trafficking and conspiracy costs associated to a number of girls after a month-long trial. Giuffre was not one of many alleged victims in that case.
Decide Alison J. Nathan, who presided over the trial, requested attorneys on either side to recommend when a sentencing date ought to be set and when a trial ought to be scheduled on perjury costs that had been severed from the opposite costs Maxwell confronted.
The Related Press doesn’t usually determine individuals who say they’re victims of sexual assault except they select to come back ahead publicly, as Giuffre has executed.
