Prince Andrew, the second eldest son of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, has failed to have a pending sexual abuse lawsuit against him dismissed in New York. On Wednesday, the court ruled to admit the case. Plaintiff Virginia Giuffre accuses Andrew of molesting her in 2001. She was 17 years old at the time.
Giuffre claims to have fallen into the clutches of the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his assistant Ghislaine Maxwell. Epstein was arrested in New York in June 2019 and found hanged in his cell a little later. Maxwell was recently convicted of human trafficking in New York and is in custody.
Epstein, says Giuffre, forced her to have sex with Andrew against her will. The prince denies the allegations.
$ 500,000 for not taking legal action
His defense lawyers had cited an agreement that Giuffre made with Epstein in 2009. In it she undertook not to take legal action against Epstein or other “possible defendants”. In return, Epstein gave her $ 500,000. Andrew’s lawyers argued that the prince fell into the “possible defendant” category. The action should therefore be dismissed.
Judge Lewis Kaplan of the New York District Court disagreed with this argument. However, he did not reject her either. In his reasoning, he states that the agreement can be interpreted in two or more ways. It is therefore not permissible at this point in time to judge their validity. This could possibly be done in the main proceedings, which are expected in the autumn.
Immense damage to the image of the royal family
However, it is questionable whether Andrew will actually appear in court. The damage to the image of the royal family is already immense. That the family, also known as “the company”, would have Andrew cross-examined in a New York court is unimaginable. The disastrous BBC interview in which Andrew rejected the allegations in 2019 and made an extremely unbelievable figure in the process is likely to reverberate too much. It is therefore possible that the royals are striving for an out-of-court solution, i.e. they pay Giuffre money.
Giuffre had stated, among other things, that the prince had “sweated a lot” during sex. In the said BBC interview, Andrew said he had a medical condition: he couldn’t sweat at all. At least he couldn’t sweat at the time, he said. Therefore, Giuffres statements could not correspond to the truth. Their lawyers then requested documents that prove that the prince cannot sweat. These have not yet been submitted.
Andrew also said he had no memory of Giuffre. There is, however, a photo that shows him putting his arm around her. The prince also said that on the day Giuffre identified as the day of the abuse, he was with his daughter Beatrice at a children’s party at a chain restaurant called Pizza Express in Woking, near London. However, despite this very specific indication, the British tabloids could not find anyone who remembers seeing Andrew at Pizza Express, although an appearance in such an establishment would have been rather unusual for a member of the royal family. After the kids’ party at the restaurant, Andrew says he spent the rest of the evening at home with his family.
There was initially no response from the palace to the New York judge’s ruling.