The desire of Prince Andrew, 61, for a New York judge to dismiss the sexual abuse lawsuit filed last summer by Virginia Giuffre, has been frustrated after the magistrate decided on Wednesday to reject the motion. The defense argued that the Duke of York was untouchable because the economic agreement that the plaintiff had reached in 2009 with the late tycoon Jeffrey Epstein also protected the prince. The lawsuit must be “denied in all respects,” Judge Lewis Kaplan has unequivocally declared.
On January 3, the legal agreement reached in November 2009 by the victim -who was then called Virginia Roberts- was made public, for which she received 500,000 dollars not to go to trial for having been sexually handled and exploited when she was a minor under 17 by Epstein and by his lover and teen getter, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Elizabeth II’s son, who denies the facts, faces a civil lawsuit by Giuffre for three cases of sexual abuse and rape: in Maxwell’s London apartment when he was a minor, in Epstein’s mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York, and on one of his private islands in the Caribbean.
The victim, who is now 38 years old, is married and lives in Australia, is one of the 30 women who raised their voices to denounce Epstein’s child trafficking crimes, who committed suicide at the age of 66 in his cell in 2019 to waiting for a judicial process for crimes of sex with minors.
Subscribe here to the EL PAÍS América newsletter and receive all the key information on current affairs in the region