One of Jeffrey Epstein’s most prominent sexual abuse victims, Virginia Giuffre, has settled a bitterly fought defamation lawsuit with famed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz.
But while Giuffre reportedly won large cash settlements from prior cases involving serial abuser Epstein and his friend Prince Andrew, no money exchanged hands in Giuffre’s settlement with Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor who was once Epstein’s attorney. Each party in the suit issued a statement as part of the settlement. Giuffre said in her statement that she may have misidentified Dershowitz when she said that he had sexually abused her.
In effect, it was vindication for Dershowitz.
“I have long believed that I was trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein to Alan Dershowitz,” Giuffre’s statement said. “However, I was very young at the time, it was a very stressful and traumatic environment, and Mr. Dershowitz has from the beginning consistently denied these allegations. I now recognize I may have made a mistake in identifying Mr. Dershowitz.”
Dershowitz, a friend of Epstein who would visit the financier’s home and sometimes accompany him around Harvard, where Epstein would eventually be given his own office, for years maintained his innocence and countersued Giuffre after she first sued him for defamation in April 2019.
“I’m very gratified that she admitted what I’ve known all along that she misidentified me,” Dershowitz told the Miami Herald, adding that he wished Giuffre well.
Dershowitz had previously accused Giuffre of lying when she claimed he had abused her, but said in his statement that he had, “nevertheless come to believe that at the time she accused me she believed what she said.”
The prominent defense attorney, perhaps most famous for being part of O.J. Simpson’s legal team in the Hall of Fame running back’s murder proceedings, said that the lawsuit with Giuffre had been particularly challenging.
“I’ve been fighting fights for a long time,” he said. “The fight with Giuffre has been the most frustrating and serious.”
Giuffre has said that she was initially recruited for abuse by Epstein’s ex-girlfriend and accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who first encountered Giuffre around the time of Giuffre’s birthday when Giuffre was working at the spa at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
Giuffre said that after being groomed by Maxwell, she was subsequently abused by Epstein and that the pair trafficked her to the pair’s high-profile friends, including Prince Andrew.
The bitterly fought lawsuits between the pair had dragged on for three years. Giuffre’s initial lawyer in the case, David Boies, was removed after Dershowitz accused Boies of trying to extort him and presented a secret recording of Boies in which Dershowitz claimed Boies told Giuffre she was wrong to have brought the suit against Dershowitz.
In his statement as part of the settlement, Dershowitz indicated that he now believed his prior claims against Boies were mistaken. The settlement also resolved cases that Boies and Dershowitz had brought against each other in New York state court.
Giuffre was one of several Epstein victims who spoke to the Herald as part of the 2018 "Perversion of Justice" series, which re-examined the deal Epstein cut with federal prosecutors in the Southern District of Florida in 2008 that allowed him to settle numerous allegations of sexual assault of girls by pleading guilty to two state charges of solicitation, one involving a minor.
Dershowitz was part of Epstein’s legal team that negotiated the lenient settlement. Epstein would ultimately serve only 13 months in a county jail, where he was allowed to leave and work from a nearby office and enjoyed other extraordinary privileges.
The Herald’s coverage led federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York to re-examine Epstein’s case and bring fresh sex abuse charges against him in July 2019. Epstein, who was held in federal custody after his arrest, was found dead in his jail cell one month later in what has been ruled a suicide.
Epstein’s ex-girlfriend and accomplice, the British socialite Maxwell, was arrested one year later and brought to trial in late 2021 on charges that she had groomed and recruited four girls for Epstein’s abuse. She was convicted on five of the six counts brought against her, including sexual trafficking of a minor.
While Giuffre wasn’t one of the four victims who testified at the trial, she was considered a victim for the purpose of Maxwell’s sentencing this past June, for which Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Maxwell is now serving her sentence in a federal prison in Tallahassee, Florida, and is appealing her conviction.
