Prince Andrew’s bid to throw out the sex abuse lawsuit against him, citing a 2009 settlement Jeffrey Epstein reached with the same accuser, appeared to be met with skepticism in a hearing Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who is presiding over the federal lawsuit brought in New York, said that there are multiple ways to interpret the 2009 agreement but that the language suggested that only Epstein and accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre could say exactly what the language was intended to mean.
“But we don’t have Mr. Epstein here to say what his view was,” Kaplan said of the deceased financier, who died in federal custody in 2019 after he was arrested on sex charges. The death was ruled a suicide.
The hearing came less than one week after Andrew’s friend Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted on five of six counts related to the sex trafficking of children. Maxwell, who prosecutors said recruited and groomed four girls under the age of 18 for her ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein to sexually abuse, faces the prospect of decades in prison. And she still faces two perjury charges that stem from statements she made in depositions given in a 2015 defamation lawsuit Giuffre brought against Maxwell that was settled in 2017.
Maxwell’s conviction gave Epstein’s victims a sense of closure they say they had been denied after Epstein died before going to trial. Epstein had been arrested a month earlier on sex charges. Federal prosecutors gave his offenses a fresh look following a 2018 Miami Herald investigation into a remarkably lenient plea deal he struck with federal prosecutors in South Florida a decade earlier. That deal had allowed him to plead guilty to two charges of solicitation, one of a minor, and ultimately required him to serve only 13 months in a county jail, with generous allowances to work out of a Palm Beach office most days of the week.
After Maxwell’s conviction, Giuffre said she hoped to see others punished for their roles in Epstein’s enterprise.
“Maxwell did not act alone,” she said in a statement. “Others must be held accountable. I have faith that they will be.”
Giuffre filed suit against Andrew in August 2021, accusing him of sexually abusing her between 2000 and 2002, when she was under the age of 18. She alleges that the abuse occurred at Epstein’s New York mansion and on his private island in the U.S. Virgin Islands, Little St. James, as well as Maxwell’s London home, where a notorious picture of Giuffre, Andrew and Maxwell was taken.
Andrew has maintained his innocence and said in a 2019 BBC interview that he had no recollection of meeting Giuffre, and said he believed the photo had been doctored. He also claimed that he was incapable of sweating, a claim that Giuffre’s lawyers have asked him to provide medical evidence of in the suit.
Giuffre’s 2009 settlement agreement with Epstein, released publicly Monday, included language suggesting that “any other person or entity who could have been included as a Epstein defendant” should be protected by the provision. Andrew’s attorneys had argued that the British royal would be covered by such language because Giuffre’s 2009 complaint against Epstein alleged that she had been sexually trafficked to several of Epstein’s high-powered friends, including “royalty.”
Kaplan pointed to other provisions of the settlement that seemed to suggest that Epstein and Giuffre would both have to agree to specifically exempt Andrew from any liability.
“If somebody got sued and said this person was in this release and it was OK with Giuffre, then it could be made available,” Kaplan said.
Kaplan even directed Giuffre’s lawyer, David Boies, to sections of the agreement that seemed to bolster the claim that Andrew wasn’t protected by the settlement.
He also pushed back on the suggestion by Andrew’s attorney, Andrew Brettler, that the reference to royalty necessarily applied to Andrew, suggesting that it could just as easily be applied to any other member of a royal family, such as, he said, the “Sultan of Brunei.”
Kaplan didn’t seem especially sympathetic to Andrew’s other arguments to dismiss the case.
Andrew’s attorney, Brettler, argued that Giuffre’s claims of abuse were not specific enough, but Kaplan pointedly said, “With all due respect, Mr. Brettler, that’s not a dog that’s going to hunt here.”
Andrew has also argued that the case should be dismissed because the law under which Giuffre brought suit had unconstitutionally been amended to allow a two-year period for people to file claims of abuse long after the statute of limitations had passed.
Kaplan appeared skeptical about the claims, asking repeatedly whether Andrew’s objections to the laws applied to anyone who filed a lawsuit during the window of availability, or just Giuffre.
Andrew had previously raised the issue of whether Giuffre had proper standing to bring the case as she primarily lives in Australia, but claims citizenship in Colorado. He had sought to block the process of collecting further evidence until the question of Giuffre’s residence was settled, but Kaplan denied the request last week.
Kaplan said he would be ruling soon on whether or not the case could proceed, “but I’m not going to define that,” he said.
He reminded both sides to proceed with the process of collecting potential evidence as they awaited his decision.
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