The settlement agreed between Virginia Giuffre and Prince Andrew over alleged sexual assault will leave the public to decide who they believe, according to a top US lawyer working with several victims of the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The settlement draws to a close the civil lawsuit filed in the US in August last year by Giuffre against the Queen’s second son, in which she accused the prince of sexually abusing her after she was trafficked by his friend Epstein when she was 17.
Andrew has consistently denied the allegations.
Although the move is seen as a remarkable turnaround, Gloria Allred said the statement outlining the settlement did not constitute an admission of guilt and would have been “carefully negotiated by both sides”. Andrew acknowledged only that Giuffre was “a victim of abuse”, but did not state who perpetrated the abuse, what it entailed or when it took place, she said.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “This case will be dismissed and each will go their own way and he’ll never end up testifying under oath and the public will just have to decide who they believe.
“Lawsuits are war, but a settlement means both sides are seeking peace. There will be peace now but this case will be remembered for many years to come.”
Allred, who is representing 20 of Epstein’s victims, said settling meant that the only way Giuffre would be able to talk about what happened in future would be by filing a police report, or if criminal charges were brought she could publicly testify in a court of law.
“Short of that we won’t hear Virginia being able to make statements about her allegations with Prince Andrew; that ship has sailed,” she said.
She added that the terms of the settlement remained unclear, since although Andrew pledges to make a “substantial donation” to Giuffre’s charity, he doesn’t say how much or how it will be funded, or whether she will personally receive compensation. She speculated that Andrew may have had to pay more in order to avoid apologising.
Giuffre and her legal team were likely to see a substantial settlement as vindication and sending a signal that her claim was legitimate, as is customary in such cases, but it also left the defendant with the opportunity to deny culpability, Allred said. “A defendant could say: ‘It’s not a vindication at all, I just wanted to get rid of the case, I don’t need this in my life, but I’m not admitting anything.’”
She also claimed that the fact Andrew’s lawyers had echoed Giuffre’s demand for a jury trial last month had been to secure “better PR” rather than a sign of confidence in his case, since “he didn’t have a choice” in the matter: in the US, if one side requests a jury trial this is usually accepted.
Other US attorneys representing victims of Jeffrey Epstein have hailed the settlement as a “victory” for survivors, with one claiming the royal’s “arrogance” stood in the way of settling sooner.
Robert Lewis, a New York-based lawyer for Sarah Ransome, who was abused at the age of 22 and settled a lawsuit with Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell in 2018, told the Guardian he felt the victims were empowered by the settlement, which showed they had “been heard, and were no longer silenced”.
He said that defendants such as Andrew “think the law on some level applies only to everybody else”, and was surprised that the prince and his legal team hadn’t settled earlier.
Lisa Bloom, an attorney for several of Epstein’s victims, said the settlement was likely to amount to millions of dollars and represented a “monumental victory” for Giuffre.
