(New York) Prince Andrew is challenging the jurisdiction of New York where the lawsuit against an American woman who accuses him of sexual assault with the help of the financier who died in prison Jeffrey Epstein, when she was underage, was recently filed, according to a document from American justice.
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According to this document dated Monday and consulted by AFP, the second son of Queen Elizabeth also intends to oppose the notification procedure for this complaint, as it was carried out at his home near London at the end of August.
The lawsuit was served on August 27 at the royal home in Windsor, in Prince Andrew’s absence, according to previous court documents.
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It is an American, Virginia Giuffre, and who had already publicly accused the Duke of York of sexual assault more than 20 years ago when she was underage, who had filed a complaint on August 9, 2021 in federal court in Manhattan. .
This procedural hearing, during which Prince Andrew was represented by his Californian lawyer Andrew Brettler, is the Duke of York’s first legal action in this embarrassing case for the British royal family.
According to the complaint of Mme Giuffre, the Duke of York is “one of the powerful men” to whom she was “handed over for sexual purposes” when she was the victim between 2000 and 2002, from the age of 16, of the vast sex trafficking for which the financier Jeffrey Epstein was indicted and incarcerated, before committing himself to death in a Manhattan prison, in the summer of 2019.
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Prince Andrew, who had previously rejected these allegations, is accused in the complaint of having “sexually assaulted” Mr.me Giuffre, then a minor, three times: in London at a very close friend of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and in the properties of the businessman in New York and in the Virgin Islands.
61-year-old Prince Andrew had already “categorically” denied, in an interview deemed calamitous to the BBC in November 2019, where he did not express a single regret for his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein or the slightest empathy for his victims.
He had expressed doubts about the authenticity of a photo showing him with Virginia Giuffre and, in the background, Ghislaine Maxwell, who remains in prison and whose trial is due to begin on November 29 in New York.
Despite his denials, his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein had plunged him into turmoil and forced him to retire from public life.
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