:watermark(cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ipmgroup/5IDEBLR7ERC5TMAPLOHS63MVNM.png,0,30,0)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/ipmgroup/KVG5XYXDAJDMJGFW2F2NLEC57Q.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1 "Charged with sexual assault, Prince Andrew challenges New York’s jurisdiction")
Prince Andrew is contesting the jurisdiction of New York where the complaint was recently filed by an American who accuses him of sexual assault with the help of the financier who died in prison Jeffrey Epstein, when she was a minor, according to a document from the American justice. 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 complaint was formally delivered on August 27 at the royal home in Windsor, in Prince Andrew’s absence, according to previous court documents.
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 Ms Giuffre’s complaint, 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 charged and imprisoned, before killing himself in a Manhattan prison in the summer of 2019.
Prince Andrew, who had already rejected these allegations, is accused in the complaint of having “sexually assaulted” Mrs. Giuffre, then underage, on three occasions: in London at a very close to Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and in the properties of businessman in New York and the Virgin Islands.
Aged 61, Prince Andrew had already “categorically” denied, during 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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