LONDON (AP) – Prince Andrew acknowledged through his lawyer that an American woman filed a lawsuit against him for sexual abuse, clearing a roadblock that had stalled legal proceedings for several weeks.
The recognition was confirmed in a joint statement signed by a lawyer for the British prince, approved by a federal judge in Manhattan and entered in the public record of the court on Tuesday.
The court documents said that Andrés had been contesting the acceptance of the lawsuit until the lawyers spoke by phone on September 21. An agreement was signed three days later, according to the order signed by Judge Lewis A. Kaplan.
In the lawsuit, Virginia Giuffre claims that Andrés abused her multiple times in 2001, when she was under 18 years of age. The prince’s lawyer has called the accusations “unfounded.”
Filing a lawsuit with a defendant is often routine, but it can be more complicated when the defendant resides outside of the United States.
A judge must be satisfied that the accused has been duly notified of the allegations and has a reasonable period of time to respond to them. The prince must respond to the allegations in the lawsuit by October 29. A conference was scheduled for November 3.
Giuffre’s lawyers had told the judge that the lawsuit was sent to Andrés in many ways, although they never delivered it directly into his hands. At one point, Britain’s high court accepted a request from Giuffre’s lawyers to formally contact Andrés about the lawsuit.
Los Angeles attorney Andrew Brettler, who signed the documents on Andres’ behalf acknowledging that the prince was aware of the lawsuit, had argued at a hearing this month that Giuffre’s claim was “unfounded, unworkable and potentially illegal.”
At the end of 2019, Andrés told the BBC’s “Newsnight” program that he never had sex with Giuffre. “It didn’t happen,” he declared.
Brettler has said that Andrés cannot be sued because a previous lawsuit in the United States that was settled “absolved our client of all responsibility.” However, that 2009 conciliation document remains sealed.
The Associated Press does not typically identify people who claim to be victims of sexual violence unless they choose to speak out publicly, as Giuffre has done.
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