The request to dismiss the complaint against the “favorite son” of the Queen of England was not enough. A complaint in the United States for “sexual assault” against British Prince Andrew should be examined at the end of 2022 in a civil court in New York, a judge said on Wednesday, a new stage in the case of the sex crimes of the deceased American financier Jeffrey Epstein.
The Duke of York has been in turmoil since the August 2021 filing in Manhattan federal court of a complaint by an American, Virginia Giuffre, accusing Queen Elizabeth II’s second son of “sexual assault” when she was minor, more than 20 years ago.
Criminal and civil proceedings are complex in the United States, and the civil review by a court of a criminal act complaint is not exceptional. Prince Andrew is not prosecuted for these alleged facts of “sexual assault”, which he continues to deny: he again asked the US justice last Friday to reject the complaint of Virginia Giuffre.
Victim says he was “handed over for sexual purposes” to Prince Andrew
New York judge Lewis Kaplan heard from lawyers for both sides this week and said on Wednesday he could “not give a trial date” to the civil but expected it to take place “between September and December next year ”.
For their part, the lawyers of Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre should make testify a dozen people each, including representatives of the parties. According to Me David Boies, representing Ms. Giuffre, two people from the United Kingdom should present themselves “voluntarily” to New York without needing to be summoned. British police have said they will take no further action after reviewing sexual assault charges targeting Prince Andrew.
In her complaint, Virginia Giuffre accuses Prince Andrew of being “one of the powerful men” to whom she was “handed over for sexual purposes” when she was, she claims, the victim between 2000 and 2002 , from the age of 16, of the vast sex trafficking for which Jeffrey Epstein was charged and imprisoned, before committing himself to death in a Manhattan prison in the summer of 2019.
The “sexual assaults” would have occurred on three occasions: in London at Ghislaine Maxwell, a collaborator of Jeffrey Epstein whose criminal trial begins on November 29 in New York, and in the properties of Mr. Epstein in New York and in the Virgin Islands. Despite his denials, his association with the American financier had forced Prince Andrew to retire from public life.
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