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Prince Harry denies sexual abuse allegations and requests jury trial
Faced with official accusations of physical abuse of Virginia Giuffre, the prince requested a preliminary jury in the civil lawsuit.
The record filed on Wednesday contains 11 pages showing each paragraph's responses to the charges in Giuffre's lawsuit.
Virginia Roberts Giuffre claims she was trafficked and forced to have sex with the late agent Jeffrey Epstein's friends, including Prince Andrew, and that he was aware she was a minor, in the United States at the time.
Giuffre claimed she was sexually abused on Epstein's private island in the US Virgin Islands, at ex-partner Ghislaine Maxwell's London home, and at her Manhattan mansion by Prince Andrew.
His legal advisers, Melissa Y. Lerner and Andrew B. Brettler, stated that The Sovereign Andrew denies that he was a conspirator with Epstein or that Epstein trafficked young girls for him.
In the document, he also denied becoming a regular visitor to Einstein's properties, worldwide, just as he declined to be his close friend.
Legal advisers assure that the prince has all the information necessary to deny or admit the accusations made.
In the court filing, Prince Andrew admitted that he met Epstein in 1999, that the businessman and Maxwell went to the sovereign's 40th birthday celebration party in 2000 and that Prince Andrew was captured with Epstein in Central Park, and remained in Epstein's mansion in New York in 2010.
There are 11 affirmative defenses presenting the document. In one of them it is stated that Giuffre's supposed reasons for the activity are banished in whole or to some degree, by his own misbehavior and by the dirty hands' doctrine.
A new trial is anticipated
Giuffre's lawyer, David Boies, assures that Prince Andrew's reaction proceeds with his methodology of denying any information or data about the cases against him, and tries to blame the abuse survivor for having caused it in one way or another.
It also alleges that Prince Andrew is expected to be confronted with his efforts to blame Mrs. Giuffre for her own mistreatment in the statement made and in the trial.
Two weeks after a New York government judge denied the sovereign's motion to excuse the lawsuit, the filing was made.
Bad decisions of the Prince
The decision led to a series of legal proceedings for Queen Elizabeth II's third son, which could have major repercussions for Buckingham Palace.
The indictment against the 61-year-old prince has drastically damaged his public position today. The sovereign resigned from his illustrious obligations at the end of 2019.
Buckingham Palace reported that following the judge's recent election, Prince Andrew was deprived of his charities and his military titles.
Andres has until July 14 to answer under oath, following Judge Lewis Kaplan's decision last year. If not resolved, the prince could face a preliminary date between September and December 2022.
The case was brought by Giuffre under the Child Victims Act. This is a New York State law enacted in 2019 that briefly extended the legal time frame in child sexual abuse cases.
Lawsuit derived from the accusations against Epstein
Epstein confessed in 2008 to state prostitution charges and in July 2019 was indicted on government sex trafficking charges.
Investigators blamed him for running a decades-long scheme to physically abuse underage girls. They were in charge of taking them on private planes to their properties in Florida, New York, New Mexico and the United States Virgin Islands.
Before being tried, Epstein committed suicide in prison. His former partner and collaborator, Maxwell, was captured in 2020. He was accused of collaborating with the abuse scheme.
A government jury convicted her in December of five bureaucratic charges, including conspiracy and child sex trafficking.
Giuffre did not testify at Maxwell's preliminary hearing that she had been mistreated. In any case, she was referred to at the preliminary hearing when Carolyn, another of the victims, claimed that Giuffre had brought her into the group to go to Epstein's house in Palm Beach, Florida.
