The British royal family will have more to think about than the August holidays. In fact, the Epstein affair catches up again with the second son of the Queen of England. The American who accuses Prince Andrew of sexual abuse under the influence of financier Jeffrey Epstein when he was a minor filed a complaint against him on Monday in New York, she said with her lawyer.
The complaint affirms that the Duke of York is “one of the powerful men” to whom Virginia Giuffre was “handed over for sexual purposes” when she was a victim between 2000 and 2002, from the age of 16, of the vast sex trafficking by which financier Jeffrey Epstein was charged and imprisoned, before committing suicide in a Manhattan prison in the summer of 2019. Prince Andrew is accused in the complaint of having “sexually assaulted Virginia Giuffre, then a minor, three times: in London with very close Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and at the businessman’s properties in New York and the Virgin Islands.
“I hold Prince Andrew responsible for what he did to me. The powerful and the rich are not exempt from responsibility. I hope that other victims see that it is possible not to live in silence and fear, ”Virgnia Giuffre said in a statement sent to the media. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Manhattan under a New York State Child Victims Act, which provides a one-year term to sue for sexual abuse, with no statute of limitations. This law, which came into force in August 2019, still leaves a few days for potential victims to act.
Now 61, Prince Andrew “categorically” denied such allegations in an interview that the BBC deemed disastrous in November 2019. In particular, he had expressed doubts about the authenticity of a high-profile photo showing him with the whistleblower and, in the background, with Ghislaine. Maxwell, who remains in prison in this case. Despite his refusals, his association with the American businessman had thrown him into confusion and forced him to withdraw from public life.