Andrew attacks his Oz accuser
NEW YORK: New documents filed in a US court show Prince Andrew’s lawyers are trying to block Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s sexual assault civil lawsuit by claiming it doesn’t have jurisdiction because she is “domiciled in Australia”.
Ms Giuffre, 38, alleges she was trafficked to Andrew for sex three times when she was 17 in 2001 by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in jail in 2019.
US-born Ms Giuffre now lives in Cairns with her husband and children. She is seeking unspecified damages.
Andrew has denied any wrongdoing and strongly refuted the allegations made against him. He has on several occasions attempted to have the “baseless” lawsuit dismissed, adding that “sensationalism and innuendo have prevailed over the truth”.
On Tuesday, his legal team filed court papers in which they claimed to have discovered “new evidence” in the case and requested “limited jurisdictional discovery” before formally challenging it.
According to the filing, Ms Giuffre’s complaint says she is a “citizen of the state of Colorado” but she has lived in Australia for “all but two of the past 19 years” and “the court does not have subject matter jurisdiction over this action”.
“It is undisputed that at the time she filed this action, Ms Giuffre had an Australian Driver’s Licence and was living in a $1.9m home in Perth, Western Australia, where she and her husband have been raising their three children,” it continued.
“In reality, Ms Giuffre’s ties to Colorado are very limited. She has not lived there since at least 2019 – two years before she filed this lawsuit against Prince Andrew – and potentially, according to her own deposition testimony, not since October 2015.”
According to a memo filed earlier this month to the Southern District of New York, Andrew’s lawyers also say Ms Giuffre’s claims are based on evidence that is “not a reasonable mechanism” to be used under the New York Child Victims Act, which allowed accusers to sue beyond the statute of limitations. Ms Giuffre sued days before the act expired in August.
Lawyers say the act is used to protect victims of abuse who are under 18, though the state’s age of consent is 17, making the issue of Ms Giuffre’s consent “unsettled”.
The Duke of York sparked fury with a legal filing in October that branded Ms Giuffre a “money-hungry sex kitten” who was only suing him for “another payday”.
David Boies, Ms Giuffre’s lawyer, then hit back in a court filing opposing Andrew’s motion to dismiss.
“Prince Andrew said that he could not recall ever meeting Ms Giuffre, a denial so at odds with photographs and other evidence that it is itself indicative of guilt,” Mr Boies said.
A judge in New York will decide on January 4 whether to allow the lawsuit by Ms Giuffre against the prince to be brought to trial.