Gloves are off in Andrew’s sex attack case
Lawyers to use accuser’s trafficking claim against her
PRINCE Andrew’s US lawyers are to use his sexual assault accuser Virginia Giuffre’s apparent own admission she recruited girls for Jeffrey Epstein in an attempt to dismiss her case.
The move will further fuel allegations from women’s rights groups of “victim blaming” .
A source explaining the Prince’s lawyers’ tactics told the Express: “The gloves are firmly off. Whereas before there was a very British sense in the handling of the case, Andrew’s US team hold an entirely different view.
“They know only too well how dirty lawsuits become over here and their belief is that if someone brings a knife to a fight, they bring a gun.
“The duke’s team believe there are numerous contradictions in Giuffre’s claims that they intend to highlight. “There is no turning back.” Ms Giuffre, 38, claims she was sex trafficked to the Duke of York on three occasions by the late billionaire paedophile Epstein, the first time when she was 17 in London.
The duke, 61, has consistently and vehemently denied her claims.
Last week, the duke’s attorneys portrayed his accuser as an alleged criminal who worked to procure underage “slutty girls” for paedophile Epstein. He died in jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
They also claimed that by making false allegations against the prince and using up court time, Ms Giuffre is allowing real predators to get away with their crimes.
Now lawyers are reportedly poring over the transcript of her unpublished book.
Ms Giuffre placed a copy of her memoir into evidence during her previous defamation case against Epstein’s friend Ghislaine Maxwell, making its contents public.
It is understood there are two more aspects of the book that Andrew’s
legal team intend to highlight in a bid to have her case thrown out.
In Ms Giuffre’s memoir, she details how she recruited a girl of her own accord for Epstein.
This week Judge Lewis Kaplan anticipated the case would go to trial in September next year at the earliest.
At a pretrial hearing in New York, lawyers for mum-of-three Ms Giuffre and Prince Andrew said they would seek to depose between eight to 12 people to give evidence.
David Boies, who represents Ms Giuffre, said there were two people in the UK he wished to speak with under oath, although he did not name them.
Andrew Brettler, for Prince Andrew, also withheld the names of those he was seeking to give evidence.
In seeking to turn the tables on Giuffre, Brettler last week claimed in his court filing to dismiss the lawsuit: “It is a striking feature of this case that while lurid allegations are made against Prince Andrew by Giuffre, the only party to this claim whose conduct has involved the wilful recruitment and trafficking of young girls for sexual abuse is Giuffre herself, including while she was an adult.”