Alan Dershowitz countersues accuser in Jeffrey Epstein case

WASHINGTON — Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, accused by a woman of sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager under the control of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, has now sued the woman in federal court in New York, claiming that her allegations are “lies, disparagement, defamation, harassment” which are “beyond the bounds of decency and not tolerated in civilized society.”

Dershowitz repeated his previous claims that Virginia Roberts Giuffre was “pressured to falsely accuse Dershowitz” by her lawyers, namely the law firm headed by renowned attorney David Boies. So Boies fired back Friday with his own defamation suit against Dershowitz, saying, “In an effort to distract attention from his own misconduct, (Dershowitz) has engaged in a campaign to attack and vilify each of the lawyers who have represented his victims, one of which is (Boies),” the head of the Boies Schiller Flexner law firm.

Giuffre, now 36, has said that she was abused by Epstein at his Florida mansion from 2000 to 2002, when she was 16 to 19 years old. In 2014, Giuffre began publicly accusing Dershowitz, now 81, of sexually assaulting her.

As a result of Giuffre’s claims, Dershowitz said he has suffered “substantial damages in the form of personal and professional reputational harm, lost business opportunities, emotional harm, embarrassment, humiliation and pain and suffering.”

Dershowitz also has written a book about the case, “Guilt by Accusation: The Challenge of Proving Innocence in the Age of #MeToo,” scheduled for publication on Nov. 19.