Prince Andrew's legal team has devised a strategy to battle the sexual abuse civil lawsuit the 61-year-old Duke of York faces, but whether it will work is a whole other story.
On November 3, Andrew's legal team faces a pretrial conference in his sexual abuse case at a New York district court. The lawsuit was filed by Jeffrey Epstein survivor Virginia Giuffre, who says the disgraced financier trafficked her to the Duke of York and other friends of theirs when she was just 17. In the suit, she claims to have been forced to perform sex acts on Andrew.
Prince Andrew, his legal team, and the royal machine at large have adamantly denied these claims time and time again. In his defense, they plan to completely tear Giuffre apart, arguing that she was actually willfully part of Epstein's network of abuse and that her money-hungry antics detract from real victims. The victim-blaming defense is already outraging many who have had it with the Duke of York.
A legal filing presenting the argument ahead of the November 3rd court date was filed on October 29. The documents conceded that Giuffre "may well be a victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Jeffrey Epstein … and nothing can excuse, nor fully capture, the abhorrence and gravity of Epstein's monstrous behavior against Giuffre, if so." That said, they denied Andrew's involvement or culpability.
"Giuffre has initiated this baseless lawsuit against Prince Andrew to achieve another payday at his expense," Andrew's lawyers, which includes Hollywood power attorney Andrew Brettler, continued. Brettler is also Armie Hammer's attorney in his cannibalism fetish case.
Andrew's attorneys also say that the Epstein plea deal would cover Andrew in the event he was involved in anything, though he allegedly wasn't.
Andrew's team references a tabloid article slamming Giuffre as a "money-hungry sex kitten" in making their argument that she has "milked" her role in this situation.
They also assert that she is guilty of trafficking as well and reference "Giuffre's role in Epstein's criminal enterprise," according to The Guardian, saying she participated in the "wilful recruitment and trafficking of young girls for sexual abuse."
In one section, they quote a young woman who was brought into the fold, saying, "she [Giuffre] would say to me, 'Do you know any girls who are kind of slutty?'"
All of this is brought up to their point that Giuffre's claims and her use of the legal system detracts from true victims, both in this situation and in the system at large.
These arguments are appalling to Andrew's critics, who have noted that much like his disastrous BBC Newsnight interview, he failed to seem at all sympathetic to any victim involved. Many in the UK in particular are embarrassed and not thrilled with the idea that the royal family is letting this play out the way it has.
Members of the public aren't the only ones disgusted with Andrew's arguments. Mark Stephens, a partner at the Howard Kennedy law firm and a UK media law expert, told The Guardian that the argument doesn't have a ton of legal viability either.
"He's obviously got fed up with the criticism that he's taken so he has instructed lawyers to engage," he noted.
"The problem, of course, is that he's now embarked on a route towards a case. He's saying it should be struck out because she’s unreliable but also that he's covered by the plea deal from Epstein in any event, which seemed to be sort of contradictory," Stephens continued.
"The problem you've got is he clearly as a human being wants to explain himself, he wants to make clear that he's not responsible but his only way of doing that is in the court hearing. And if he does that, he has to get into what he actually did with her, how did the photograph [with Giuffre] come to be taken, etc., and she will undoubtedly give graphic and detailed evidence about what she says were their liaisons."
An unnamed solicitor also detailed how this could further damage Andrew's reputation.
"This looks like putting up a smokescreen to tarnish her reputation but it has no legal relevance whatsoever. Whether or not she was complicit in assisting Epstein with his child abuse is neither here nor there when you consider the allegations against Prince Andrew, which are that he raped and molested her," they explained.
