NEW YORK — Prince Andrew says a woman who claims Jeffrey Epstein offered her to him three times for sex is out for a “payday” and has harmed “many innocent people” with false accusations, the British royal said in court papers Friday.
“Virginia 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,” reads the prince’s motion to dismiss Giuffre’s lawsuit.
“However, and without diminishing the harm suffered as a results of Epstein’s alleged misconduct, Prince Andrew never sexually abused or assaulted Giuffre.”
Giuffre is one of Epstein’s most prominent accusers and has long maintained that he trafficked her for sex in the early 2000s, when she was a teenager.
In a lawsuit filed in August, she says the dead financier and his jailed madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, forced her into having sex with the Duke of York three times.
Now 38, Giuffre says she was forced into sex with Andrew when she was 17 years old at Maxwell’s London townhouse, Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion, and Epstein’s private island in the Virgin Islands.
Andrew, who is ninth in line for the British throne, was served the suit Aug. 27 at the Royal Lodge in Windsor. Giuffre’s lawyer David Boies filed the case under New York’s Child Victims Act.
“Most people could only dream of obtaining the sums of money that Giuffre has secured for herself over the years,” reads the paperwork filed by Prince Andrew.
“This presents a compelling motive for Giuffre to continue filing frivolous lawsuits against individuals such as Prince Andrew, whose sullied reputation is only the latest collateral damage of the Epstein scandal.”
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