Prince Andrew seeking jury trial in sex assault
case in New York
Issued on:
26/01/2022 - 22:46
New York
(AFP) – Britain's Prince Andrew is seeking a jury trial to clear his name in
the sexual assault civil complaint he is fighting in New York, his lawyers
announced Wednesday.
"Prince
Andrew hereby demands a trial by jury on all causes of action asserted in the
complaint," his attorney wrote in a motion filed at a Manhattan federal court.
His
accuser, Victoria Giuffre, has said she had sex with the prince when she was 17
and a minor under US law after meeting him through the late US financier
Jeffrey Epstein, who committed suicide in prison two years ago while awaiting
trial for sex crimes.
The prince
has not been criminally charged and has denied the allegations, which have left
him in disgrace and forced him to withdraw from royal duties.
Earlier
this month Andrew was stripped of his honorary military titles and charitable
roles after Judge Lewis Kaplan denied his plea to dismiss Giuffre's case,
making a civil trial in New York more likely.
Giuffre,
who is now 38, alleges that Andrew sexually assaulted her at the London home of
socialite and Epstein friend Ghislaine Maxwell after a night out dancing in
March 2001.
She sued
the prince last year for unspecified damages, alleging that she was trafficked
to him by Epstein and Maxwell.
Maxwell was
convicted of sex trafficking last month.
The motion
filed on Wednesday, which contested each point in Guiffre's complaint,
reiterated that "Prince Andrew denies that he was a co-conspirator of
Epstein or that Epstein trafficked girls to him."
As well as
the London allegations, Giuffre also says Andrew assaulted her at Epstein's
home in New York, and on Epstein's private island in the US Virgin Islands.
Lawyers for
Andrew and Giuffre named the first witnesses they hope to grill in the lawsuit
in mid-January.
Andrew's
attorneys said in a filing that they were seeking testimony from Judith
Lightfoot, Giuffre's psychologist in her adopted home of Australia.
Lawyer
Melissa Lerner said that the prince's legal team want to quiz Lightfoot about
what was discussed during her counseling sessions with Giuffre.
The
prince's lawyers argue that Giuffre "may suffer from false memories"
and want to ask Lightfoot about the "theory of false memories,"
Lerner wrote in a formal "letter of request" submitted to Kaplan that
would compel testimony in Australia.
In a
separate filing, Giuffre's lawyers told judge Kaplan that they wanted to
question two witnesses based in Britain, including Shukri Walker, who claims to
have seen Andrew at the nightclub in London with a young girl around the time
of the alleged assault.
Andrew, the
second son of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, withdrew from public life as a
royal in 2019 after a widely ridiculed BBC interview where he sought to
vindicate himself of the accusation.
In other
signs of social ostracism since, Andrew last week deactivated his social media
accounts and the York Racecourse in northern England has announced it is
renaming an event called The Duke of York Stakes -- even though this refers to
an earlier bearer of the title.
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