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Journalism of Courage
It was in a 2009 civil lawsuit against notorious sex offender Jeffrey Epstein that Virginia Giuffre, under the pseudonym ‘Jane Doe 102’, first alleged that she had been exploited by Epstein’s adult male peers, “including royalty.”
Later in 2015, during a defamation case against Epstein and his longtime companion Ghislaine Maxwell, she explicitly named Prince Andrew as one of the men she was forced to have sex with when she was 17 years old.
While that particular allegation was struck from court records at the time, it set the ball rolling for one of the biggest scandals to hit the British royal family in decades, ultimately resulting in Prince Andrew’s departure from royal duties. After years of denying all of Giuffre’s allegations, the Duke of York on Tuesday decided to go ahead with an out-of-court settlement in the landmark sexual assault case.
As part of the settlement, Prince Andrew has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to Giuffre, which will include a donation to her charity for victims of sex trafficking. In a letter sent to the court, Prince Andrew’s lawyers said that he had “never intended to malign Ms Giuffre’s character” and acknowledged that she had “suffered both as an established victim of abuse and as a result of unfair public attacks”.
“Prince Andrew regrets his association with Epstein, and commends the bravery of Ms. Giuffre and other survivors in standing up for themselves and others,” the statement reads.
Australia-based activist Virginia Giuffre is one of the most prominent victims of the infamous sex trafficking ring run by Epstein and Maxwell. In court documents, she claimed that she was procured by Maxwell as a “sex slave” for Epstein when she was still a teenager.
Born into a troubled home in Sacramento, California in 1983, Giuffre, now 38, had a difficult childhood. She ran away from home on several occasions, and even spent some time living on the streets, according to a profile by AFP.
It was while working as a spa attendant at former US President Donald Trump’s residence in Florida one summer that she first met Maxwell, a noted British socialite. She was offered a job as a personal masseuse at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion, where she was sexually abused by the financier and his friends.
In 2002, she was able to escape after she attended massage training school in Thailand. She later migrated to Australia with her husband Robert Giuffre.
Giuffre was not Epstein’s only victim. He ran a racket under which girls were lured to his residences, where he would abuse them. Epstein allegedly made the girls give him nude and semi-nude massages, while also making them engage in sexual acts with him in exchange for money. The girls were sometimes as young as 14.
In 2019, Epstein committed suicide in prison while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Two years later, Maxwell was found guilty of child sex trafficking and several other related offences.
In a lawsuit against Prince Andrew in 2021, Giuffre alleged that he sexually assaulted her in 2001 when she was 17 years old. She claimed that Epstein and Maxwell had directed her to have sex with Andrew at Maxwell’s home in London.
A photograph of Prince Andrew posing with his arm around Giuffre was submitted as evidence. She also accused him of assaulting her on multiple other occasions, including at Epstein’s home in New York and on his private island in the US Virgin Islands.
Prince Andrew has consistently denied the sexual assault allegations and previously tried to get the lawsuit tossed out.
In late 2019, Andrew gave a controversial interview to the BBC, in which he was asked about the allegations as well as his friendship with Epstein. Following widespread criticism, he stepped away from his royal duties.
“It has become clear to me over the last few days that the circumstances relating to my former association with Jeffrey Epstein has become a major disruption to my family’s work and the valuable work going on in the many organisations and charities that I am proud to support,” he said in a statement released at the time.
Last month, he was stripped of his royal patronages and military titles after a US court refused to dismiss the case against him.
By deciding to go ahead with the settlement, Prince Andrew has escaped a civil trial, which was scheduled to take place early next month. He has also made no admission of guilt and will not be required to air further evidence at trial.
In the statement submitted to the court, Prince Andrew has vowed to support sex trafficking victims and to fight against sexual exploitation. But experts say that the damage has been done and there is little scope for his return to public life.
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