Sexual abuse victim sues Britain’s embattled Prince Andrew

Saeed Pourreza

Press TV, London

The continuing fallout over Britain’s Prince Andrew’s friendship with the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein; a lawsuit brought against the duke by mother of three, Virginia Giuffre, who alleges she was trafficked to the Prince by Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell when she was 17 and forced to sleep with him on three occasions.

In a statement Giuffre said, "The powerful and [the] rich are not exempt from being held responsible for their actions. I hope that other victims will see that it is possible not to live in silence and fear, but to reclaim one’s life by speaking out and demanding justice’’. 

But the Queen’s son denies any wrongdoing. In a car-crash interview with the British public broadcaster (BBC) in November 2019, he claimed he had never slept with Giuffre.

However, the case started to escalate after that infamous interview. The humiliated royal was evicted from his private office on his mother’s orders. And that was followed by a slew of companies and institutions who severed ties with him.

66-year old Epstein is said to have committed suicide in a US jail in 2019, a month after he was arrested over sex trafficking charges. His partner in crime, Ghislaine Maxwell, has pleaded not guilty to those charges and is awaiting trial in November. It is yet to be seen how the Duke and the embattled British Royal Family will emerge from this new looming storm.