New York (tca/dpa) – A $500,000 settlement in 2009 between Jeffrey Epstein and one of his victims, which Prince Andrew says shields him from lawsuits, was unsealed by a Manhattan federal judge on Monday.
The agreement between Epstein and Virginia Giuffre was revealed through ongoing litigation between her and the British royal.
Giuffre says Epstein lent her three times to Andrew for sex when she was 17 and he was 41.
Lawyers for the queen’s son say the broad terms of the deal protect him from Giuffre’s lawsuit.
The 11-page agreement «forever discharge[s]» Epstein and «other potential defendants» from «the beginning of the world to the day of this release.»
The deal resolved a federal lawsuit Giuffre filed in Florida against Epstein.
A hearing in Giuffre’s new lawsuit against Andrew is scheduled for Tuesday.
Andrew met Epstein through his friend Ghislaine Maxwell in the early 2000s, according to court filings. Andrew’s name came up multiple times at Maxwell’s sex trafficking trial, which ended on December 29 with her being found guilty of facilitating Epstein’s serial abuse of minors.
Epstein’s former private pilot Larry Visoski testified at the trial about flying the Duke of York numerous times as a passenger on Epstein’s private planes.
The deceased financier’s longtime house manager, Juan Alessi, told jurors he was driving Maxwell to the spa at former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago country club in 2000 when she first spotted a 16-year-old Giuffre walking the grounds. Maxwell then allegedly recruited Giuffre into Epstein’s sex-trafficking scheme.
According to Giuffre’s lawsuit, Epstein and Maxwell forced her to sleep with Andrew at Maxwell’s London townhouse, Epstein’s Upper East Side mansion, and on his private island in the Caribbean when she was 17.
Andrew has denied the allegations. In his latest bid to quash Giuffre’s lawsuit, his lawyer Andrew Brettler claimed that her Australian residency bars her from suing in a New York court.
Giuffre maintains that her home is Colorado, where she is registered to vote and will return to once her elderly father-in-law in Australia no longer needs round-the-clock care.
In her latest filing, Giuffre demanded the prince prove that he cannot sweat, which the royal attempted to use as a bizarre alibi during a 2019 interview with the BBC.
Police arrested Epstein for trafficking underage girls for sex in July 2019. He hanged himself in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York a month later.