Prince Andrew To Face Virginia Giuffre In US Court Over Rape Allegations

KEY POINTS

Judge Kaplan said the trial would occur between September and December 2022
Giuffre previously claimed Prince Andrew sexually abused her on a private island
Prince Andrew has denied the allegations

Prince Andrew is set to face Virginia Giuffre in court. Giuffre filed a lawsuit against the royal in New York City in August over sexual abuse allegations. In a hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan revealed the timeline for the upcoming trial.

Judge Kaplan said the trial would occur between September and December 2022. The judge opted to set a window instead of a specific date due to potential jury delays resulting from the pandemic.

During a teleconference on Wednesday, Giuffre’s attorney David Boies and Prince Andrew’s attorney Andrew Brettlet said they were expecting to gather depositions from eight to 12 witnesses ahead of the trial. While the complete list of witnesses remains under wraps, some of the names expected to be included in the list are Prince Andrew’s ex-wife Sarah Ferguson and their two daughters Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.

In the lawsuit, Giuffre claimed that the Duke of York forced her to have sex with him in three separate instances between 1999 and 2002, one of which happened when she was a minor. Prince Andrew has repeatedly denied the accusations.

According to Giuffre, one of her sexual encounters with Prince Andrew happened while she was on a private Caribbean island owned by convicted sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein, who died in his prison cell in August 2019 pending sex trafficking charges.

Two months after Epstein’s death, the Duke of York said in a BBC interview that the alleged sexual abuse that took place on Epstein’s private island could never have happened because he was at home with his children on the alleged date.

“No, that couldn’t have happened because the date that’s being suggested I was at home with the children,” he said. “I’d taken Beatrice to a Pizza Express in Woking for a party at I suppose sort of four or five in the afternoon. And then because the Duchess was away, we have a simple rule in the family that when one is away the other one is there. I was on terminal leave at the time from the Royal Navy, so, therefore, I was at home,” he added.