Will Prince Andrew ever escape Virginia Roberts’s lawsuit?
There comes a time in our lives when we realize royalty isn’t quite what Disney makes it out to be. Plus, no matter how financially fortunate someone may be, why should anyone escape accountability? Abuse of power has led to the greatest atrocities of society.
Now, it seems like Prince Andrew and Virginia Roberts aren’t leaving the headlines anytime soon. Andrew’s lawyer argues the sex abuse accuser cannot sue him in the United States as “she lives in Australia”. The lawyer has called for the civil sexual assault case against the royal in the U.S. to be stopped due to the location circumstance.
For anyone in need of a brief brush-up, Virginia Roberts Giuffre is suing the Queen’s son for allegedly sexually assaulting her when she was a teenager. The Duke of York continues to deny the allegations. Prince Andrew’s legal team contends that the New York court is without jurisdiction over the case. Staying this long in the headlines, the question is clear: Will Prince Andrew ever escape Virginia Roberts’s lawsuit?
The Duke of York
As the Duke of York, the prince handles a broad range of public work with a chief focus on economic and business matters. Recently, he’s shifted his focus on three core areas in which he believes he’ll bring the most profound impact: “education and skills, entrepreneurship and science, technology and engineering.”
After twenty-two years of service with the Royal Navy, the Duke of York has a great interest in supporting military organizations and charities.
In April of 2015, amid a defamation case against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, Virginia Roberts Giuffre claimed that Epstein forced her to have sex with Prince Andrew when she was seventeen years old. At the time, the allegation was thrown out and struck from the court record.
Virginia Roberts’s lawsuit
In court documents that were filed on Tuesday in the Southern District Court of New York, it was stated that the case should be obstructed until the “issue of subject matter jurisdiction is adjudicated.”
In the documents which were viewed by the PA news agency, “Recently discovered evidence suggests that the court does not have subject matter jurisdiction over this action because Plaintiff Virginia Roberts Giuffre cannot satisfy the elements of diversity jurisdiction.”
“Notwithstanding that, in her complaint. Ms. Giuffre alleges she is a citizen of the state of Colorado, the evidence demonstrates that she is actually domiciled in Australia, where she has lived for all but two of the past nineteen years.”
According to Roberts’s own disposition testimony, “In reality, Ms. Giuffre’s ties to Colorado are very limited. She has not lived there since at least 2019 一 approximately two years before she filed this lawsuit against Prince Andrew.”
New York Child Victims Act
Merely two weeks after the argument of the case needing to be thrown out due to Virginia Roberts having a “tortured interpretation” of the law she is relying on. On December 14, it was said that some of the alleged offenses happened outside the state of New York and beyond the jurisdiction of the New York Child Victims Act which she’s utilizing.
The New York Child Victims Act created a year-long window for individuals to file civil lawsuits seeking compensation for the alleged sexual abuse they suffered as children. But the deadline was later prolonged by one year due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Virginia Roberts is seeking “unspecified damages,” but the sum is speculated to be millions of pounds. She alleges she was trafficked by the late Jeffrey Epstein to have sex with Prince Andrew as a minor under U.S. law. It doesn’t look like the case will conclude anytime soon.
