The woman who is suing Prince Andrew for sexual assault when she was a teenager is likely to have received at least £7 million already in payouts linked to her alleged abuse at the hands of Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein.
Legal experts believe Virginia Giuffre, who says she was a “sex slave” to the late American paedophile financier, has received a string of seven-figure settlements, as well as hundreds of thousands of pounds in media fees.
She is now suing the Duke of York for “punitive damages” that could run into millions in a civil case lodged in New York.
Giuffre, 38, who is also known by her maiden name, Virginia Roberts, has accused Andrew, 61, of sexually abusing her on three separate occasions in 2001 when she was 17.
She alleges that assaults took place at Epstein’s mansion in New York, at Maxwell’s mews home in Belgravia, London, and on Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean.
Advertisement
The duke denies the claims. His lawyers have accused Giuffre of seeking “another payday” and being a part of Epstein’s underage sex trafficking operation herself.
Over the past fortnight, jurors in a separate criminal case against Maxwell have been told that her accusers received payments of up to £4 million each from a compensation fund set up by Epstein’s estate after he killed himself in custody in 2019.
Observers believe that Giuffre is likely to have received at least a similar amount from the fund.
She was also paid an estimated £2 million when she settled a civil action against Epstein in Florida in 2009.
A third seven-figure payout came in 2017 when Maxwell, 59, Epstein’s former girlfriend, settled a separate defamation case brought by Giuffre.
Advertisement
“The £7 million could be just a conservative figure,” said one observer. “It’s probably a lot more.”
Tomorrow the duke’s lawyers will file their latest salvo at a court in Manhattan in an attempt to have Giuffre’s action thrown out.
However, Andrew’s attempts to paint his accuser’s case as “unconstitutional” has drawn the ire of America’s biggest child abuse charity.
Giuffre filed her lawsuit in August just days before a deadline for New York’s Child Victims Act (CVA) expired. The legislation allowed victims of historic abuse to sue their alleged perpetrators up until the age of 55. They were previously only able to file a claim within five years of turning 18.
Child USA has suggested that more than 10,000 CVA claimants could be denied justice if the duke’s challenge succeeds on constitutional grounds.