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Last month, Virginia Giuffre decided to level a lawsuit against Prince Andrew for sexual abuse of a minor after writing in her statement, “I was trafficked to him and sexually abused by him.” Giuffre has accused the 61-year-old royal of abusing her several times between the years 1999-2000 when she was still a minor, and vowed to hold him accountable for his alleged crimes. It was initially reported last week that Prince Andrew was served the papers for Giuffre’s lawsuit against him after being accused of dodging servers by the 38-year-old’s lawyers, but new reports have since stated otherwise.
While David Boies, Giuffre’s lawyer, stated that they successfully served the 61-year-old duke, Prince Andrew’s legal time spoke out, staunchly refuting these claims. "We do contest the validity of service to date. The duke has not been properly served under either U.K. law or pursuant to The Hague Convention," said Andrew Brettler, the Prince’s lawyer.
As of Monday, the court has given the two parties several weeks to work out the details as to whether or not proper service was completed, with a court date set for October 13. However, rebutting Brettler’s claims that Prince Andrew was not successfully served, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York said, "I'll tell you right now that there is going to be ... service authorized appropriately, because I have a foreign national who has been sued in the United States court, and he's taking the position that he hasn't been served.”
According to Giuffre, Prince Andrew is connected with the late Jeffrey Epstein and his sex trafficking ring, which the prince has since denied, stating that he has never met nor come into sexual contact with Giuffre. The initial hearing on this case was scheduled for Monday afternoon in New York, with Brettler calling the case a “baseless, non-viable and potentially unlawful lawsuit that the plaintiff has filed against the duke.”
At this time, Brettler continues to hang Prince Andrew’s case on a document which Giuffre allegedly signed in 2009 which the Prince’s legal time claims "releases the duke and others from any and all potential liability." However, Boies told ABC News that there "is no evidence there that Prince Andrew was intended to be covered by the release. And, indeed, Prince Andrew has never himself asserted that he was intended to be covered by the release."
