Witness who saw Prince Andrew dance with alleged victim at nightclub will testify: report
A woman who has claimed she saw Prince Andrew dancing with his alleged victim will testify in court, as the royal is selling off a major asset.
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A witness who has claimed she saw Prince Andrew dancing with a woman who has accused the royal of sexual assault will testify in court.
The Mirror reports that Shukri Walker who claimed she saw the royal at London’s Tramps nightclub in 2001 – the night he said he was at Pizza Express – has agreed to testify against him in the United States.
Andrew is being sued in New York on three counts of sexual assault by Australian woman Virgina Roberts Giuffre.
London-based Ms Walker has given a written statement to the FBI saying she saw Prince Andrew with the then 17-year-old Ms Giuffre “because she apologised to him after standing on his foot on the dancefloor”, per The Mirror.
Prince Andrew previously claimed he had “no recollection” of meeting Ms Giuffre, despite a photograph of them standing together.
PRINCE’S PROPERTY
Prince Andrew is selling his $23.7 million ($A32.53 million) ski-resort chalet in Switzerland, the only property that he still possesses in his own name.
The former owner of the chalet sued Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson for reportedly failing to pay the remaining $9 million ($A12.35m) still owed on the property.
However, the lawsuit was dropped following the prince’s decision to sell the property, according to the Daily Mail.
Prince Andrew is set to sell his £17million Swiss chalet to pay off debt after legal battle https://t.co/ADiFLMx6X3
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) September 27, 2021
Andrew and his ex-wife bought the chalet in 2014 as a family investment using a mortgage and private funding from his mother, Queen Elizabeth II.
It comes as Prince Andrew is reportedly taking refuge in Balmoral Castle, Scotland as his legal team weigh up his options after being served with legal papers alleging his sexual assault of Virginia Giuffre when she was 17.
According to The Times of London, the prince is represented by Andrew Brettler, a Hollywood lawyer, and Giuffre is represented by David Boies, a litigator with a “fearsome reputation”.
According to the Times, Giuffre, 38, wants the US federal judge and jury to hear her claims and decide whether the prince should be liable to pay her damages, and if so how much.
She has accused the duke of forcing her to have sex at the London home of his friend Ghislaine Maxwell when she was 17.
She also said he abused her at around the same time in the Manhattan mansion of his late friend the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and on Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands.
Prince Andrew engaged in these sexual acts knowing “that she was a sex-trafficking victim”, she claims.
Andrew has denied all Giuffre’s claims, saying he does not recall ever meeting her.
According to the Times, the prince has three options in his response: zero co-operation; negotiate a settlement; or come out fighting.
A source told the Times: “The decision to bring in high-profile US lawyer Andrew Brettler to fight the civil case marks a significant turning point in approach, and the US team will be looking to robustly engage and challenge the claims from Mrs Giuffre in a bid to provide the duke with a platform to finally clear his name. They will be looking to examine and dismantle the claims one by one.”
PRINCE OFFICIALLY CONCEDES BEING SERVED LEGAL DOCUMENTS
It comes as Prince Andrew has officially conceded that the legal papers relating to Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s sex assault claims have been served.
In a joint stipulation filed on Friday, local time, in a US federal court, Andrew’s lawyers confirmed they had received copies of the complaint and summons.
The legal papers were signed by attorneys from both sides of the case which set the date for the service of process as of 21 September.
Under normal procedure, Andrew’s legal team would have 21 days to respond to this bringing the deadline to October 12.
However, the new request from the Prince’s legal team has asked the deadline be pushed to October 29 – something Roberts’ team agreed to in return that Andrew’s team would not challenge the service of process.
Sources told the Daily Mail that attorneys from both sides spoke by phone to sort out the agreement on September 21.
The day after it was revealed that Andrew, who is ninth in line to the throne, had accepted the papers after they were emailed to the Duke of York’s US lawyer.
Prince Andrew reportedly missed the birth of his granddaughter while trying to avoid getting served the documents.
A lawyer for accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre filed papers late Monday stating that the lawsuit had been delivered in numerous legal ways to Andrew, whose lawyers disputed that earlier deliveries were legally binding, the NY Post reports.
In her affidavit, lawyer Sigrid McCawley showed receipts proving that the documents were received by the UK High Court at 8:27am. Monday, a process approved by New York District Judge Lewis Kaplan.
The documents were also received by Fed Ex by the Duke of York’s US lawyer, Andrew Brettler, at 9:22am, after emails had already been sent to him Friday, the filing showed.
A judge approved both methods of service as the middle son of Queen Elizabeth II was accused by Giuffre’s lawyers of playing a “game of a hide and seek behind palace walls” to dodge the impending lawsuit accusing him of assaulting Giuffre three times, starting when she was 17.
Ms Giuffre, an Australian woman, alleged the conduct occurred around when his friend Jeffrey Epstein was sexually abusing her.
Prince Andrew and his lawyers have strongly denied Ms Giuffre’s claims.
Prince Andrew is “stressed” and “worried” over the bombshell lawsuit accusing him of sexual assault — and holding crisis talks about whether he should fire his legal team for its “shambolic” strategy of silence, according to reports.
The UK royal had wanted to forcefully deny the allegations made by longtime accuser Ms Giuffre in her New York lawsuit, a royal source told the UK Telegraph.
But he was overruled by his lawyers — leaving him fearing that “the wall of silence and policy of evasion only adds to the impression [that] the Duke has something to hide,” the source said.
The royal has spent weeks dodging receipt of her sex-assault lawsuit, according to a new US federal filing in the case.
“Ms Giuffre believes she has already properly served Prince Andrew, and the Central Authority of the United Kingdom has accepted her request to serve him itself,” wrote David Boies in the motion, per the New York Post. “Service is not intended to be a game of a hide and seek behind palace walls.”
Ms Giuffre’s lawyers chronicled the extensive efforts they’ve made to ensure Prince Andrew, 61, is properly served — including emailing, mailing and hand-delivering the papers to the UK High Court, his attorneys, his royal office and his home.
The motion includes a photograph of an envelope containing the complaint addressed to the Royal Lodge and partially deposited into a British mailbox, with a red first-class stamp bearing the visage of Andrew’s mother, Queen Elizabeth.
Prince Andrew’s lawyers argued Monday at the first hearing in the case that a secret 2009 settlement Giuffre struck with late paedophile Jeffrey Epstein would absolve the Duke of all liability — but they had no way to get their hands on it as it was under seal.
Giuffre’s suit alleges that she was 17 when she was forced to have sex with the monarch’s middle son at the direction of his longtime pal Epstein and cohort Ghislaine Maxwell — who allegedly operated a sex-trafficking ring that lent out girls to rich and powerful men.
Epstein took his own life while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges in 2019. Maxwell remains in custody in Brooklyn on allegations she recruited underage girls for Epstein to abuse. She has pleaded not guilty.
US District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversees Giuffre’s lawsuit, has urged both sides not to dwell on “technicalities”.
“I can see a lot of legal fees being spent and time being expended and delay, which ultimately may not be terribly productive for anyone,” Kaplan said at a September 13 hearing.
Maxwell’s trial date is November 29.
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