This was seemingly the end to the ongoing legal battle between Virginia Giuffre and the Prince, stemming from allegations that the Prince assaulted Ms Giuffre when she was a teenager.
In 2021, Ms Giuffre began civil proceedings against the Prince under New York’s Child Victims Act, a law enabling victims of childhood sexual abuse to seek compensation from their abusers after the statute of limitations for the crime has already been passed.
The money will not go directly to Ms Giuffre, instead it will be a substantial donation to a charity created by Ms Giuffre, Victims Refuse Silence, based in the United States and set up to advocate for the rights of sexual assault and trafficking victims.
The allegations are intertwined with the larger sex scandal of Jeffrey Epstein, with Ms Giuffre alleging that she was groomed by the deceased financier and his socialite ‘madam’ Ghislaine Maxwell.
Epstein infamously was found dead in his prison cell in 2019 after himself being arrested on charges of sex trafficking. Ms Giuffre’s lawyers maintain that Epstein introduced Giuffre to Prince Andrew and that the Prince allegedly assaulted her on three occasions, once in New York, once in London and once at Epstein’s own private island.
Prince Andrew had previously come under fire for his connections to Epstein yet had denied knowledge of any wrong doings. The Prince then himself received accusations of committing acts of consensual sexual conduct, namely from Ms Giuffre.
Whilst the Prince asserted his innocence, this settlement agreement could be seen as an admission of wrongdoing, if not guilt – with his refusal for the matter to be brought into the courts.
The Daily Telegraph reports that it was the Queen herself who sunk millions of pounds into the civil suit for her son and the Daily Mirror details that £2 million of the estimated £12 million settlement suit (the exact amount has not yet been officially disclosed) again came from the Queen.
As Andrew’s finances have been tangled up in dispute and mystique ever since he stepped back from his royal role in May 2020, supposedly his only source of income is that of his £20,000 a year pension and the Prince is currently in the process of selling his £8 million chalet.
This payment from the Queen could be seen as a tough pill for the British public to swallow, with the rise in energy bills and surging inflation, it is uncertain how the public will react to the royal family spending millions to protect one of their own.
Whilst the Civil suit seems over, the sun has not risen upon the Prince just yet, as Ms Giuffre’s lawyer states; this settlement “does not in any way insulate him from any criminal liability that would otherwise exist.”