The Royal family tends to be in the headlines almost every day. Due to their high status, every activity the family decides to engage in ends up becoming a national curiosity.
Unfortunately this time, the royal family’s Prince Andrew has been caught among sexual assault accusations claimed by Virginia Guiffre.
The case against the Duke of York came into view in 2015 during a defamation case against Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Giuffre professed that Epstein coerced her to have sex with Prince Andrew in his New York mansion, in London, and on Epstein’s private island in the US Virgin Islands in 2001 when she was 17 and was known as Virginia Roberts.
However, at that time, the allegations were thrown out due to being “immaterial and impertinent to the central claim”.
The case once again came into the public’s focus in 2019 when the documents regarding 2015’s defamation case were unsealed.
Along with the documents the leading witness of the case, Johanna Sjoberg also made his viewpoint known by commenting, “Andrew and Virginia sat on the couch, and they put the puppet … on her lap, I sat on Andrew’s lap, I believe on my own volition, and they took the puppet’s hands and put it on Virginia’s breast, and so Andrew put his on mine.”
When these allegations continued to roam around the Royal Family, the prince finally decided to step down from his royal duties after giving a disastrous interview for the BBC’s “Newsnight.”
The Duke of York made his decision known through the following statement, “It has become clear to me over the last few days that the circumstances relating to my former association with Jeffrey Epstein have become a major disruption to my family’s work and the valuable work going on in the many organizations and charities that I am proud to support,”
With the trial for justice in federal court in Manhattan likely to begin in the fall of 2022, Queen Elizabeth’s third child has been stripped of his military ties and royal patronages.
This decision was made known to the public after the Manhattan Federal Court Judge Lewis Kaplan made his decision of proceeding with the lawsuit against the 61 year old British Royal known on Wednesday claiming that “Ms. Giuffre’s complaint is neither ‘unintelligible’ nor ‘vague’ nor ‘ambiguous,’ It alleged discrete incidents of sexual abuse in particular circumstances at three identifiable locations. It identifies to whom it attributes the sexual abuse.”
The Buckingham Palace statement read, “With the Queen’s approval and agreement, the Duke of York’s military affiliations and Royal patronages have been returned to the Queen, The Duke of York will continue not to undertake any public duties and is defending this case as a public citizen.”
Along with this, Prince Andrew is also banned from using the term “His Royal Highness” in any capacity.
Along with the Royal family, the whole nation will be waiting to see the results of this lawsuit. Hopefully, it will bring justice to the right party.
