Friday, March 29

The accusation of sexual abuse of a minor condemns Andrés de Inglaterra to a family and social ostracism | Society


The hero of the Falklands War, who piloted his helicopter to divert the attention of Argentine artillery and protect British ships, is in low hours among his military colleagues. Prince Andrew (London, 61 years old) has to listen these days to requests that he renounce his honorific ranks “so as not to tarnish” the reputation of the different bodies to which he still belongs. The well living of the Windsor family, favorite and until now protected by his mother, Elizabeth II, is considering putting up for sale his chalet in the Swiss Alps, valued at more than 20 million euros, to face a millionaire lawsuit for sexual abuse in American courts. Because the queen has already made it clear to him that she won’t put down a pound.

The friend of the millionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, whom he continued to hang out even after he was sentenced to 13 months in prison for prostitution of minors – “for his exacerbated sense of honor”, as he justified to the BBC -, is now considering negotiating a Extrajudicial agreement to prevent the case from being dragged during the celebrations of the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II, which this 2022 celebrates its 70 years of reign. Even if he avoids a conviction in this way, he will admit in practice to the public that he slept with Virginia Roberts – now Virginia Giuffre – when she was a minor under 17 years of age, handled and sexually exploited by Epstein and her lover and adolescent achiever, Ghislaine Maxwell .

The lawyers of Andrés, who tried in an almost childish way to hide last September in the Scottish castle of Balmoral, together with his mother, so that the summons of the New York judge would not reach him, they know that they have in front of a jurist with the dimensions of a colossus . David Boies represents Virginia Giuffre in her civil lawsuit against the prince for three cases of sexual abuse and rape, according to the woman: in Maxwell’s London apartment, in Epstein’s mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York, and in one of his private islands in the Caribbean.

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Boies was the lawyer who represented the US government in the now legendary lawsuit against Microsoft the first time the IT operator’s monopoly was broken and its abuses of market position were exposed. Who was the black beast of Bill Gates is not going to tremble at the possibility of overthrowing a member of the British royal family. “With all due respect to Prince Andrew, I think you need to start opening up, and for all the facts to be revealed. No one is above the law. Neither the president of the United States nor a prince of the United Kingdom ”, Boies assured the program Panorama, from BBC.

The first attempt by the prince’s legal team to completely dodge the lawsuit has apparently been unsuccessful. Andrés’ attorney, Andrew Bettler, this week asked Judge Lewis Kaplan to dismiss Giuffre’s petition. The legal argument was an up-to-the-minute surprise conveniently aired in advance among the media, but which did not seem to convince the magistrate at all. In 2009, Epstein and the woman had signed a confidential settlement, for which Giuffre received a compensation of half a million dollars, in exchange for waiving future legal actions against the American millionaire or other “potential defendants.” Bettler argued that his client, Andrés, fell into that category of hypothetical implicated parties, and that therefore the woman could not now take legal action against him. The judge constantly contradicted the lawyer’s reasoning during the hearing, held via videoconference, and was not at all convinced of the interpretation of the term “potential accused”. In fact, he came to say, only Epstein and Giuffre knew for sure what consequences their private arrangement had. And the millionaire, who committed suicide in a New York cell in 2019, could no longer clarify it. The judge has promised to make his decision known soon, but the experts who followed the hearing are practically certain that the trial will go ahead.

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Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre (center), in 2001. In the background, Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's lover and accomplice.
Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre (center), in 2001. In the background, Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein’s lover and accomplice.

On December 29, Epstein’s lover and accomplice, and friend for at least three decades of Prince Andrew, Ghislaine Maxwell (Paris, 60 years old) was found guilty of a crime of child sex trafficking by an American jury. The conviction carries a penalty that could reach 65 years in prison. It was the daughter of media mogul Robert Maxwell who introduced Epstein to a very special world that included politicians, academics, and members of the British aristocracy. Up to two occasions the couple went to Windsor Castle, invited by Prince Andrew.

Institutional ostracism

Despite his continuous attempts to regain a relevant role in the tasks of public representation carried out by the relevant members of the British royal family, Andrés has been condemned by the queen, the heir, Charles of England, and his son Guillermo to an institutional ostracism from which it will hardly emerge. Much more than the constant headaches that the couple of Enrique and Meghan Markle give them from their golden exile in the United States, Andrés’s adventures with his friend Epstein throw a stain on the image of the royal house of incalculable gravity.

“At the time, all the details he told us seemed almost comical. They provoked memes and clichés; questions for television contests and plots for comedians. And now, all of a sudden, everything sounds extremely serious ”, wrote these days Emily Maitlis, the BBC journalist whose interview with Andrés, more than a year ago, became the death trap into which he voluntarily fell. Duke of York. His ineffable excuses provoked the collective mockery of the country. If Giuffre remembered how much he sweated in the first match, Andrés assured that the excess adrenaline caused by the combat situations in the Falklands had cut off his ability to sweat. If the woman specified the date and place of the first time the prince allegedly abused her, Andrés countered with the statement that that afternoon he had taken one of his daughters to a birthday party at the restaurant Pizza Express. As if the two were not chronologically compatible. And if the definitive proof was a photo of Andrés, holding the then young woman by the waist, in Maxwell’s London apartment, the duke and his entourage showed no blush in suggesting that those did not look like his fingers – “they are not so plump ”- and the snapshot could be faked. “That is what I consider a hoax [bullshit, en la expresión estadounidense]. At the end of it all, it’s about two people telling their side of the same story. And I know that mine is the real one ”, Giuffre assured a few months ago before the BBC cameras.

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After Epstein died, Maxwell harshly condemned, the moment of truth has come for Prince Andrew, who for years has been able to avoid a scandal that affected him fully. Despite the accumulation of evidence against you, it is possible that an out-of-court settlement, or a well-played legal strategy, will save you from the quagmire. But before British public opinion, at the time of MeToo, In which the sexual escapades of a member of the royal family no longer admit jokes, Prince Andrew has become a ghost in life.


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