The woman who named Britain’s Prince Andrew in a US court filing claiming that she was kept as an underage “sex slave” by a Wall Street financier said Saturday she would not be silenced.
The plaintiff, identified only as “Jane Doe #3” in court papers, told the Guardian newspaper that she refuses to be “unjustly victimised again” after robust denials from Buckingham Palace and another man named in the suit.
The story made headline news in Britain’s newspapers on Saturday.
According to the motion filed in a Florida court on Monday, the woman alleges she was “forced to have sexual relations” with Andrew, the Duke of York, in London, New York and the Caribbean at the behest of Jeffrey Epstein.
Epstein, a known friend of the 54-year-old prince, was convicted in 2008 of soliciting an underage girl for prostitution and served a prison term.
No dates for the purported sexual encounters were given, but the woman claimed she was Epstein’s sex slave from 1999 through 2002.
In a strongly worded response on Friday, Buckingham Palace said that “any suggestion of impropriety with underage minors is categorically untrue”.
Another man named in the court papers also robustly protested his innocence.
Alan Dershowitz, one of Epstein’s defence lawyers with whom “Jane Doe #3” was allegedly forced to have sex with on several occasions, told AFP the story was “made up”.
He accused “Jane Doe #3” of “filing a false and malicious legal proceeding” in an attempt to extort money from his former client.
In a statement issued to the Guardian through her lawyers, the woman said: “These types of aggressive attacks on me are exactly the reason why sexual abuse victims typically remain silent and the reason why I did for a long time.
“That trend should change. I’m not going to be bullied back into silence.”
Andrew is the second son of Queen Elizabeth II and fifth in line to the British throne.
He was Britain’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment for 10 years until 2011.
The motion in which he is named is to be included in an ongoing civil case that accuses federal prosecutors of cutting a plea-bargain deal with Epstein without consulting his victims, in violation of the US Crime Victims Rights’ Act.
In 2008, Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to a single Florida state charge of soliciting prostitution. He remains a registered sex offender.