For several weeks, this member of the British royal family had practiced a policy of the ostrich in due form.
Accused in early August of the sexual assault of an American, Prince Andrew finally admitted to being the target of an investigation, which he refused to do before.
In the height of summer, Virginia Giuffre filed a lawsuit against Queen Elizabeth's second son in Manhattan federal court for sexual assaults that allegedly occurred more than 20 years ago when she was underage.
Part of the investigation into the sex crimes of American financier Jeffrey Epstein, found dead in prison in 2019 after his indictment.
He contested the delivery and notification of the complaint
Virginia Giuffre's complaint, dated August 9, had been officially delivered on August 27 to the royal residence of Windsor, in the absence of Prince Andrew, but he had contested for ten days the official delivery and notification.
According to court documents, the Duke of York finally accepted that the complaint was indeed and formally delivered to him.
His lawyers and his accuser agreed that this notification of complaint dated back to September 21 (and no longer to August 27).
Prince Andrew, 61, has until October 29 to respond.
Read also Epstein affair: the long fall of Prince Andrew, the favorite son of Queen Elizabeth II
According to Virginia Giuffre's complaint, he was "one of the powerful men" to whom she had been "handed over for a sexual purpose" when she was the victim between 2000 and 2002, from the age of 16, of the vast sex trafficking for which the financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Prince Andrew, who “categorically” rejects these accusations, is suspected of having “sexually assaulted” Virginia Giuffre on three occasions: in London at Ghislaine Maxwell's, a very close friend of Jeffrey Epstein, in the properties of the businessman in New York and the Virgin Islands.
Prince Andrew gave an interview deemed calamitous to the BBC in November 2019, where he did not express a single regret for his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein or the slightest empathy for his victims.
He had expressed doubts about the authenticity of a photo showing him with Virginia Giuffre and, in the background, Ghislaine Maxwell, who remains in prison and whose trial is due to begin on November 29 in New York.
Despite his denials, his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein had plunged him into turmoil and forced him to retire from public life.
