NEW YORK (AP) — A lawsuit by an American who claims Prince Andrew sexually abused her when she was 17 might have to be thrown out because she no longer lives in the U.S., lawyers for the Prince said in a court filing Tuesday.Attorneys Andrew Brettler and Melissa Lerner wrote that they recently discovered Virginia Giuffre has lived in Australia all but two of the last 19 years and cannot claim she’s a resident of Colorado, where she hasn’t lived since at least 2019.
In an August lawsuit, Virginia Giuffre claimed that the prince abused her on multiple occasions in 2001.
The prince’s lawyers in October asked Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to throw out the lawsuit, saying the prince "never sexually abused or assaulted" Giuffre and they believed she sued Andrew "to achieve another payday at his expense and at the expense of those closest to him." The lawyers acknowledged that Giuffre may well be a victim of sexual abuse by financier Jeffrey Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while awaiting a sex trafficking trial.
Last month, Kaplan said a trial in Giuffre’s lawsuit against the prince could occur between September and December 2022.